7033

• UCREFRP Catalog Number: 7033
• Author: Abbey, D. and C. Olinger.
• Title: A Survey of Energy Projects and Instream Resources in the Upper Colorado and Upper Missouri River Basins.
• USFW Year: 1979.
• USFW - Doc Type: LA-8126-MS.
• Copyright Material: NO

There
resources.8
themes.

are numerous variations of
This section presented

strategies
what seem

for protection of instream
to be the most important

IV. CONCLUSION

In Section I we presented data concerning the collocation of high quality
instream resources and energy projects and indicated generally the reaches
where conflicts might occur. Can we say anything specific about the conse-
quences for either the energy industry or fish and wildlife?
Numerous water supply and demand alternatives are available to the energy
industry. The most expensive of these--dry cooling--reduces water require-
ments for electric plants to 1,000 acre-ft per year/IOOO MW at an incremental
cost of less than 10% and for coal gas plants to as little as 2000 acre-ft/250
million ft3/day plant at an incremental cost of 1.5% (see Abbey, 1979 a and
b). Supply alternatives to streamflows include groundwater, municipal and
other wastewater, and transfers from present users.
Fish and wildlife management is less flexible. Numerous studies stress
the susceptibility of freshwater ecosystems to habitat modification, the most
pervasive influence being reduced flow. When depletion is gradual and cumula-
tive, mitigation is especially difficult.
The issue, then, is not whether streamflow reservations will constrain
energy development but whether the increased costs of water conservation are
worthwhile. That requires specific information concerning the effects of
development on streamflows and water quality. Getting that information
requires application of such a technique as the Incremental Methodology as
well as basic ecological research.

,

81n 1978 the US Fish and Wildlife Service published a series of reports
discussing streamflow protection in each of 13 Western states.

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