The endangered-species argument has become a very
<br />critical one now with the California salmon populations.
<br />Three of the four runs are either endangered or threatened
<br />or strong candidates to join the list. In the Columbia, I
<br />think about half the species-100 or more subspecies of
<br />salmon-are at risk. What we've done in California is
<br />exactly what we did to the buffalo 100 years ago. We've
<br />gone from 140,000 winter-run Chinook salmon to 191 fish
<br />last year. That's a 99.9 percent drop. Thanks to Dennis—
<br />the Bureau of Reclamation-spilling a couple of hundred
<br />thousand acre-feet of water, we brought that population
<br />back up to maybe a thousand, maybe two. But meanwhile,
<br />the spring run is going downhill, in part because of the
<br />operations to salvage the winter runs. So you have endan-
<br />gered species competing with each other for water now,
<br />which is a terrible situation.
<br />The best news that I guess I can bring to this conference
<br />here is that it is beginning to make more and more eco-
<br />nomic sense to leave water in rivers rather than take it out.
<br />As you all know, the whole mindset of the West since the
<br />Gold Rush has been that water doesn't do any damn good if
<br />it's in the river. It only does good if you take it out and do
<br />something with it, whether it's placer mining (which is how
<br />the whole Doctrine of Appropriation of Rights got going) or
<br />irrigation farming or sending it to Los Angeles so we can
<br />have nice green lawns in Beverly Hills and golf courses.
<br />Then water is worth something. The only way it's worth
<br />something in a river is if it's producing hydroelectricity.
<br />This has been the mindset of the last 100 to 150 years, and
<br />that is why our rivers are in such terrible shape.
<br />1 sat down with a hydrologist who's been working with
<br />me on a project in California and tried to calculate the value
<br />of a hundred cubic-feet per second, whether it's first left in
<br />the river and then taken out of the river. Now, what we
<br />assumed when we assumed the water was going to be
<br />taken out of the river, was that it was going to irrigate
<br />pastures or alfalfa. Those of you who live in the Rocky
<br />Mountain states and California probably know that
<br />agriculture uses 80 to 95 percent of all the water in every
<br />Western state, including Oregon and Washington. What
<br />many of you may not know is that, of that 80 to 95
<br />percent, usually anywhere from a third to two-thirds goes
<br />to cows.
<br />Cows are the biggest users of water in America, especially
<br />in the Western states, and even in states like California,
<br />where the number-one user of water is cows that eat
<br />irrigated pasture; the number-two user of water is cows that
<br />eat irrigated alfalfa; and the number-five user of water is all
<br />14 million people in Los Angeles.
<br />A lot of people don't know that, but of course, it has
<br />changed a little with the drought now-they have had to
<br />cut back on some of the acreage. But it is true that most of
<br />the diversions go to some kind of livestock-fodder opera-
<br />tion, so we assume that this water was going to be taken
<br />out to feed cows.
<br />First, we calculated the worth of the water left in the
<br />river. I'm not saying that I don't believe in the moral/
<br />aesthetic/etcetera arguments for leaving water in rivers, but
<br />I think we've got to start making economic ones because in
<br />this society money counts.
<br />I'm going to run you through this exercise very briefly
<br />just to give you an idea. The weight of a cubic foot of water
<br />is 62.4 pounds. Now, 100 cubic-feet per second is a rather
<br />typical diversion on a smaller river someplace in one of the
<br />Rocky Mountain states. The Snake River, you know, has a
<br />15,000-cubic-foot diversion at one point. I can't remember
<br />the name of the dam, but the entire river dries up there.
<br />Usually, if you take out, let's say, 200 cubic-feet per second
<br />of water, the rule of thumb in agriculture is about half of
<br />the water is evapo-transpired and half of it makes its way
<br />back to the river. So you are losing 100 cfs if you take out
<br />200 cfs. If you've got a river like the Roaring Fork, where
<br />you've a whole bunch of diverters up and down the river,
<br />it's very easy to imagine a minimum of 100 or 200 cfs going
<br />out of that river cumulatively. Well, take 100 cfs, multiply
<br />it by the weight of the water, and you've got 6,240 pounds
<br />of water leaving the river and not coming back every
<br />second.
<br />Now, since a lot of these diversions in the Rockies are
<br />high up, at 3,000 to 7,000 feet, especially here in Wyo-
<br />ming, you have a lot of drop. A lot of that drop goes
<br />through dam turbines. Hydroelectricity is created by the
<br />drop. We assume 3,000 feet of drop from one of these
<br />higher-altitude diversions.
<br />Now, if you multiply the weight of that water by 3,000
<br />feet of drop, you suddenly come up to 18,000,720 pound
<br />feet per second that have been foregone. Then you put in a
<br />turbine-coefficiency factor and so on and so forth. This stuff
<br />was all over my head about a week ago and now that I
<br />teamed about it, I am pretending to be an expert, but these
<br />are a hydrologist's figures, not mine.
<br />You add a horsepower-conversion factor and, to make a
<br />very long story short, what are you left with? One hundred
<br />cubic feet per second taken out of a river is potentially 23
<br />megawatts of hydroelectricity you could have produced.
<br />Now, 23 megawatts of hydroelectricity over a five-month
<br />period at typical utility rates would be worth about $4
<br />million, maybe $5 million worth of power production-
<br />clean power.
<br />Let's say that is the only value of the water. Let's forget
<br />about all the other values. Let's now assume that you took
<br />the water. Let's take the 100 cfs that went out of the river
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