Comments on: WATER AND POWER – MY ENCOUNTERS WITH SMALL HYDRO DAMS

By: RAFTING JOB IN A KAYAKING PARADISE | ANDRAŽ KRPIČ WHITEWATER KAYAKING BLOG

RAFTING JOB IN A KAYAKING PARADISE | ANDRAŽ KRPIČ WHITEWATER KAYAKING BLOG — Mon, 06 Jan 2014 05:08:54 +0000

[…] A raft guiding and safety kayaking job on the Elaho and Cheakamus rivers kept me busy through most of the days but unlike most similar jobs we always finished working before 16.30, which meant I had enough time to go kayaking after work. The Callaghan River is normally the best option for after work run in springtime and early summer. It is an amazing mix of class 4-5 rapids and some fun waterfalls, a truly great home run if you live in the area. Unfortunately it is under threat for a hydro power plant diversion. You can read more about the issue in a blog I published at my Palm Blog page. […]

By: Andraz Krpic

Andraz Krpic — Sat, 14 Sep 2013 05:25:03 +0000

Thank you for your contribution to this article, Rob. The thing I am really worried about is that economists might have the final word. But that makes presumptions of questionable profit making capabilities of these facilities even more odd and it raises a question of what is hidden from our eyes? Is there an agenda we’re not seeing? And because we fail to educate ourselves more thoroughly and are too focused on our short-term goals, which never the less might have the same vision of free-flowing rivers, our arguments are weaker and our capabilities to fight them smaller. It is obvious that we leave in a world ruled by economic interests, but in the end all of us (yes, even the economists, politics, investors and so on) are just human and we can make a difference by fighting the right battles; by educating ourselves and others and actively participating in future discourse development. We need to affect our communal “knowledge” if we seek to reach more minds and change our future to green (colour of nature).

By: Rob

Rob — Mon, 09 Sep 2013 16:07:45 +0000

Thanks for this. You are right that kayakers need to make a stand if they want to save the rivers they enjoy. The sad fact is that kayaking has very little economic importance when compared with other water uses such as power generation and fishing, however valuable the experience is to this small group. Here in the UK, it is virtually impossible to install a run-of-river hydro on a major fishing river without masses of mitigation measures and negotiations with local fisheries management bodies. That’s because fishing is very valuable to the local economy – some prime beats costs thousands of pounds to fish, for even a week. However rivers with impassable barriers to migratory fish (of the kind kayakers enjoy – waterfalls) have very few defenders, but they are avid defenders!

In the UK small hydro is made economical by government incentives – at the moment it’s really a kind of experiment I think, just like wind power to see what we can make of it. One route that is being developed is using low-head turbines such at the Archimedean screw turbine on main stem rivers. These turbines are purported to allow fish to pass downstream through them unharmed, but this does not remedy the effects on upstream migrants, the depleted reach or kayakers. Happily though most of the historic mill sites where these are being installed are not much fun for kayaking. There is a growing body of scientific research into the potential impacts of small hydro, for example http://www.loughs-agency.org/ibis/the-project/research/the-effect-of-small-scale-in-stream-hydro-schemes-on-riverine-fishes

Hopefully we can elucidate some of the ecological problems, but the bigger question of whether small hydro is an effective way of meeting energy demands remains for the economists and engineers to answer.