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THE BALANCI NG ACT SWAN: Any other comments on question two before we move on? HYDE: I just would like briefly to warn that we not pat ourselves on the back and yell success when we manage to shake each other's hands but the fish continue to die. SWAN: The third question is my effort to get to a specific issue that I think exemplifies this kind of tension as Clayton mentioned a minute ago, that values change over time. Many of you know that when Congress authorized Glen Canyon Dam in 1956, one of the provisions said: you will maxi- mize the generation of hydropower. That didn't work very well for the downstream ecosystem in the Grand Canyon and so Congress adjusted that with the Grand Canyon Protec- tion Act. I think there's some debate about what Congress did to effect, quote, "the Law of the River." But I think it's accepted that they did adjust some of the power generation aspects of Glen Canyon Dam and in that regard, my question is: In that situation the power users lost some ground, and with that action as an example, is it possible to balance environmental needs with our need for energy in the form of hydropower? we instituted some very We have estimated that if non-severe energy conservation measures throughout the Southwest, we could entirely eliminate our need for the hydropower from Glen Canyon Dam. SYMPOSIUM PROCEEDINGS SEPTEMBER 1999 o - Pam Hyde HYDE: I'd like to briefly take issue with the question. Bill and I actually talked about this as we were preparing this panel. I suggested that the question be: "Is it possible to balance environmental needs with our need for energy?" Again, this goes back to my point about what are our needs and what do we perceive our needs as being? We perceive that we need hydropower and there's a lot of dismay that hydropower took a hit in the re-operation of Glen Canyon Dam. Although I don't discount our need for power - our society depends on certain things and energy is certainly something that we can't do without at this point - we tend to perceive our need for energy is either going to remain the same or increase and that it has to come from the same sources it has always come from. We've gone into an era of energy deregulation throughout some of the states in this country. There has been a big debate about whether hydropower is green power. For those of us who work in river protection and river restora- tion, our view is, no, it's not green power. This is a source of energy that has environmental impacts. So, is it possible to balance environmental needs with our need for energy? Yes, I think that's definitely possible but the question is: Does it need to be hydropower? There's a lot of renewable energy sources that we haven't explored fully. Look at Arizona as a place where the sun shines all the time, that's my home state, yet we use very little solar energy in Arizona. It would be an obvious source of power. We at Glen Canyon Institute have estimated that if we instituted some very non-severe energy conser- vation measures throughout the Southwest, we could entirely eliminate our need for the hydropower from Glen Canyon Dam. It's definitely possible. What we have to do is stop and examine our needs. Do we need to have neon lights blazing 24 hours a day in Las Vegas? Do we need to come into a resort and have the lights on in the room when we come in? Mine were, I don't know about yours. It's a bright day out. Do we need to have lights shining on the panel? Could you see me if there wasn't a light in my face? Probably. These are the kinds of things that we have to stop and think about. Again, balancing means, let's examine what the needs are. PAlMER: I'm going to throw this away and answer Pam. There are two responses. One, I don't think that there is such a thing a green power. I've been to Altamont, California, where there's about two megawatts of power, or five megawatts of power generated from wind sources and I think it would be really unacceptable for us to take that visual blight and locate it in a national park. Wind power is sustainable bur it's visually impairing. I have been to a facility in western California that's solar generated, generates 10 megawatts of power through solar panels or through solar reflectors which take the sun and reflect it to a tower. The tower heats up the water and turns it to steam. The steam runs a turbine. It takes not quite a square mile of those reflective panels to get 10 megawattS of power. It isn't a good debate to talk about green power or not green power.