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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 <br />7