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Protecting Federal Hydropower Investments in the West by Congressman Tom McClintock Congressional Subcommittee on Water and Power Oversight Hearing, May 4, 2011

The purpose of today's hearing is to receive testimony on the benefits that hydroelectricity offer to our nation's prosperity, the impediments that hydroelectricity generators now face, and the costs that these impediments impose on the family budgets of millions of Americans and on job creation at a time when Americans suffer the most prolonged period of high unemployment since the Depression.

Hydropower is by all accounts the cheapest and cleanest electricity available to modern technology. Its cost is typically estimated at between a half-cent and three cents per kilowatt hour, compared with more than 14-cents per kilowatt hour for solar power. It produces zero air emissions.

(Tom Karier testimony to the subcommittee: The average cost of the energy efficiency in the Sixth Power Plan in 2009 was 3.6 cents per kilowatt-hour; the cost of the least-expensive new natural gas-fired power plant was 9.2 cents, and wind power in the Columbia Basin cost 10.4 cents per kilowatt- hour.")

Earlier this year, this subcommittee heard from the federal agencies charged with producing and delivering hydropower. It became painfully clear that crushing new costs continue to be heaped onto our electricity bills from over-regulation, water use restrictions and mandated use of so-called alternative energy sources. Worse, it became apparent that there are no plans actually being implemented to increase our hydroelectric generation through construction of major facilities.

We see around us the wreckage of these retrograde policies. California, which boasts of being on the cutting edge of this folly, now suffers the highest electricity prices in the continental United States, chronic shortage of capacity, per capita electricity consumption that is now lower than Guam and Aruba, and an economy that leased the nation -- from behind. This must not become America's future.

Our water and power pioneers had the vision of constructing large multi-purpose facilities to "make the desert bloom" and to provide low cost, emissions-free energy. The cheap and abundant hydroelectricity generated in the West's federal dams played a major role in producing the armaments and food needed to defeat our enemies in World War II. And it laid the foundation for the explosive economic growth and prosperity of the western United States in the post-war years.

This Administration purports to support hydropower through press releases, yet actions speak louder than words:

• It continues to pursue the destruction of four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath that produce enough electricity for more than 150,000 homes. The capital cost is more than half a billion dollars, on top of crushing replacement costs, on top of the loss of the Iron Gate Fish Hatchery that releases 5 million salmon smelt each year.

• It continues to fund extremist organization like the one invited by the minority party today, whose President has said the destruction of these dams would be a model for the demolition of four additional dams on the Snake River that produce enough electricity for 1.1 million homes -- adding a half-billion dollars per year just in replacement costs.

• It continues to pursue high flow spillage from the Glen Canyon Dam that wastes million of dollars of lost electricity production and ironically increases predator populations that devour endangered humpback chub. Upstream it has its sights on the Aspinall Unit in western Colorado.

It is the purpose of these hearings to begin moving the pendulum back toward sensible and proven policies that built our hydro-electric infrastructure. Today, we will hear from leading experts from outside the beltway whose work is dedicated to providing for the needs of a growing population. Their insights on hydropower policy will provide this subcommittee with guidance to restore the federal government as a positive force to prosperity, abundance and plenty once again.

Related Pages:
Protecting Federal Hydropower Investments in the West Testimony by Tom Karier, Northwest Power and Conservation Council, May 4, 2011