Hydropower Clarified

Clear water – doesn’t that sound wonderful? It’s also a nice name for a town.

But mostly it is a phrase with a great deal of promise. And so far on this planet it is a promise unfulfilled. The good news is that there is what appears to be the beginning of some understanding of the huge benefits of hydropower and it is our main mission to see those efforts multiplied in a major manner.

Once again, there are a number of misconceptions about hydropower, fostered mainly by the fossil fuel mega-corporations using fear tactics we have discussed earlier.

For example, many people only see hydropower as huge towering dams, flooding great areas of land, displacing communities and killing aquatic wildlife. Some see the use of water to make electricity resulting in water that cannot be used for drinking or other healthy purposes. Some also have been led to understand that all the possible hydropower sources have been used up.

So many things that people “know” are very far from the truth and we have explained some of the truths in earlier issues (“More of the Clean Water Story” and “Little Water, Big Energy”) and will continue to the best of our hundred-year-old experience to underline the message that our planet has a limited tolerance for pollution and that limit is rapidly being approached.

Small hydropower – particularly horizontally flowing generation – uses little space, requires no one to move and, if anything, creates a healthier environment for aquatic and other wildlife.(Look for our future issue “Hydropower on the Level.”)

Big hydropower – those large dams that so impress us with their hugeness – constitutes only 8% of the total hydropower population in the U.S. today. There are a myriad of locations where small waterfalls are potential hydropower producers, again without harm to the planet.

We have shown in earlier issues that between the United States and Canada the total of existing hydropower production plus the use of the known potential sources in both countries, hydropower could replace all of the coal burning capacities of both countries and have enough left over to substantially reduce all systems that require the burning of petroleum.

We understand that everyone will need to see a lot of proof of these arguments before the major changes are made to happen. We intend to provide just that– from some very impressive sources. Please stay tuned.