"If there’s any environmental regulations that’s preventing California from having a 100 percent max output at their plants, as I understand there may be,then we need to relax those regulations."
President George W. Bush on CNN
Dear Whitewater paddler;
When I started as Conservation Director for American Whitewater back in 1992, our time was largely taken up with fighting off bad, pro-industry actions that jeopardized the health of rivers and adversely impacted paddling.
Over the years, American Whitewater and other river, conservation, and recreation organizations started working together, ensuring that resource agencies like the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Fish & Wildlife, etc., actively enforced existing regulations and laws regarding hydropower relicensing. One of the most visible improvements has been the licensing of privately-owned hydroelectric dams. Repeated interventions combined with court rulings favoring the environment motivated these agencies to protect the public interest in license proceedings. Through the efforts of American Whitewater and members like you, literally hundreds of miles of whitewater rivers now have increased flows, and paddlers have access to new and outstanding runs.
Today, whitewater rivers face the most serious threat of the past decade!
Just days after coming into office, President Bush responded to California’s energy crisis by sending his new energy bill to Congress.Written by and for power producers, this bill will ensure wholesale abandonment of the progress American Whitewater has made over the past nine years!
This bill undoes all the environmental regulations that protect rivers.To increase power production, this energy bill will block river protection provisions in:
The Clean Water Act
The Endangered Species Act
Undermine the resource protection authority of agencies.
In order to increase power production, and to Òreduce the cost and time of obtaining a [hydropower dam] license, this energy bill will reduce the ability of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Marine Fisheries Protection Service, the U.S. Forest Service, and the public to protect rivers.
This is not a new bill; the hydropower industry has been pushing this for years, but it has been so tilted toward industry, so obviously a disaster for rivers, that no one took it seriously.
In the fall of 1999, the hydro industry lobbyists were finally able to get Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) to introduce it as the Hydroelectric Licensing Improvement Act (S. 71) in the Senate, and Representative Ed Towns (D-NY) to introduce a companion bill in the House.But the bill sat, waiting for a change that would once again favor power over natural resources.
The new administration has seized upon the energy crisis in California as an opportunity to talk of reforming our energy policy. But when setting policy in a period of crisis, people tend to focus on short term solutions at the expense of a long term vision.
It’s important to understand the California crisis.Experts have labeled this a "fiscal crisis" – not an energy crisis. The problems are caused partly by demand exceeding supply, as 20% of their production facilities were down simultaneously, and a dry summer led to lower reservoirs in the Pacific Northwest.
But most of the problems are a result of the deregulation bill crafted by the utility industry and passed by the state legislature in 1996. This froze consumer rates for five years, while allowing wholesale prices to float freely. In the past year, the utilities comfortable profit margin has disappeared as wholesale prices rocketed up 10 to 15 times their previous price.
Companies purchasing wholesale power and distributing it were quickly strapped for cash, and their credit ratings downgraded to such an extent wholesalers would no longer sell to them. Rolling blackouts were the only way for distributors to cope.
The new Bush Administration is exploiting this crisis
to push legislation that will allow industry to monopolize rivers!
You and I both know that existing hydropower facilities were licensed before Americans became aware of the need to protect our natural environment.The majority of these projects have never had adequate instream flow requirements for fish, wildlife and recreation, planned public access for recreation, fish passage facilities or proper land protection provisions.
Hydropower already enjoys a competitive advantage over other sources of energy because it has been granted free access to its fuel source the public’s waterways.Due to the length of hydropower licenses – licenses that straddled the environmental reform era – hydropower has been largely insulated from the responsibility of paying for the real environmental cost it imposes.
No other major source of power coal, nuclear, gas or oil has been so privileged. All have confronted their environmental obligations, and begun to internalize such costs.
Whatever the solution to the "energy crisis", it will not come by rolling back our environmental regulations. We cannot solve the "energy crisis" by destroying our rivers, by tapping into the short-term resources available within the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or by sacrificing river recreation or endangered wild salmon.
The outcome of this battle may or may not allow for the inclusion of public interest.
Only you can determine that.
I need you and everyone who cares about rivers to sign a copy of the attached letter to Senator Frank Murkowski (R-AK), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and return it immediately, so we can let him know our opposition to Senate Bill 71 and to the Administration’s energy policy.
Call or write your senators and representatives to tell them you oppose this bill.
We also need your financial help.The opposition is exceptionally well-funded and determined American Whitewater is small, frugal and ferocious. Your gift is crucial in the fight to preserve the gains we’ve made, while working to restore more rivers a task that will be infinitely harder, should this legislation pass.
Please rush your tax-deductible gift today, so we can fight for you and for the rivers.
Sincerely,
Rich Bowers
Executive Director
Your letters are needed today more than ever.
Please use the text below as a model, and modify it as needed.
Fax or snail mail it to:
The Honorable Frank Murkowski
The U.S. Senate tel: 202-224-6665
Washington, DC 20510
fax: 202-224-5301
Dear Senator Murkowski,
I am one of American Whitewater’s 8,000 members and a deeply concerned citizen. I have been watching the unfolding of the "energy crisis" with ever-increasing concern, as the government’s response – a reiteration of Senate Bill 71 – has taken the wholly unwarranted turn of calling for removal of environmental protections on our rivers.
While I do agree that California and other states need to bring additional power plants on line to meet the increased demands of a growing population and lively economy, I do not agree that this requires the unwarranted sacrifice of our precious natural resources.
That is too high a price to pay.
In the last ten years of hydropower dam relicensings, we have worked toward shared usage of America’s rivers.intended by God to nourish the land and the soul. Rivers are not put here for the sole usage of the power companies.Sharing the river drops power production by only 1% – a small price.
I will continue to fight to require that hydropower projects include:
instream flows adequate to support fish;
aesthetic flows to beautify the landscape; and
scheduled recreation flows to make life worth living.
Condemning rivers to being locked up in a steel tube, or behind a concrete wall condemns all of us to a life half-lived.
I will fight to free the rivers!
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