In September, when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission rejected plans for a 600-acre hydroelectric project in the southern Susquehanna River, Lower Susquehanna Riverkeeper Ted Evgeniadis predicted it wouldn’t be the last it we would hear about it.
He was right.
Last month, York Energy Storage refiled plans for the project, correcting what partner in the Reading-based company Bill McMahon called “minor technical” issues that prompted regulators to reject initial plans for the $2.1 billion project.
“We knew it was going to happen,” Evgeniadis said.
When FERC turned down the project, its regulators determined that York Energy Storage had not adequately defined the boundaries of the project. “We thought we had done that,” McMahon said.
Still, he said, the company resubmitted the plans with more enhanced drawings that show the scope of the project and outline the path of power lines leading from the project, something that McMahon said “fully complied with the request” from regulators.
“We’ve done the right thing,” McMahon said. “There’s nothing tricky or funny here at all. We’re trying to show what we’re planning to do as best as we can.”
The plans call for erection of a dam to divert water to a pumping station that would pump water into a reservoir on the bluff by Cuffs Run, a creek that flows into the river on Lake Clarke, the widest point on the Susquehanna, caused by the Safe Harbor hydroelectric dam about five miles downstream.
The idea is that the reservoir would store energy produced by renewable resources during times when power is plentiful and produce power when it’s not, like a large battery.
Despite objections from Evgeniadis and other environmental and heritage organizations, McMahon asserts that the project is “100 percent green.” With the expansion of renewable energy sources – solar and wind – and the decline in the use of coal and fossil fuels, he said, there is a need to be able to store energy to meet demand when production falls short. Unlike using batteries to store energy, he said, the hydroelectric project is environmentally friendly, as the production and disposal of batteries creates waste that “we’re not equipped to handle.”
“We don’t use water,” he said. “We put every drop back into the river. We have no emissions and no waste.”
If you're serious about using renewable energy, particularly wind wind and solar, you need some kind of energy storage system, the production electricity by wind and solar are too intermittent. Batteries won't cut it at this point, and pump storage is one of the few things we have the technology for on the scale necessary. So, of course, the "environmentalists" oppose it.
Evgeniadis and others, though, believe that the project would have detrimental environmental effects on the river. They also point out that the reservoir it would require on the bluff above the river would flood hundreds of acres of prime farmland in Chanceford Township and displace 39 families. It would also destroy one of the few pure wilderness areas on that stretch of the river.
“It’s just not the place to do it,” Evgeniadis said. "There could be a place where it makes more sense. How much more can the river take?”
If we would just get more nukes we could avoid all of this.
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