Please call your House member on Low Impact Hydro today!
Eagle Valley Trout Unlimited
2010 February
Should large-scale new dams that dewater streams be treated as "low impact hydropower"?
While the answer may seem obvious to you, it has been less obvious at the General Assembly.
We need your help - now - to call your Representative and ask them to support removing the phony "low-impact" language from SB19.
A Senate amendment changed the definition of "low impact hydropower" in an otherwise untroubling bill, SB19, to include new hydropower facilities that deplete flows in Colorado rivers - eliminating earlier language which would have ensured that streams did not face additional diversions for hydropower purposes. When SB19 proceeds to the House floor - possibly later this week! - we need to see this bogus approach to limiting hydropower's impacts stripped from the bill. Please ask your Representative to help remove this phony approach to "low impact" hydropower.
Points you can make:
- Hydropower is not necessarily "green" energy - it can cause real harm to rivers by depleting flows and causing rapid changes in flow that harm fish and other aquatic life.
- While generating hydropower as a "by-product" of delivering water for other uses such as municipal supplies makes sense, SB19 would broaden the definition of "low impact" hydro to allow for even more water to be taken from already depleted rivers solely for hydropower purposes - while still giving them "low impact" status. This simply doesn't make sense.
- Hydropower facilities that harm rivers are not "low impact" and should not get more favorable tax treatment.
- Please support the amendment to remove the phony "low impact" language from SB19.
You can reach the Colorado House of Representatives by calling 303-866-2904 and asking to be connected to your Representative.
Don't know who your State Representative is? Look them up at: here
Additional Background:
Senate Bill 19 - a bill designed to change the way in which hydropower facilities are valued for tax purposes - was originally written to apply only to small hydro facilities (under 10 MW). TU had suggested that low-impact hydropower facilities were appropriate for more favorable consideration as well, and a Senate amendment was crafted that would have allowed the same valuation to be applied to hydropower that was added as a retrofit to existing facilities, or that were constructed as a secondary use on new facilities that were built to deliver water for agricultural or municipal purposes. In other words - TU supports taking advantage of the movement of water for other purposes in order to also generate renewable energy. Unfortunately, the Senate language was then modified to eliminate the restriction that hydropower be a "secondary" use of the water - opening the door to having additional water drained out of rivers strictly for hydropower production and still deeming it "low impact". We need your help to ask the House to remove this phony version of low impact from SB19.
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David Nickum
Executive Director
Colorado Trout Unlimited
1320 Pearl Street, Suite 320
Boulder, CO 80302
303-440-2937 x101
