Hydro Leader April 2021

Leader ydro H VOLUME 2 ISSUE 4

Max Spiker: Using Hydro to Power the Future at the Bureau of Reclamation

april 2021

ADVERTISEMENT

Rugged Trash Rakes and Trash Racks

Keep water intakes free from debris and hassles.

Gene Power

, Paper & Steel Mills | Munic ration | Pulp ipal W ater I nt

Rugged trash racks and rakers keep water intakes free from debris and hassle.

Our innovative debris capture solutions were developed at our own hydroelectric facilities. So, we mean it when we say... ”we use what we sell, every day.” Our trash racks and trash rakes are easy to install, operate and maintain.

Our HDPE trash racks are practically maintenance free, designed to resist rust, corrosion, mussels and other marine life. Our patented electro-mechanical rakers have no hydraulics to maintain so they provide years of flawless performance. *Electro-mechanical Trash Raker U.S. Patent No. 7,815,811 & 9,539,528

akes | Wastew at e

ti o ns r Treatment Plants | Flood Control Pump Sta

For inquiries, please contact Shane Scott at 360.601.2391 or at shane@sscottandassociates.com

ADVERTISEMENT

NC man dies after boat gets sucked into raging flow of dam floodgate June 4, 2018 (Also: July 2019*, May 2020, November 2020)

Public Safety Around Dams - Let’s Get Started “a licensee must install, operate, and maintain any signs, lights, sirens, barriers, or other safety devices that may reasonably be necessary or desirable to warn the public of fluctuations in

Worthington Public Safety Solutions Call

l

1.800.899.2977

Click

flow from the project or otherwise to protect the public in the use of the project lands and waters” Section 10c, Part 12 of the Federal Power Act

See what happens when a boat gets too close to an open floodgate.

l

tuffboom.com

8

Max Spiker: Using Hydro to Power the Future at the Bureau of Reclamation

Hydro Leader Hydro Leader is published 10 times a year with combined issues for July/August and November/December by

an American company established in 2009.

STAFF: Kris Polly, Editor-in-Chief Joshua Dill, Managing Editor Tyler Young, Writer Stephanie Biddle, Graphic Designer Eliza Moreno, Web Designer Caroline Polly, Production Assistant and Social Media Coordinator Cassandra Leonard, Staff Assistant SUBMISSIONS: Hydro Leader welcomes manuscript, photography, and art submissions. However, the right to edit or deny publishing submissions is reserved. Submissions are returned only upon request. For more information, please contact our office at (202) 698-0690 or hydro.leader@waterstrategies.com.

Contents April 2021 Volume 2, Issue 4

5 P owering the Future

By Kris Polly 8 Max

Spiker: Using Hydro to Power the Future at the Bureau of Reclamation 14 The Red Rock Hydro Project: How Missouri River Energy Services Powered a Nonpowered Dam

30 D avid Capka: Advancing Dam Safety at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission 36 M itigating Warming and Preserving Cold Water Refuges in the Columbia River

Do you have a story idea for an upcoming issue? Contact our editor-in-chief, Kris Polly, at kris.polly@waterstrategies.com.

4 | HYDRO LEADER | April 2021

CIRCULATION: Hydro Leader is distributed to all hydroelectric facility owners in the United States, to hydrorelated businesses, and to every member of Congress and governor’s office. For address corrections or additions, or if you would prefer to receive Hydro Leader in electronic form, please contact us at admin@waterstrategies.com.

Copyright © 2019 Water Strategies LLC. Hydro Leader relies on the excellent contributions of a variety of natural resources professionals who provide content for the magazine. However, the views and opinions expressed by these contributors are solely those of the original contributor and do not necessarily represent or reflect the policies or positions of Hydro Leader magazine, its editors, or Water Strategies LLC. The acceptance and use of advertisements in Hydro Leader do not constitute a representation or warranty by Water Strategies LLC or Hydro Leader magazine regarding the products, services, claims, or companies advertised. hydroleadermag hydro.leader

hydro_leadr

hydroleadermagazine.com

COVER PHOTO:

Max Spiker, Senior Advisor for Hydropower and Electric Reliability Officer, Bureau of Reclamation.

Photo courtesy of the Bureau of Reclamation.

hydroleadermagazine.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE BUREAU OF RECLAMATION.

20 C amilla Braithwaite and Billy Cothran: Using Geospatial AI to Make Dams Smarter

24 D enise Bunte‑Bisnett and Rachael Bisnett: A Family Tradition of Hydropower

ADVERTISING: Hydro Leader accepts half-page and full-page ads. For more information on rates and placement, please contact Kris Polly at (703) 517-3962 or hydro.leader@waterstrategies.com.

ADVERTISEMENT

Powering the Future

T

hrough technological innovations, regulatory revisions, and constant advances in management, the U.S. hydropower industry is preparing to power the future. In this month’s Hydro Leader, we speak with representatives of numerous federal agencies, local hydropower entities, and industry professionals.

Max Spiker has three decades of experience in the Bureau of Reclamation and today serves as its senior advisor for hydropower and its electric reliability officer. In our cover interview, Mr. Spiker tells us about hydropower’s critical role in providing both clean, dispatchable energy and domestic energy-security benefits.

Powering nonpowered dams is one of the most promising and cost-effective methods of increasing hydroelectric capacity.

Recently, Missouri River Energy Services (MRES) added power generation to the federally owned Red Rock Dam on the Des Moines River in Iowa. We speak with Brent Moeller, MRES’s director of generation resources, and Ray Wahle, MRES’s senior vice president of power supply and operations, about the challenges and benefits of the Red Rock Hydro Project.

Optical, infrared, and radar observation from satellites can provide huge quantities of precise data on subsidence, seepage, and dam stability. To learn more about this cutting-edge dam monitoring technique, we speak with Camilla Braithwaite, a product manager at Rezatec, a satellite data analytics company, and Billy Cothran, CEO of South Carolina’s Startex-Jackson-Wellford-Duncan Water District, which is using Rezatec's services.

By Kris Polly We also bring you the story of two impressive female dam engineers who just happen to be mother and daughter.

Denise Bunte‑Bisnett is the president of the U.S. Society on Dams and works for the South Carolina Public Service Authority. Her daughter Rachael Bisnett is a geotechnical engineer at Stantec. We speak with them about their backgrounds and how to encourage young professionals to go into dam engineering.

Most of our readers are highly familiar with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which licenses nearly all nonfederal hydropower dams. We interview David Capka, the director of FERC’s Division of Dam Safety and Inspections, about FERC’s dam safety work and the progress of the part 12 revision process.

Finally, we interview John Palmer, a senior policy advisor for the water division at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) region 10 office, about the EPA’s new report on cold water refuges in the lower Columbia River.

I hope that the stories of these impressive professionals inspire you as you work to power our nation’s future through the hydro industry. H Kris Polly is the editor-in-chief of Hydro Leader magazine and the president and CEO of Water Strategies LLC, a government relations firm he began in February 2009 for the purpose of representing and guiding water, power, and agricultural entities in their dealings with Congress, the Bureau of Reclamation, and other federal government agencies. He may be contacted at kris.polly@waterstrategies.com.

ADVERTISEMENT

Israel Water Education and Trade Tour October 3–13, 2021 REGISTER NOW!

Please save the date for this tour, sponsored by Hydro Leader magazine and operated by Imagine Tours and Travel, LLC. $4,707.00 per attendee (with airfare from Dulles airport) $4,319.00 per attendee (without airfare) All posted prices, services, and destinations are subject to the terms and conditions of the participant agreement.

To view, please visit http://hydroleadermagazine.com/israel_tour/.

Hydro Leader magazine is published by Water Strategies LLC.

Services included in the package: • meeting and assistance at Ben Gurion Airport on arrival • transfer to/from Ben Gurion airport • licensed English-speaking guide for all transfers and sightseeing days • luxury air-conditioned coach • entrance fees for all visits and tours • eight nights of hotel accommodation • breakfasts and dinners at hotels and farewell dinner at local restaurant

hydroleadermagazine.com

April 2021| HYDRO LEADER

|5

ADVERTISEMENT

New Revenue Stream Low Impact

High Energy Output Cost Effective

Unleashing water’s natural power Delivering modular, scalable hydropower without the need for construction

u Tailrace-friendly, hydropower turbine modules that don’t affect your waterflow u Installation is easy - no site work or permits u Modular and scalable power generation 5kW - 1MW u Zero risk - can be installed or removed quickly

Learn more about our technology and how we can help you and your customers in these difficult times. We’re all in this together.

Email Sales@Emrgy.com for more information.

www.Emrgy.com

ADVERTISEMENT

Quality Engineered Steel Penstock Pipe Systems Leading the nation in reliable water transmission solutions since 1966.

Northwest Pipe Company is the most experienced manufacturer of engineered water transmission systems in North America. Bar none.

With locations across the continent, we’re nearby and ready to support your hydro project through design, specification, installation, and testing.

A legacy grounded in water.

Questions about a project?

Contact us!

Northwest & Midwest Region Neal Kelemen nkelemen@nwpipe.com 303-478-8342

Southwest Region Michael LaBroad mlabroad@nwpipe.com 909-839-3978 714-602-6022

Texas Region William Ast wast@nwpipe.com 817-304-8991

Atlantic Region Gary Lewis glewis@nwpipe.com 614-537-7549

NWPIPE.COM

ADVERTISEMENT

Max Spiker: Using Hydro to Power the Future at the Bureau of Reclamation

S

ince 1902, the Bureau of Reclamation has played a crucial role in bringing water and power to the western United States. Many of the Reclamation dams that provide flood control services or surface water also generate hydroelectric power for millions of homes and businesses. In his three decades with Reclamation, Max Spiker has been at the forefront of the bureau’s hydropower efforts. From his early role as a mechanic to his current position of senior advisor for hydropower and electric reliability officer, he has been involved in maximizing’s Reclamation’s hydropower efforts. In this interview, Mr. Spiker tells Hydro Leader how Reclamation provides hydropower across the West, the advantages of hydro as a renewable energy resource, and Reclamation’s role as a hydropower provider in the future.

Hydro Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

Max Spiker: As of this March, I’ve been at Reclamation for 33 years. I started in college and gravitated to working full time in power plant maintenance, eventually coming to be a hydroelectric mechanic at Hoover Dam. In general, my first 10 years at Reclamation were spent working in power plant maintenance. My second 10 years were spent in management and supervision of facilities. Since then, I’ve spent over a decade in the Reclamation Power Resource Office, which is the agency’s hydropower program office. I’ve worked as a program analyst and as the manager of the Power Resource Office, and currently I am the senior advisor.

Hydro Leader: What are your responsibilities in that position?

Max Spiker: I lead the oversight of the programmatic functions of Reclamation’s hydropower program—not only the policies, but also the initiatives implemented within Reclamation’s hydropower program to ensure that we produce reliable and cost-efficient power. I work with our customers to ensure that our facilities are maintained at operational and reliable levels to provide the value our customers expect and deserve.

Max Spiker: Reclamation has approximately 5,300 total employees, and approximately 1,600 of them directly support the hydropower program.

Hydro Leader: What role does Reclamation’s hydro program play in our nation’s overall power supply?

8 | HYDRO LEADER | April 2021

Max Spiker: Over the past century, federal hydropower generated at Reclamation projects has served project loads, enabling Reclamation to manage western water supplies. The surplus energy that goes beyond project load requirements is marketed by the U.S. Department of Energy’s power marketing administrations, providing Reclamation a steady stream of revenue for project repayment and investment.

Today, Reclamation is the second-largest producer of hydroelectric power in the United States. It owns 78 facilities in total. Of those 78, Reclamation directly operates and maintains 53 with its own staff. We call those 53 facilities reserved works. Those 53 facilities account for about 14,700 megawatts of capacity. On average, Reclamation’s reserved works facilities generate about 40 million megawatt-hours of clean and renewable electricity each year. For context, each year Reclamation’s hydropower program displaces over 18 million tons of carbon dioxide that would otherwise have been generated by traditional fossil fuel plants and generates an amount of energy equivalent to the demand of over 3.8 million hydroleadermagazine.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE BUREAU OF RECLAMATION.

Hydro Leader: How many Reclamation employees are directly associated with the hydro program?

Reclamation’s iconic Hoover Dam on the Colorado River.

Reclamation’s Davis Dam, which spans the Colorado River in Pyramid Canyon, 67 miles downstream from Hoover Dam and 88 miles upstream from Parker Dam.

U.S. households. We account for approximately 15 percent of United States’ hydropower capacity and generation.

Hydropower generated at Reclamation projects has provided tremendous value to the United States by developing and managing water supplies in the arid West and delivering reliable, low-cost, clean energy to our customers. Reclamation remains committed to our long-standing mission.

Hydro Leader: Are there any additional benefits or challenges of hydropower that you’d like to discuss?

Max Spiker: Hydropower is a clean, renewable energy resource. Hydropower is generated through the nonconsumptive use of water, and the water that flows through the turbines is available for downstream use and is naturally replenished by snow and rainfall. Hydropower delivers clean energy, domestic energy security benefits, energy storage, and job opportunities. There’s a lot to love.

Hydropower is also a dynamic energy resource, uniquely fitted to deliver both firm, dispatchable electric power and ancillary services. It supports safe, reliable energy transmission and the integration of intermittent, nondispatchable renewable energy resources into the grid.

Hydropower ancillary services include frequency, voltage, and ramping capability services; resource flexibility services, such as load following; condensing; rapid startup times; and black start. Reclamation’s hydropower program is poised to play a critical role in the clean energy and climate change discussions that are currently ongoing.

Unfortunately, hydropower’s environmental and energy benefits are not fully valued a lot of the time in current energy hydroleadermagazine.com

The spillway of Reclamation’s Davis Dam.

markets. For example, there are only limited revenue streams for ancillary services, and large or existing hydropower facilities are often excluded from state renewable energy portfolio standards. In addition, Reclamation’s hydropower program is experiencing rate pressures in select markets.

Factors including hydrologic variability, long-term drought, and operational constraints have collectively limited our generation and resource flexibility. At the same time, we’re managing increases in investment needs to keep our facilities April 2021| HYDRO LEADER

|9

ADVERTISEMENT reliable and dependable, as well as incremental costs allocated to hydropower for environmental mitigation activities. The result is less generation to recover more costs. Simultaneously, we’re operating in an increasingly competitive energy market, marked by abundant low-cost natural gas and costcompetitive nonhydropower renewables.

Reclamation’s Parker Dam forms Lake Havasu on the Colorado River.

These operating conditions and shifting energy market dynamics present both challenges and opportunities for Reclamation’s hydropower program. In response, Reclamation has developed a hydropower program strategic plan that establishes our hydropower program vision and includes complementary goals and objectives, such as prioritizing the value of Reclamation’s hydropower, maintaining customer satisfaction, and investing in our workforce.

The strategic plan will allow Reclamation to better navigate shifting operational conditions and market dynamics, ensuring the long-term viability of Reclamation’s hydropower program.

The strategic plan is available on the Reclamation hydropower program website, which can be found at www.usbr.gov/power/.

Max Spiker: In August 2020, Reclamation responded to unusually high energy demands across the western United States, demonstrating hydropower’s integral role as a renewable, reliable, clean source of electricity that provides great value to the West and protects our nation’s energy security.

10 | HYDRO LEADER | April 2021

Hydro Leader: What is Reclamation doing to improve the performance of its existing hydropower plants?

Max Spiker: We’re continually seeking out opportunities to better maintain and improve the performance of our existing hydropower facilities and resources. Specific ongoing activities include collaborative regulatory reform, operational and technological innovation, and customer outreach and partnerships. Collectively, these activities further the capabilities and value of Reclamation’s hydropower.

For example, Reclamation actively collaborates with federal and nonfederal partners to streamline and accelerate federal permitting processes for nonfederal renewable energy development on Reclamation projects, primarily through lease of power privilege contracting or Federal Energy Regulatory Commission licensing. Reclamation also coordinates with the regulatory agencies responsible for administering state renewable energy programs, portfolio standards, and energy markets to ensure that hydropower is recognized as a renewable resource in their programs, standards, and markets and is valued appropriately.

Reclamation also improves performance through operational and technological innovation. Over the last four decades, Reclamation has invested in upgrading our generators to their maximum mechanical parameters hydroleadermagazine.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE BUREAU OF RECLAMATION.

Hydro Leader: Would you tell us about Reclamation’s role in providing power during extreme weather events?

For example, our Glen Canyon, Hoover, Davis, and Parker facilities ramped up power production to respond to California’s electric emergency and to help stabilize the western electrical grid. Reclamation’s Central Valley Project maximized generation and reserves to make more energy available during peak periods and shifted pumping operations to off-peak periods to reduce electric system load. Federal Columbia River Power System facilities generated enough electricity to meet load requirements for Columbia River basin customers and sold surplus power to California via the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA).

Another example of hydropower support for emergencies was during the cold wave of February 2021. Several Reclamation facilities increased energy output to help the Western Area Power Administration (WAPA) and BPA meet customer and electric system demands. The Hoover, Davis, and Parker facilities generated approximately 14,000 additional megawatt-hours that month to support the response to the cold wave. Federal Columbia River Power System facilities, including Reclamation’s Grand Coulee Dam, deferred planned unit outages to ensure that adequate energy was available to BPA customers and to avoid the purchase of on-market energy.

Hydropower facilities are a crucial part of the interconnected electrical grid in the western United States, and these extreme weather events demonstrate the dynamic and critical capabilities of hydropower to respond almost immediately to system emergencies and swings in power demand.

ADVERTISEMENT to get the most out of each machine. Reclamation is also actively investing in innovative decision-support tools to optimize hydropower operations, maintenance, and asset management. For example, Reclamation’s hydropower optimization system, HydrOS, delivers both water conservation benefits and incremental hydropower generation by recommending optimal unit-loading levels and commitment solutions to plant operators. Reclamation is also investing in the development and deployment of hydropower data infrastructure and data analysis tools to optimize maintenance practices and long-term asset management. Another interesting project that we did here about 5 years ago was the installation of wide-head turbines at Hoover Dam. Reclamation also coordinates with customers and federal partners to exchange information, research solutions, leverage resources, and adopt best practices. Examples of these efforts include the Central Valley Project Power Initiative and the federal hydropower memorandum of understanding.

Additional program activities and planned investments are noted in Reclamation’s hydropower strategic plan.

assets. I mentioned Reclamation’s efforts to develop and deploy data infrastructure and data analysis tools.

Specifically, we’re looking at leveraging data technology to transition toward a more cost-effective, reliability-centered maintenance strategy, focused on predictive, conditionbased maintenance practices to support long-term asset management and reduce costs and outages. We also see opportunities to derive additional value from existing Reclamation hydropower resources by leveraging emerging markets and regulatory opportunities, such as energyimbalance and ancillary service markets and by pursuing regulatory opportunities to get large hydro recognized as a renewable energy source.

Hydro Leader: How are wide-head turbines different from the older turbines at Hoover Dam? Max Spiker: In total, five wide-head turbines were installed at our Hoover facility from 2012 to 2017. The wide-head design allows for more-efficient hydropower operations and flexibility at low reservoir levels. The wide-head turbines also deliver water conservation benefits, as more-efficient turbines require less water to meet power delivery requirements.

Hyrdo Leader: Does Reclamation offer operational training for non-Reclamation hydropower professionals?

Max Spiker: We invest in our staff and support several operational training programs, such as those of WAPA’s Electric Power Training Center and the Energy Providers Coalition for Education. They have helped us with apprenticeship training. Reclamation does offer training for our non-Reclamation transferred works operating partners on dam safety and other water and power topics when requested.

We don’t normally offer training to the general public, but we do publish technical documents and manuals, including our facilities instructions, standards, and techniques (FIST) manuals, on our public-facing website.

The FIST manuals define Reclamation’s power operations and maintenance program.

Hyrdo Leader: What future changes or developments do you foresee in the hydropower industry?

Max Spiker: From our perspective, we see opportunities to better leverage technological innovation to inform how we operate, maintain, and generally manage our power hydroleadermagazine.com

Reclamation’s Glen Canyon Dam forms Lake Powell on the Colorado River.

Hydro Leader: What should everyone know about hydropower?

Max Spiker: Hydropower has a critical role to play in the long-term national energy portfolio. The resource provides both clean, dispatchable energy and domestic energysecurity benefits. Reclamation looks forward to continued coordination with our customers, partners, and stakeholders to achieve those goals and is committed to ensuring that hydropower remains a long-term cost-competitive energy resource, delivering value to our customers and the nation. H Max Spiker is a senior advisor for hydropower and electric reliability officer at the Bureau of Reclamation. He can be reached at mspiker@usbr.gov.

April 2021| HYDRO LEADER

| 11

ADVERTISEMENT

HYDROPOWER PROVIDES 90% OF OUR CLEAN ENERGY IN THE NORTHWEST

100% CLEAN • 100% RENEWABLE

JOIN US NWHYDRO.ORG TALK WITH US INFO@NWHYDRO.ORG

NORTHWEST HYDROELECTRIC ASSOCIATION NWHA was founded in 1981 to support small hydro developers and has since grown into a 130-member strong collective of hydropower developers, utilities, manufacturers, consultants, and researchers. We are the voice of hydropower in the Northwest and focus on state issues, educating, and advocating for hydropower. NWHA is dedicated to the promotion of the region's waterpower as a clean, efficient energy while protecting the fisheries and environmental quality which characterize our Northwest region.

ADVERTISEMENT

Setting the standard.

Troutman Pepper is home to one of the largest and most experienced teams of hydropower attorneys in the United States. Our attorneys have more than 70 years of combined experience in the hydropower industry and have been involved in nearly 40% of all FERC-regulated hydropower projects nationwide.

Learn more about our firm, including our hallmark higher commitment to client care, at troutman.com.

troutman.com Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders LLP

ADVERTISEMENT

The Red Rock Hydro Project: How Missouri River Energy Services Powered a Nonpowered Dam

The Red Rock Dam and Hydro Project.

A

dding hydropower facilities to nonpowered dams is an increasingly popular way to create new noncarbon power generation resources without having to build new reservoirs or dams. Missouri River Energy Services (MRES), a joint action agency that brings together 61 municipal utilities in the upper Midwest, recently added a hydro plant to the federally owned Red Rock Dam on the Des Moines River in Iowa. In this interview, we speak with Brent Moeller, MRES’s director of generation resources, and Ray Wahle. MRES’s senior vice president of power supply and operations, about the challenges and benefits of the Red Rock Hydro Project (RRHP).

Hydro Leader: Please tell us about your backgrounds and how you came to be in your current positions.

Ray Wahle: I’m the senior vice president of power supply and operations at MRES. I’ve been here for 42 years.

14 | HYDRO LEADER | April 2021

Hydro Leader: Please tell us about MRES as a company.

Ray Wahle: MRES is a joint action agency, which means that we were formed by and are owned by our members. Our members are the 61 municipal utilities I mentioned. Each one of those member communities owns its own electrical distribution system. Our primary function is to provide power supply, energy, and transmission services to those members.

Over the years, we have developed a suite of other energy services that we provide to them as well, including energy efficiency rebate programs for their customers, rate studies for the utilities themselves, and distribution maintenance crews to support communities that need help delivering reliable services. We also have a host of technical services and other support services for our members.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF MRES.

Brent Moeller: I’ve been with MRES since 2008. I serve as the director of generation resources. I am a registered professional engineer in the state of South Dakota. I originally started out in the utility business and worked at a nuclear facility for 12 years. I then moved into project management with industrial pumps, steel fabrication, and things of that nature before coming back to the utility business again about 12 years ago. That’s how I got here.

I started after I graduated from college with a degree in electrical engineering. I am a registered professional engineer in the state of South Dakota and have an MBA. In my 42 years at MRES, I’ve filled various roles of increasing responsibility. I am responsible for the operations, maintenance, and construction of our power plant and transmission facilities. We serve 61 municipal utilities located in Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota. MRES provides other electrical services to those communities as well.

ADVERTISEMENT Hydro Leader: How is MRES’s power generated?

Ray Wahle: We have a diverse portfolio of generation resources, including facilities powered by coal, gas, oil, wind, solar, and hydro. Thirty-four percent of our supply comes from market purchases—buying energy is sometimes cheaper than producing it ourselves. According to our 2018 yearly breakdown, we produce about 15 percent of our energy from coal, about 2 percent from natural gas, 5 percent from nuclear, 36 percent from hydro, 5 percent from wind, and less than 1 percent from solar; the remaining 34 percent comes from market purchases of power generated by others. The 36 percent that comes from hydro is energy that MRES manages for our members. Fifty-nine of our 61 members have an allocation of hydropower from the federal dams on the Missouri River, which is supplied to them through the Western Area Power Administration.

Hydro Leader: When did the idea for the RRHP arise, and what was the motivation?

A view from above of construction on the RRHP.

Ray Wahle: In fall 2010, I got a phone call from a gentleman by the name of Doug Spaulding, who worked for a company called Nelson Energy and had gotten my name from a mutual colleague. He presented the idea of MRES developing a hydro project on the Des Moines River—the RRHP. At that time, MRES was looking for additional resources. We have the obligation to supply our 61 member communities with power to meet their electric energy needs.

As the communities grow, we need to provide more and more power. Of course, we were interested in looking at renewable resources. At that time, Nelson Energy held a hydroleadermagazine.com

preliminary permit for the development of the RRHP and had applied to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for a license to develop it.

Nelson Energy is a small organization and did not have the financial ability to develop the project. It was looking for a partner. We started looking at the RRHP from an economic standpoint, evaluating whether it would meet our future electric supply needs and recognizing that it was a renewable resource. Based on our analysis, we felt that the project would meet our long-term need for additional electric supply, and we made the decision to develop the project. Once we got the FERC license, we started the design and the construction of the project.

Hydro Leader: Who owns the Red Rock Dam, and what was their attitude toward the idea of adding hydropower to it?

Ray Wahle: The dam is owned by the federal government and operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Dealing with the Army Corps was new for us, and initially, it was a challenge to understand how the Army Corps worked and operated. FERC was also involved in the process. After we developed a working relationship with the Army Corps, and the Army Corps got used to the idea that we were going to build a hydro project at its dam, it was a cooperative partner. The Army Corps has its own process and requirements, and we had to recognize that.

Brent worked more directly with the Army Corps than I did. Our relationship with the Army Corps is ongoing, because it still controls the flows going through the power plant and coming out of the dam and controls water releases from the Red Rock project.

Brent Moeller: We have a good working relationship with the Army Corps operations folks at Lake Red Rock and with the Rock Island District, the headquarters for the operational folks at the Army Corps. We interact with its flow division daily, communicating about the flows that it will be releasing for the day. We will continue to work closely with the flow division, which I think is excited to see the hydro project there now. As Ray mentioned, we had to get used to the Army Corps’ process. Of course, the Army Corps had a lot of concerns about an unknown company coming in and about the condition in which we would leave the facilities or the area. I think that now that construction is complete, the Army Corps is happy with everything that we did and with the current situation.

Hydro Leader: Who owns and operates the hydropower facility itself?

Ray Wahle: The intake structure, the penstocks, the power plant, and all the equipment in the power plant is owned by the Western Minnesota Municipal Power Agency. MRES constructed, operates, and maintains the project on its behalf.

April 2021| HYDRO LEADER

| 15

ADVERTISEMENT Hydro Leader: What made the Red Rock Dam appropriate for adding hydropower?

Red Rock Dam is about 5,200 feet long.

Ray Wahle: A combination of things. The first, of course, is that the dam already existed. Second, the timing of water releases at the dam, and thus the power capacity and energy we can get out of the facility at different times, fit with our power needs. The Red Rock Reservoir is a flood control reservoir. In the spring, the reservoir fills up with snow melt and spring rains and the Army Corps holds back the water. The Des Moines River drains into the Mississippi River, and the Army Corps wants to control the amount of water going into the Mississippi River to prevent downstream flooding. The Army Corps starts releasing water in the late spring and releases it throughout the summer. In the electric utility industry, we need more power in the summer than in the winter. As long as there’s flow in the Des Moines River, the RRHP will generate power year round, but it will generate the bulk of its energy in the summertime, exactly when we need it. It matches our electric load needs.

Hydro Leader: Please tell us about the timeline of planning, permitting, and constructing the project.

A wide view of construction on the RRHP.

16 | HYDRO LEADER | April 2021

hydroleadermagazine.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF MRES.

The RRHP power plant.

Brent Moeller: Doug Spaulding of Nelson Energy started going through the FERC licensing process for this project back in 2005. That process usually takes about 2 years and includes studies and public meetings. When Doug came to us, he had submitted the application and it was pending being issued. Nelson Energy received the FERC license in April 2011. At that point, we purchased the rights to the project and the license and started doing a more detailed design of the facility. A 5 or 10 percent design was done for the licensing process, so there was a limited design for the facility. We spent the next 2 years or so going through the design process. In addition to that, around 40 different plans were required for the FERC license. For example, we couldn’t cut trees during the summer to avoid affecting the Indiana bat.

Part of the design involved bringing on the turbine design manufacturer, because the powerhouse is designed around the hydraulics of the turbines. In April 2012, we signed a contract with a turbine manufacturer to provide the water-to-wire-package. In August 2013, we submitted our 408 application to the Army Corps, which is a review of the complete design of the powerhouse and of the projects, dealing with the walls and different civil structures associated with the project. It took several months for that application to be approved, and we issued a contract to the general contractor in April 2014. We received final authorization to start construction from the Army Corps on July 28, 2014, and we released the general contractor to start construction on August 1, 2014. Construction took place from August 2014 to October 2020.

ADVERTISEMENT We are currently commissioning the units. As Ray mentioned, the bulk of the water comes down during the summer. However, during the review of the project, we learned that once about every 8–10 years, there is not adequate water to operate the turbines. Last year, we didn’t have much water, and as a result, the Des Moines River did not really flow sufficient quantities of water to operate the turbines throughout the winter. Now that we’ve gotten a little bit of snow melt, we’re back to commissioning the units again. We anticipate that that will last for another 2–3 weeks, at which point they will do a 30‑day test run on both units. After that point, we’ll go into commercial operations.

Hydro Leader: Once the RRHP is running at full capacity, how much energy will it produce, and how will that power be distributed and marketed?

Ray Wahle: It will produce 180,000 megawatt-hours a year. The facility is located in the market area of the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), which is a regional transmission operator in the United States. The market area basically goes from the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico and runs down through the center of the United States. The RRHP is located in the center of the MISO. We deliver our energy to that market, and there’s a complex financial arrangement that governs how we eventually get that energy to our members in Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota. More to the point, the members of MRES are financially responsible for paying the costs associated with the RRHP and get the benefits of the energy that is generated by it.

Hydro Leader: Does MRES have plans for any similar projects in the future?

Keep in mind that it’s the Army Corps’ sandbox, and you’re coming to play in it, so to speak. You need to develop a rapport with the Army Corps. You can’t bulldoze your way through; it needs to be a working relationship. Also, you’re going to spend more money than you anticipated because the Army Corps is going to want to add more security and safety than you originally anticipated. There might be additional costs, but at the end of the day, it’s a matter of getting the project built and operational.

Ray Wahle: What allowed us to be successful was developing a great relationship with the local community.

Pella, Iowa, is about 3½ miles from this project. It turned out to be one of our members, which was fortuitous.

We have an employee at Red Rock who helped build community relationships that really helped us. We had nothing but positive comments from the community. A construction project of this nature is invariably disruptive to the area. Developing a good relationship with the community, the county, the county police force, and the county sheriff is important. For example, we had to work with those entities to close the roads for construction.

Brent Moeller: One of the things that we’re looking at doing after the COVID‑19 pandemic is holding an open house for the local community. We’ve gotten calls from people who want to tour the facility, and we constructed the facility with a meeting room set up as a classroom so that we can bring in school groups as a way to give back to the community.

Hydro Leader: Is there anything else you wanted to add?

Ray Wahle: It was really an interesting project. We’re engineers, and the reason you go to engineering school is to do a project like this. It’s something that we both enjoyed doing. H

Ray Wahle: We have no plans for anything similar. We are looking at developing other resources, but none like the RRHP. Hydro Leader: Does this project provide a model for adding hydropower to other nonpowered dams across the nation?

Ray Wahle: We worked with the Army Corps to develop the project, and that process can certainly be repeated with other nonpowered dams where it makes economic sense to add a hydro unit. One of the challenges is that hydro units are fairly expensive. However, they also have long lives. Over time, the RRHP will definitely pay for itself, but it had a high initial capital cost.

Hydro Leader: What advice do you have for other power agencies that are considering powering a nonpowered dam?

Brent Moeller: Do your homework and develop a relationship with the Army Corps. It is your partner in this. hydroleadermagazine.com

Brent Moeller is the director of generation resources at Missouri River Energy Services.

Ray Wahle is the senior vice president of power supply and operations at Missouri River Energy Services.

Both gentlemen can be contacted at (605) 338‑4042.

For more information about the RRHP, visit www.redrockhydroproject.com.

April 2021| HYDRO LEADER

| 17

ADVERTISEMENT

SAFETY. QUALITY. CLIENT.

40 YEARS OF SUCCESSFUL APPLICATIONS COMBINING SUPERIOR PRODUCTS & EXPERTISE.

NSF APPROVED

NSF and Water Quality Association approved to ANSI Standard 61.

ZERO VOC

Non-hazardous - eliminates risk of explosion, fire, and health issues.

EXTENDED LIFESPAN

Adds over 75 years of service life, even in active sewer conditions.

BARRIER COATING

Protects substrates from corrosives, microbial attack, abrasives, and more.

SCAN TO LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR EPOXY SOLUTIONS

NUSTREEM ADVERTISEMENT

INNOVATIVE

HYDRO-EQUIPMENT

MANUFACTURER

RELIABLE KAPLAN DESIGN

FAMILY OF PRODUCTS

COME VISIT OUR BOOTH

A dual regulated kaplan optimized for your sites performance

NuTURBINE™ NuTECH Controller™ NuBRAKE™ NuCONTAINER™

HYDROVISION 2021 - Booth 1518 Clean Currents 2021 - Booth 645

It's hydro, in a box.

www.nustreem.com info@nustreem.com (860) 724 - 2868 Follow us @NuSTREEM

ADVERTISEMENT

Camilla Braithwaite and Billy Cothran: Using Geospatial AI to Make Dams Smarter

A screenshot of Rezatec’s dam monitoring platform dashboard, displaying ground motion anomalies.

G

eospatial data and advanced information technologies have revolutionized nearly every aspect of modern life, including the assessment of dams. Geospatial analytics companies are now partnering with water districts, dam operators, and government agencies to provide better assessment of normal and abnormal dam behavior, subsidence patterns, vegetation changes, and other factors that can provide insight into the safety status of water infrastructure.

Camilla Braithwaite and Billy Cothran are a prime example of this partnership. Ms. Braithwaite is a product manager for Rezatec, a satellite data analytics company, and Mr. Cothran is CEO of a South Carolina water district that is undertaking a pilot study of Rezatec’s technology. In this interview, they tell Hydro Leader about the synergy between their two worlds.

Hydro Leader: Tell us about your backgrounds and how you came to be in your current positions.

20 | HYDRO LEADER | April 2021

Billy Cothran: I am the CEO of Startex-Jackson-WellfordDuncan (SJWD) Water District. I’ve been in that position for 2 years now and have more than 25 years of water industry experience. I’m an engineer by trade and an administrator by necessity. I’ve been with SJWD since 2005 and have held the role of district engineer, chief operating officer, and now CEO. hydroleadermagazine.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF REZATEC.

Camilla Braithwaite: I am a product manager for Rezatec’s WaterSAT solution, which incorporates geospatial artificial intelligence (AI) to look at the physical and environmental hazards that threaten asset integrity and the factors that enable our customers to maximize the value of their assets.

I guess the first thing to cover is the definition of geospatial AI. The geospatial element is that we gather data remotely from satellites, including location, attribute, and temporal information. We then deploy our unique AI to interpret the

data, providing our customers with cutting-edge insights.

Our technical team is made up of software developers, data scientists, and earth observation scientists. My role is to listen to what’s happening in the industry and talk to our customers, then communicate their needs and challenges to the technical side of our business. This enables us to deliver products to our clients that help them in their day-to-day operations, whether by optimizing resources, reducing costs, or streamlining operations. I also communicate what we’re doing on the product development side back to our customers and the industry so that they can understand the value we can add with our data and software. Our main goal is to add value by helping dam owners and operators solve the considerable challenges they face.

I come from a software development background and previously worked with legal software, which is slightly drier.

What I really enjoy in this role is the asset management side—helping companies make better decisions to keep both people and assets safe.

ADVERTISEMENT

PHOTO COURTESY OF SJWD.

Hydro Leader: Camilla, would you tell us about Rezatec as a company?

Camilla Braithwaite: Rezatec started off in 2012 by quantifying carbon stock, and SJWD’s Lake Lyman, located on the Middle Tyger River, is a 1.4-billion-gallon reservoir that stores water for we continue to work subsequent release and capture at the downstream Lyman Low Head Dam. with the top forestry businesses around the world to monitor and keep costs low for our customers. The resolution of the images manage millions of hectares. However, we realized that from those satellites comes down to about 10 meters (33 feet), by using satellite data, we could cover large areas, reach which gives us more than enough data to accurately monitor inaccessible places, and monitor assets that are challenging our customers’ assets. We can provide a lot of insight using to monitor from the ground. At the same time, there was the open-source data, so that’s where we usually start. We can an evolution in satellite capabilities. In 2016, the Sentinel also access data from commercial providers, which can be of satellites started sending back data of a resolution that a much higher resolution, but we don’t always need that level allowed us to use the data to monitor very small changes on of detail, and those satellites don’t have the archive that the the ground. The combination of those two things is what Sentinel satellites have. We are data agnostic, so we use the enabled us to start serving the dam industry. best data available to provide our customers with the insight Water is just one industry we serve, alongside forestry, energy, they need at the right cost. Sentinel One monitors synthetic and agriculture. We provide geospatial AI for water companies aperture radar (SAR), which is radar data that bounces off managing dams and water networks. Our dam monitoring the earth and other hard surfaces. We use a proven, leadingproduct includes remote monitoring of ground motion and edge technique called interferometry to track movement in vegetation. Ground motion is important for measuring uplift millimeters. The great thing about radar is that it isn’t affected and subsidence, and vegetation can be an indicator of seepage. by night or cloud cover. Sentinel One orbits continuously Representing the data in a secure, online platform allows every 6–12 days, so it provides consistent, regular data. engineers to make better, data-informed decisions.

The other satellite we generally use is Sentinel Two, which has an optical sensor that picks up visual and infrared data. That’s Hydro Leader: Billy, please tell us about SJWD. what we use to monitor vegetation greenness and moisture. As I mentioned, for our WaterSAT products, we use vegetation Billy Cothran: We’re a special-purpose district located in as a proxy for seepage. Vegetation moisture and greenness are Spartanburg County, South Carolina. Our area has historically expected to correlate, and our analysis looks at both factors been predominantly rural. However, our residential and to see whether they are pulling in different ways than would commercial/industrial customer base has grown rapidly, be expected. The limitations of optical data are that they can especially over the last 5 years. Two interstates intersect our only be collected during the day and that cloud cover can be a service area, so it is highly accessible. We have approximately problem. Both Sentinel One and Sentinel Two have archives, 28,000 customers and a population of roughly 80,000. We’re which means that we can gather historic data. We use this to still what I would consider a residential community. By number perform a retrospective analysis, which uses 3 years of historic of customers, our customer base is approximately 90 percent data to determine the baseline or normal behavior of a dam. residential and 10 percent commercial/industrial. By water That’s something that clients find useful, as every dam moves production, the split is more like 70 percent residential and in a unique way, unlike a lot of other assets. Dam owners know 30 percent commercial/industrial. We own and maintain six that their dam will be affected by water levels in the reservoir or dams, four of which are classified as high hazard, which is not by weather. The current practice of carrying out surveys once or a statement about their integrity but a state classification that twice a year gives them little data or seasonal context. reflects the potential effects of a failure.

Rezatec’s dam monitoring product provides detailed analysis across the entire structure, so our customers can Hydro Leader: How does Rezatec’s dam monitoring product better understand a dam’s normal behavior, its rate of work? Who owns the satellites, and how does Rezatec access movement, which sections have greater seasonality of the data they provide? movement and vegetation, and where there are trends of uplift or subsidence. We then set a threshold to separate Camilla Braithwaite: There are over 400 satellites used normal from abnormal or anomalous behavior. Customers for earth observation. Some satellites provide open-source then receive ongoing monthly updates on how their dams information for businesses to use, and we try to use that to are changing against that baseline of normal behavior. hydroleadermagazine.com

April 2021| HYDRO LEADER

| 21

ADVERTISEMENT Hydro Leader: Would you explain how AI uses the satellite data?

Hydro Leader: When is your pilot going to be complete?

Camilla Braithwaite: AI thrives off a large amount of data, and satellites provide an enormous amount of data. In fact, the evolution of our computing capabilities has really tracked satellite data because of their quantity. Being able to process and store that amount of data is key. AI includes techniques like machine learning and data mining that can extract meaningful information from the geospatial data provided by the satellites. We run the data through our models, which first process and clean the data, removing as much noise as possible, and then pick out trends, including seasonality and periodicity. That helps us identify the baseline behavior and analyze what is abnormal. We usually use a statistical 95 percent confidence interval as a starting point. Our customers use this to set thresholds for the ongoing monthly updates for each dam. Taking this one step further, we can make predictions based on our analysis. Our pipeline risk solution, for instance, which is for water networks, makes predictions about when pipelines are likely to fail. We aren’t quite there with our dam solution, as we need failure data to build a likelihood-of-failure model. Luckily, unlike with pipelines, there isn’t regular failure data for dams. However, we can extrapolate predictions for the indicators of failure, and that is the direction we are taking our dam solution in.

Billy Cothran: It is a 3‑year pilot that started in December 2020, so it will be complete in December 2023.

Hydro Leader: Billy, what kind of dam monitoring are you required to do, and how did you do it until now?

Billy Cothran: In South Carolina, we are required to do a minimum of one annual inspection; however, SJWD conducts additional monthly inspections. The annual inspections are performed in conjunction with the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control’s inspections. SJWD has a history of strategic implementation of technology, so Rezatec interested us.

It will allow us to supplement what we’re already doing and will provide more data for our dam asset management program. If the pilot works out and provides the data we think it will, we will have advance notice of small changes that may not be clearly visible to somebody looking at the dams once a month. It’s another data layer for us to use in the maintenance of and capital planning for our dams.

Hydro Leader: Is Rezatec’s technology going to supplement your current program, or is it going to replace elements of it?

22 | HYDRO LEADER | April 2021

Camilla Braithwaite: Our solution provides an extra set of data and an extra layer of intelligence to our clients. Those data are sometimes used to give clients a deeper level of understanding before they visit their dams and to direct expert engineering resources to the right place at the right time. Alternately, our clients might visit the dam first, see something they want to dig into, and then have a look at the data to see what’s happened in the past and what’s happening monthly. Some clients are looking at whether they can reduce the number of visual inspections they have to do. Some dam owners do frequent visits and would like to reduce that number to make the most of their resources. Sending people out to your dams is costly in terms of expertise and travel.

We supplement what our clients are already doing so that we can enhance their understanding of their dams, but we also give our customers a layer of insight they can’t get by looking at the dam over a large period of time, giving them further understanding of the dams’ movements and safety.

Billy Cothran: It’s almost like having another lens through which to examine the dam. The AI, with the 3‑year look back and onward monitoring, helps give us a better understanding of what is normal and abnormal. The additional data could change the way we examine our capital improvement plans for the next 10–15 years. If Rezatec sees something that our visual inspections don’t, that could change our long-term capital improvement plan.

The dams have the largest potential importance by far for our customers and our finances, so if something major must be done to them, it’s beneficial to have that level of early detection to prioritize plan improvements. H

Camilla Braithwaite is a product manager for Rezatec. She can be reached at info@rezatec.com.

Billy Cothran is the CEO of StartexJackson-Wellford-Duncan Water District.

He can be reached at lakeinfo@sjwd.com.

hydroleadermagazine.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF REZATEC AND SJWD.

Billy Cothran: I don’t think it will replace what we are doing now. We’ll continue manual and visual inspections, and Rezatec’s data will supplement them. It could potentially change some of our operations if we see certain trends that would affect maintenance or vegetative control.

The main goal is to have additional data to include in the asset management plan and to help improve planning for future improvements.

Hydro Leader: Camilla, how have your services helped your dam owner clients and changed their operations?

ADVERTISEMENT

HOBAS in CANADA

From Vancouver to Newfoundland

HOBAS’ geographic acceptance is growing, with expansion into Canada. With projects from Vancouver to Newfoundland and many places in between, the HOBAS standard brings corrosion and abrasion resistance, leak-free systems and a long-maintenance free life.

HOBAS PIPE USA | Home of the 100-Year-Life CCFRPM Pipe | 281-821-2200

| www.hobaspipe.com

ADVERTISEMENT

Denise Bunte‑Bisnett and Rachael Bisnett: A Family Tradition of Hydropower

Sharon Powers, Denise Bunte-Bisnett, and Rachael Bisnett in Ottawa for the 2019 International Commission on Large Dams conference.

W

hen Denise Bunte‑Bisnett began taking her daughter Rachael with her on dam visits, it planted a seed of interest that would inspire Rachael to pursue her own career in hydropower. Since then, mother and daughter have both grown their roles in the world of dams: Denise is now the president of the board of directors of the United States Society on Dams (USSD), and Rachael is now a geotechnical engineer for Stantec. In this interview, they tell Hydro Leader about how they became involved in hydropower, their experiences as women leaders in the industry, and the importance of inspiring and mentoring the next generation of hydropower professionals.

Hydro Leader: Please tell us about your backgrounds and how you came to be in your current positions.

24 | HYDRO LEADER | April 2021

Rachael Bisnett: I knew I wanted to be an engineer from a young age. Mom took me along to work with her at NYPA. In high school, I had an opportunity to participate in the Project Lead the Way engineering program, which was just starting at the time. The program was a good primer for the different fields of engineering, and it further solidified my desire to pursue an engineering career. I went to school at Purdue University and started out as a structural engineer.

After a couple of summer internships, I realized structural really wasn’t for me, so I stayed at Purdue and earned a master’s in geotechnical engineering.

During my master’s studies, I applied for a USSD scholarship that gave me an opportunity to attend the USSD annual conference and network with professionals in the field of dams. There I met David Kleiner, who was one of the senior geotechnical engineers at Stantec (formerly MWH). hydroleadermagazine.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF USSD.

Denise Bunte‑Bisnett: I spent nearly my entire career working in the public power sector as a civil engineer. My first position was with the New York Power Authority (NYPA) on the St. Lawrence Power Project, following my grad school work on ice management on the river and river control operations. When my husband made a career change, we moved to South Carolina, and I began working with the South Carolina Public Service Authority,

where I continue to work today. My first assignment was to assist with developing the license application for our relicensing effort. Most recently, I have focused on regulatory compliance and regulatory review, and now I am focusing almost entirely on getting our new Federal Energy Regulatory Commission license, an effort that has been ongoing for two decades.

ADVERTISEMENT

Denise Bunte-Bisnett and Rachael Bisnett at the Panama Canal Third Set of Locks Project construction site.

He encouraged me to stop by the office in Chicago the next time I was in town. That introduction led to an internship, which in turn led to a full-time position when I graduated.

From the outset, I was involved in some really cool projects, such as the Panama Canal expansion and the Red Rock Hydro Project. Eventually, I was able to move back to the Southeast, where I focus on dam safety risk assessments.

PHOTO COURTESY OF STANTEC.

Hydro Leader: Denise, please tell us about your role as president of the USSD board and your initiatives or goals for the organization.

Denise Bunte‑Bisnett: I am nearing the end of my term as president, and I am proud of what we have accomplished during my tenure. One of my early assignments was to help find our current executive director, Sharon Powers. Together, we were able to address some important issues, including the organization’s financial situation and members’ demands for better training and educational opportunities to help advance the profession.

In the last 18 months, we have focused on updating our strategic plan. We have primarily done this by refining the prior plan, which was developed about 7 years ago, by making it much more focused. That helped guide us through the hydroleadermagazine.com

pandemic year, which was a challenge for a lot of nonprofit organizations. Thanks to Sharon’s strong leadership and the financial position she had put us in prior to the pandemic, we came through the year quite well, remained strong financially, and became more robust as an organization. Sharon is focused on member outreach and making sure that our members understand the value of belonging to the organization. We have also put some programs in place to better position USSD to be a technical leader worldwide.

It has been a great experience to help lead USSD along with the rest of the executive team on the board of directors and with Sharon in the leadership role as our executive director. She is truly a professional nonprofit manager.

Hydro Leader: Rachael, would you tell us about your role in USSD as well?

Rachael Bisnett: I’ve worn a few hats over the last decade or so. I joined the organization as a student member when I was in college and quickly became a part of the embankment dams committee. I’ve been the chair of that committee since 2014. That has given me good insight into the organization and a lot of opportunities to network with some of the giants of our field, particularly in geotechnical engineering April 2021| HYDRO LEADER

| 25

gender has never really been an issue with my coworkers, 99 percent of whom are men. I think engineers are pragmatic, and in general, we respect each other for our accomplishments and special knowledge. Gender rarely plays into it.

Rachael Bisnett: Early on, I always felt like I needed to work harder to differentiate myself. That wasn’t necessarily because of a message that I was receiving from my employer or those I was working with; it was just that because of life experiences or societal pressures, I felt I needed to prove myself. Later in my career, I spent about 18 months working on a construction site. There were definitely some nuances to being the only female engineer and oftentimes the only female on site. I have to say that 99 percent of those experiences were great. As you show your value, people respect you for what you bring to the table. That being said, I think you do occasionally run into bad situations or experience people making offhand comments. I don’t think that’s isolated to the engineering field; it is more reflective of society as a whole.

Hydro Leader: Rachael, your interest in engineering goes back to childhood. How did it begin?

Rachael Bisnett at the Red Rock Hydro Project site.

on the embankment dam side. When we revamped our website 6 years ago, I led the effort to stylistically and functionally bring it into the modern era.

Starting later this year, I’ll be leading our new initiative to create a speaker’s bureau. This program will give us another way to reach out to universities and to get our members into schools to share cool projects they’re working on, to help students think about dams as a career path, and to share information about what USSD is and what we do. We want to create stronger ties between universities and USSD with this program.

Hydro Leader: What has your experience been as women professionals in a male-dominated field?

26 | HYDRO LEADER | April 2021

Denise Bunte‑Bisnett: When Rachael was deciding what to focus on in college, I recall the day she said, “I think I want to pursue engineering. You really love what you do, and I want to do something that I love to do also.” I think if people pursue what they love and enjoy solving problems and being creative, engineering is a perfect avenue.

Hydro Leader: Did you actively encourage Rachael to go into your field, and if so, do you have advice for how to get other young people interested in the dam engineering field? hydroleadermagazine.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF STANTEC.

Denise Bunte‑Bisnett: Early in my career as a junior engineer at a consulting firm, a client told me I was taking away a good job from a man who had a family to raise. It shocked me a little, but my manager handled it quite well and we moved on. Another manager early in my career felt uncomfortable having to travel for business with a female. Other than that,

Rachael Bisnett: My mom took me to dams a lot. We would take drives on the weekend, and more often than not, we’d end up at a nearby dam. I had the opportunity to go into work with her on a number of occasions. One memory that sticks in my mind is visiting one of the NYPA units that forms part of the project on the St. Lawrence River that is shared across the Canadian border while it was under maintenance. We went inside the unit and my mom was explaining to me how much water was being held up above my head. That was a really cool experience that solidified my interest.

I love building things, getting dirty, and playing outside, and geotechnical engineering has been a natural extension of that. The engineering program I participated in in high school demonstrated that engineering is fundamentally about solving problems. You can define the problem in whatever way is appropriate for the situation, but at the end of the day, you’re defining a problem and solving it. I think that really spoke to me. I’m able to put logic and structure into my work but also be creative and think about doing it a different or more efficient way. That is what led me to pursuing engineering in college and staying with it after college.

ADVERTISEMENT Denise Bunte‑Bisnett: I took her to a lot of dams only because I am fascinated by them. We lived in northern New York when she was young, and there are a lot of dams on the Racquette River. Within an hour’s drive there were five or six dams, all different types of projects, that had been constructed around the 1950s. Rachael was naturally drawn to it and was always a strong student in math and science. I can’t say that I tried to push her into it. The important thing is for young people to be exposed to a lot of different things and to find out what really interests them and what they want to pursue.

Hydro Leader: Rachael, what is your advice for young engineering professionals?

PHOTOS COURTESY OF USSD AND STANTEC.

Rachael Bisnett: First and foremost, it’s important to seek out organizations that will be invested in helping you continue to learn and grow. That doesn’t mean that there needs to be a formal mentorship program or anything like that—I’ve often found that those make mentorship a bit more challenging. My best mentoring relationships have come about organically, and I have a number of them for different reasons. The Chicago office where I started out was founded on the legacy of Harza, and the senior engineers there were intentional about teaching and training us to do things the right way so that we were in a good position to continue their legacies. A good teaching and learning culture is really important.

With that comes a lot of hard work. When you’re young and you have a bit more free time on your hands, take the opportunity to dive in and really understand what you’re doing. The better you understand it, the easier it’ll be in years to come. Take the opportunity to go on a field assignment, particularly if it’s a project that you worked on in the office. Those opportunities are rare. Seeing something in person, understanding how office decisions have affected how things are going in the field, and learning how it could be done better the next time are all crucial learning experiences for a younger engineer.

Also, I encourage young engineers to take opportunities to go somewhere or to take on roles that sound a little bit intimidating and challenging. Bet on yourself. Invest the time to figure out how to do it, even if that particular job or that particular role isn’t something you see yourself doing forever. You’re going to learn something from it that’s going to help you with the next experience.

Denise Bunte‑Bisnett: USSD now has a position on each of the technical committees for a young professional vice chair. The young professional committee is meant to be a landing spot for new engineers or younger professionals coming into our organization to help them get oriented and then move quickly into one of the technical committees.

The technical committees provide opportunities to develop mentor relationships organically, because they allow you to hydroleadermagazine.com

meet with people, maybe in a social sense but also a working sense, through USSD. Hydro Leader: Rachael, please tell us about your involvement with the Red Rock Hydroelectric Project.

Rachael Bisnett: I started working on that project about a year into my career, and I’ve been working on it for nearly 10 years now. I started as a junior engineer, and through the design process, I ultimately ended up as the lead geotechnical engineer during the design phase. I spent 18 months living in Iowa during the early geotechnical work, doing field and construction work. As a field geotechnical engineer, I got to see a lot of different things.

We constructed structural diaphragm walls that currently form the left side of the approach channel for the intake structure and retain the upstream side of the existing embankment; there’s a maximum cantilever of about 59 feet embedded 35 feet or so in the rock. We also had some large, braced excavations to construct the intake structure on the upstream side and to construct two penstocks on the downstream side. We performed blasting within the downstream toe of the dam to form the powerhouse foundation. A bevy of cool geotechnical methods were incorporated in the project, and we were doing it all at an existing dam that we needed to ensure we didn’t harm. My onsite role also included dam safety, including performing weekly inspections, looking at instrumentation and monitoring, and interfacing with the regulators and our review board. During that time, I also took on the role of project technical lead, which means lead engineer for the construction phase of the project. Stantec has carried on engineering services during construction. It is currently finishing the commissioning of the project. It’s been sitting there, ready to go, since October of last year, but we had to wait until the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers could release enough water to finish commissioning. We’re close to completion, and while it’s definitely been a challenging project, it has been fulfilling and rewarding to see it from beginning to end. H Denise Bunte‑Bisnett is the president of the United States Society on Dams.

She can be reached at denise.bunte-bisnett@santeecooper.com.

Rachel Bisnett is a geotechnical engineer at Stantec. She can be reached at rachael.bisnett@stantec.com.

April 2021| HYDRO LEADER

| 27

ADVERTISEMENT

The United States Society on Dams

USSD MISSION: Empower professionals to advance the sustainable benefits of dams and levees for society

USSD Members Represent: - Dam and levee owners - Consulting firms - Water districts - Utilities - Contractors - Government agencies - Colleges and universities - International organizations

USSD VISION: A world where all dams and levees are safe and valued by the communities they serve

USSD Members are Involved With:

- Dam and levee safety - Dam and levee engineering - Dam and levee operation & maintenance - Hydroelectric power - Construction and modernization - Environmental and social issues - Geology - Project finance and economics

USSD offers a wide variety of technical knowledge exchange through an annual conference, workshops and webinars. It also publishes a quarterly members only USSD Dams & Levees Bulletin.

Learn more at www.ussdams.org

ADVERTISEMENT

HYDRO TURBINE TECHNOLOGY

kaplan | francis | pelton | micro w w w. m ave l . co m

ADVERTISEMENT

David Capka: Advancing Dam Safety at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

Wanapum Dam, on the Columbia River in central Washington State, is licensed by FERC.

T

he Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) licenses almost all nonfederal hydropower dams in the United States. To maintain a license or exemption, dam owners must meet a number of criteria, including many related to dam safety, and carry out periodic inspections.

Currently, FERC is considering significant technical revisions to the part 12 process, one of its main dam safety inspection processes. In this interview, David Capka, the director of FERC’s Division of Dam Safety and Inspections, tells Hydro Leader about the agency’s dam safety work, the status of the part 12 revision process, and new trends in dam safety risk analysis.

Hydro Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

30 | HYDRO LEADER | April 2021

Hydro Leader: Please tell us about FERC and how hydropower and dam safety fit into its overall mission.

David Capka: FERC is an independent agency that regulates the interstate transmission of electricity, natural gas, and oil. FERC reviews proposals to build liquefied natural gas terminals and interstate natural gas pipelines and licenses hydropower projects. FERC’s mission is to guarantee efficient, safe, reliable, and secure energy for consumers.

FERC is responsible for licensing nonfederal hydropower projects in the United States. Hydropower fits within the mission of guaranteeing safe, reliable, secure energy for consumers, and the safe part is where dam safety comes in.

FERC retains oversight and jurisdiction over hydropower projects for their full license terms. hydroleadermagazine.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF WILLIAMBORG.

David Capka: I’ve got about 25 years of federal government engineering experience. I started with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the Baltimore district as a civil engineer in the construction and engineering divisions, where I worked on dams, levees, and civil works projects. I transferred to the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs

in Washington, DC, in 2005, and worked as a dam safety program manager. I then came to FERC in 2006. I started as a geotechnical engineer, then became headquarters branch chief, then deputy director, and now I am the director of the Division of Dam Safety and Inspections, a position I have held since March 2017.

ADVERTISEMENT Hydro Leader: Which dams require FERC licenses, and how many of those dams are there?

David Capka: In general, any nonfederal dam that generates hydropower requires a FERC license. There are occasional, minor exceptions to that. When I say license, I am including exemptions, which are another form of licensing. We treat exempt dams the same way within dam safety—they just have to meet different requirements to get their exemptions than the requirements other dams have to meet to get their licenses. The federal government gets involved with nonfederal hydropower because of its oversight of interstate commerce and the use of navigable waters in the United States. Most of our projects fall under both of those categories, some under just one. We currently have over 1,650 licensed and exempt projects. Those 1,650 include over 2,500 dams. Some licensed projects include multiple dams. The numbers fluctuate annually, because some projects leave FERC jurisdiction, and some come into FERC jurisdiction.

Hydro Leader: What part does dam safety play in attaining and maintaining a FERC license, and what requirements do dam constructors and owners need to meet?

David Capka: The dams that fall under FERC jurisdiction have to meet the engineering requirements found in FERC’s engineering guidelines for dam safety. The Federal Guidelines for Dam Safety are the overarching framework we work under. They define some general standards for flood passage, stability, and similar things. FERC’s guidelines go into more detail on all the different analyses that are required and the different types of loading conditions that have to be safely accommodated by a structure. Any project that comes under FERC jurisdiction has to meet those requirements and must continue to meet them as long as it is under our jurisdiction.

We also have something called the part 12 process, which is a 5‑year independent consultant and inspection process that is detailed in our regulations. During that process, an independent consultant assesses the loading conditions that the project was designed for and determines whether any updates should be recommended. Examples of that include looking at storm events and reanalyzing the flood design capacity of a project to make sure that the existing extreme flood events are still appropriate or increasing spillway capacity based on new information. The same is true of seismic analysis. A lot of the projects out west are routinely reanalyzed based on updated seismic information, whether from the U.S. Geological Survey, state agencies, or other projects that do more in-depth analysis. For example, if a new fault is discovered, a dam’s seismic loading condition could be higher. The projects are constantly reassessed to make sure that the project can safely pass the known required loading conditions.

The dam owners have to hire consultants to do studies hydroleadermagazine.com

such as seismic analyses or flood studies. Some of the really large utilities have in-house staff to do them. FERC is a regulator; we’re not the owner-operator or the engineer of record. We review the analyses provided to us by the licensees, independently review them, and concur or not concur. That is how we work through most dam safety issues.

Hydro Leader: How does public safety factor into FERC’s dam safety program, and what kind of signage, warning devices, or programs does FERC require?

David Capka: We require public safety plans for projects.

Those are developed and prepared by the licensee and tailored to the specific project. Our requirements depend on the specific characteristics of each project, all of which are different. The type of structure, the size, and the things that are located downstream and upstream of the structure are all relevant factors. The specifics of the project determine whether warning signs, boat barriers, audible alarms, or other safety measures are required. When we do our inspections, we go through the safety plan and assess whether what’s in the plan is in place. We may also provide input on potential enhancements.

Hydro Leader: Is there any interest in standardizing requirements for sign programs and sign formats?

David Capka: There is a push for that within the National Dam Safety Program, which FERC is part of. A subcommittee has been set up to look at that. If that effort does standardize certain public safety items, we would certainly look to incorporate that in our guidance. Currently, there is not a nationwide standard.

Hydro Leader: What consequences follow if a dam does not meet FERC’s dam safety standards, and how are those consequences enforced?

David Capka: Once a deficiency is identified, we work closely with the dam owner to make sure that we both understand and agree on what the issues are, and then FERC requires plans and schedules to bring the project up to our requirements. It’s an iterative process that happens often. As you might imagine, during every part 12 cycle, the reanalysis of some items is recommended. That doesn’t mean the projects in question are unsafe, just that we have to look at the outcomes of the new analyses. If they do show deficiencies, then we require those plans and schedules.

If the owners don’t make good-faith efforts to remediate their projects, that’s when enforcement action comes into play. It’s typically the last resort for us. Most dam owners want their projects to be safe and are cooperative, but when owners don’t do what they need to do, FERC does have the ability to impose penalties. It can issue civil penalties or cease-generation orders or revoke a license, although that April 2021| HYDRO LEADER

| 31

The FERC-licensed Conowingo Dam on the Susquehanna River in Maryland.

happens rarely. The enforcement group is not within dam safety; we’re just the ones trying to identify potential issues and then make sure they get addressed. If necessary, we get the compliance and enforcement folks involved.

When projects are found to be deficient, we work with the owners to make sure that they propose and incorporate interim risk reduction measures to reduce the risk at the project until it can be remediated. Those measures may include enhancements of the emergency action plan, interim structural modifications, reservoir restrictions, or operational modifications.

Hydro Leader: What are the main changes being considered to FERC’s proposed part 12 guideline revisions, and how long is the revision process likely to take?

32 | HYDRO LEADER | April 2021

hydroleadermagazine.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE STATE OF MARYLAND.

David Capka: Last summer, the commissioners voted out what is called a notice of proposed rulemaking for an updated part 12 regulation and for new engineering guideline chapters. There was a public comment period, which ended last fall. We’re currently finalizing our internal responses to the comments and making appropriate changes to our proposed revisions. We can’t say how long the process of getting to a potential final rulemaking will take. It is not delegated to the staff level, so the commissioners will have to vote on it. There is no guarantee that the regulations will actually be changed, though the fact that the commissioners voted out the draft proposed rulemaking and put it out for public comment indicates that they were supportive of full consideration of the updates.

These changes stand to be the first technical programmatic changes to our 18 CFR 12 regulations since 1981, which is a big deal. There have only been occasional, minor, editorial-type changes as different program offices change their names. There are a lot of things that have come up over the years that point to necessary changes. Following the Oroville spillway incident in 2017, we undertook a forensic investigation and hired an after-action panel to look at FERC’s program. Some of these proposed revisions come directly from the reports generated during that process.

We are looking to change the part 12 process, our 5‑year independent consultant inspection, into a two-phase undertaking. We’re looking to replace the current version of the inspection with a combination of periodic inspections, which would require less effort than the current inspection, and comprehensive assessments, which would require more effort. Those would alternate every 5 years. The periodic inspection would be a review of project operations over the previous 5 years that would make sure that nothing needed to be addressed right away. The comprehensive assessment would look at design, construction, and the current-day operations of the project. It would assess the design intent in light of the current state of the practice and determine whether there are things that need to be modified. Some of these proposed changes derive from the Oroville project findings.

Currently, we require that part 12 inspections be carried out by a single independent consultant. We’re looking to change that requirement to allow a team of consultants to do them, because it is asking too much of one person to ask

ADVERTISEMENT them to do a comprehensive look at every aspect of a lot of our projects. There are some projects that work perfectly, but we’ve got projects such as the Oroville Dam that are large and have a lot of different features. Regional engineers always have the discretion to grant exceptions to some projects, so not every project is going to have to have every single thing, but we do want to establish a baseline standard process. We’re also proposing a requirement that a level 2 semiquantitative risk analysis be performed as part of this comprehensive assessment. That would be a big change.

The other big change that I want to highlight is that we are looking to formally incorporate the requirement for an owner’s dam safety program (ODSP) into the regulations. It’s been required through our guidance, but we want to formally codify it into our regulations. The owner is ultimately responsible for the safety of the project, and the dam can only be safe if the owner does their job. FERC only inspects highand significant-hazard dams once a year. We are not out there every day; we cannot know everything that’s happening at a project. It’s the responsibility of the owners to do that. The ODSP highlights the importance of owners’ responsibilities.

FERC is a regulator, not the owner’s dam safety engineer.

We certainly have a major role in dam safety, but we are not responsible for day-to-day operations or the execution of the safety of licensed projects. That’s the big message that we’ve been pushing, but there are still owners out there who we don’t feel understand that well enough.

PHOTO COURTESY OF FERC.

Hydro Leader: How does the paradigm of risk analysis compare to earlier approaches, and why is FERC looking into incorporating risk-based analysis?

David Capka: We set up a branch within the dam safety program called Risk-Informed Decisionmaking. It has been overseeing pilot projects and developing draft guidance.

In the dam safety arena, FERC coordinates with other federal agencies, including the Army Corps, the Bureau of Reclamation, and the Tennessee Valley Authority, and they’ve all moved toward risk analysis and risk-informed decisionmaking within their dam safety programs. Reclamation has been doing it since the late 1990s, and the Army Corps moved to it after Hurricane Katrina. Risk analysis is different from standards-based analysis, which is what we still require. Risk analyses enable us to look at projects more comprehensively, compare projects across an inventory, and consider consequences that other analyses do not include.

We have a wide variety of dams, as do all the agencies.

Some of the dams have a couple of homes downstream; others have hundreds or thousands. Risk analysis helps identify the hazard, the potential consequences, and their importance. Our goal is certainly to have no dam safety incidents, and that’s what we always strive for, but there are dams whose failure would have extreme consequences. Risk analysis helps us direct our resources better. It helps us focus on the right things at each project. hydroleadermagazine.com

Hydro Leader: What are the major trends affecting the way FERC views dam safety?

David Capka: Financial constraints are sometimes a challenge for owners. Making projects profitable can be difficult, so it can be difficult to get dam owners to invest more in their project based on our safety requirements, despite the importance. FERC issued a notice of inquiry in January about potential financial assurance measures for hydro projects.

There’s going to be a major effort to look at ideas for making sure that dam safety and environmental issues are not being ignored because of financial constraints. We want to see what potential avenues there are to address these issues.

Another thing that we’re focusing on is what we call nonbreach risk at projects. Some of our projects, even if they operate properly, could still flood areas downstream under certain circumstances. That isn’t typically thought of as an issue until a large flood occurs and operators have to open the spillway gates. This may result in homes or other structures downstream being flooded. We’re continuing to make sure that our owners know which operations might affect folks downstream so that, if necessary, they can notify local authorities in a timely manner so that people can be evacuated.

Most FERC-regulated dams are not control dams. A lot of people don’t understand that not every dam serves flood control functions. Many of our dams are set up as run-ofriver projects, which means that all flows that come into the reservoir have to be passed through the powerhouse or over the spillway, with no ability to hold flows back. As more water comes in from rainfall or snowmelt, more water has to go downstream. As more development occurs downstream, nonbreach risk increases. If a person’s house gets flooded, they often blame the dam owner, and we usually have to do an assessment to determine whether the dam operations were proper or not. A lot of the time, dam owners can’t do anything about situations like these; there was just too much rain in too short a time.

Hydro Leader: Is there anything else you would like to add?

David Capka: We’re trying to do what we can with the resources we have. It’s a challenge to oversee all these projects and make sure that our licensees are doing what they need to do. A lot of repairs and construction modifications are going on, which is a good thing, but it’s also a lot of work. That’ll continue to be the case. H David Capka is the director of the Division of Dam Safety and Inspections at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. He can be contacted at david.capka@ferc.gov.

April 2021| HYDRO LEADER

| 33

ADVERTISEMENT

We’re Ready to Help

We can support you with an efficient strategy to address the updated FERC Part 12 Dam Safety Regulations. hdrinc.com

We know one size doesn’t fit all. We will apply our extensive dam safety experience to support your implementation of an appropriately scaled dam safety program.

What We Provide • FERC-approved Part 12D Independent Consultants available across the United States • Deep bench of risk experts, facilitators, geotechnical, electrical/mechanical, H&H, and civil/structural engineers • FERC-required experience and expertise adapted to your specific project needs • Cost-effective dam safety program support • Staff with extensive Risk-Informed Decision Making experience Contact Our Dam Safety Experts Today Ed Luttrell | Ed.Luttrell@hdrinc.com Alex Grenoble, PhD | Alex.Grenoble@hdrinc.com Adam Jones | Adam.Jones@hdrinc.com Kevin Snyder | Kevin.Snyder@hdrinc.com Keith Moen | Keith.Moen@hdrinc.com

Ad contains images captured prior to COVID-19 pandemic

ADVERTISEMENT

I N T E R N AT I O N A L C O N F E R E N C E ON OCEAN ENERGY

Join Us for an All-Virtual ICOE 2021!

Sign up to stay updated at icoe2021.org.

I CO E2 0 2 1.O RG

•

# I CO E 2 0 2 1

W WATER.POWER.WEEK. VIRTUAL CONFERENCE • APRIL 27-29, 2021 WAT E R P O W E R W E E K . C O M

Stay updated at waterpowerweek.com

NATION’S PREMIER WATERPOWER POLICY EVENT

The National Hydropower Association’s (NHA) Waterpower Week 2021 is the industry’s premier policy event.

• Regulatory and Legislative Policy Sessions • Capitol Hill Advocacy • Networking Opportunities

INDUSTRY PROFESSIONALS

SHAPE THE FUTURE OF WATERPOWER

ADVERTISEMENT

Mitigating Warming and Preserving Cold Water Refuges in the Columbia River

The confluence of the Deschutes and Columbia Rivers, with a plume of cold water from the Deschutes visible.

F

ew tasks are as challenging as conserving endangered or threatened species. Such conservation often requires balancing many diverse and competing factors to preserve the species and their habitat while also allowing for the appropriate use of natural resources. John Palmer is part of a team at the region 10 office of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that is working to achieve such a balance on the Columbia River by finding ways to preserve the cold water refuges that are important to migratory fish while ensuring dam operators and irrigators can still operate as well.

In this interview, Mr. Palmer tells Hydro Leader about the EPA’s efforts, why cold water refuges are so vital for the future of salmon and other fish, and the role of collaboration with dam operators in conservation.

Hydro Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

36 | HYDRO LEADER | April 2021

John Palmer: Cold water refuges are areas of water that are colder than the mainstem river—the Columbia, in this case.

We generally find that where cold tributaries come into the Columbia River, there are areas of cooler water in which migrating fish can hold out in to avoid the warmer water of the mainstem.

Where a tributary comes into the river, it creates a plume of cold water. The fish use the plume and the lower mile or so of the tributary itself as a refuge. The Columbia is hottest from mid-July to mid-September. When the river’s temperature exceeds 20°C (68°F), salmon and steelhead start using these refuges. The main fish that use these refuges are steelhead, which migrate up the Columbia River during the peak temperatures in the summer, and fall Chinook, which are Chinook salmon that start migrating up the Columbia River in August.

We started this project because of the State of Oregon’s water quality standard, which stipulated that the Columbia River needed to have a sufficient number of cool water refuges distributed along the river to allow salmon and hydroleadermagazine.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE EPA.

John Palmer: I’m a senior policy advisor for the water division at the EPA region 10 office in Seattle. I’ve been here for a little over 20 years. I work to ensure that our programs comply with the Endangered Species Act (ESA), and I work on a variety of special projects within the office.

Hydro Leader: Tell us about cold water refuges on the Columbia River and how they help migratory fish.

ADVERTISEMENT steelhead to migrate up the river as adults. We developed this plan to implement that standard. One of the things that we’ve learned is that the Columbia River is warming over time. Over the last 60–80 years, the river has warmed, in part due to climate change and in part due to the building of dams, which create reservoirs that absorb heat. Due to the warming of the river, we’re seeing fish using these refuges more and more to escape the warmer summer temperatures.

Hydro Leader: By how much has the river warmed?

John Palmer: We estimate that the August mean temperature of the river has increased by about 2½°C (4½°F).

Hydro Leader: How do dams and reservoirs contribute to that warming?

John Palmer: An impounded reservoir increases the area of the river that’s exposed to solar radiation and warm air. Impounded reservoirs also lengthen the residence time of the water in the river—in other words, they slow the river. When a broader area is exposed and the river is moving at a slower speed, it allows the heat of the water body to increase.

more refuges in the future. The final goal is to recommend the monitoring and future studies needed to address uncertainties.

Hydro Leader: How many cold water refuges exist today, and how should they be maintained and restored?

John Palmer: The plan identifies a total of 23 cold water refuges created by the 23 tributaries that provide cold water from the mouth of the Columbia up to the Snake River. Of those 23, 12 were defined as primary, because they represented the vast majority of the volume of the cold water refuges—about 98 percent. We concluded that in order to meet Oregon’s standards, we need to maintain those 12 tributaries and maintain the volume of cold water they add to the Columbia River. In addition, we concluded that we needed to cool the Umatilla River so that it provides more cold water.

Hydro Leader: Would you tell us about the EPA’s cold water refuge plan?

John Palmer: The plan started because of an ESA consultation that we did on our approval of Oregon’s water quality standards.

A map of the cold water refuges in the lower Columbia River.

The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) determined that our approval of Oregon’s Hydro Leader: Are you aware of any mitigation efforts that standards would jeopardize ESA-listed species. While dam owners and operators have carried out to try to control Oregon had a standard on the books called the cold the temperature of their reservoirs or the river downstream? water refuge standard, there was evidence that it wasn’t being implemented. In its biological opinion, the NMFS John Palmer: The most common way in which reservoir recommended developing this plan as a way to avoid operators try to control the temperature of the river is by jeopardizing the ESA-listed fish. releasing water from deep in the reservoir. That can be The plan itself sets out to do a number of things. First, it done at storage dams whose reservoirs are stratified by identifies, maps, and quantifies the cold water refuges from temperature—in other words, where there is cooler water the mouth of the Columbia River on the Pacific Ocean all at the bottom of the reservoir and warm water at the the way to the mouth of the Snake River, which is a little surface. Four tributaries that provide cold water refuges over 300 miles upriver. Second, it describes how and to what to the lower Columbia River have dams upstream that extent salmon and steelhead use those refuges. Third, it aims release cool subsurface water that keeps the tributaries to determine whether the current number of refuges meets cool. Those four tributaries are the Cowlitz and Lewis Oregon’s standards, and if not, to describe what actions are Rivers in Washington and the Sandy and Deschutes needed to meet Oregon’s standards. Fourth, it identifies Rivers in Oregon. The dams on the lower Columbia actions to protect and restore cold water refuges and to create River mainstem are generally not storage dams. They hydroleadermagazine.com

April 2021| HYDRO LEADER

| 37

ADVERTISEMENT pass water rather than storing it for months, and only in the latter case do you get that stratification.

Hydro Leader: Recognizing that your plan doesn’t prescribe any changes of this type, would you tell us whether there are any changes in hydropower dam operations or facilities that would benefit cold water refuges?

John Palmer: The plan includes recommendations to protect and restore the refuges, which include continued cool water releases from dams in the four tributaries noted above. It doesn’t specifically address the lower Columbia River dams. We generally looked at actions within tributary watersheds that would protect those cool tributaries or make them even colder.

There are two links between cold water refuge tributary watersheds and the lower Columbia dams. One is in the confluent areas where these tributaries meet the mainstem, which are reservoir settings. There has been some sediment buildup at the mouths of some of these tributaries. One of the actions that we recommend is to conduct feasibility studies on restoring the confluence of streams where there’s been a lot of sediment buildup, in part because these are reservoir environments where the lack of fast-moving water in the Columbia River has contributed to this sediment buildup. Restoring the confluence areas could increase the access of fish to the cold water refuges and help keep the water cold. That’s an action that dam operators could carry out, because it relates to their operations.

A second link is mitigation in the tributaries to help offset dam temperature effects in the mainstem. I think there are opportunities for dam owners to engage in mitigation activities as part of their water quality plans, including sediment management or investments to help protect and restore tributaries.

38 | HYDRO LEADER | April 2021

Hydro Leader: What is your vision for the future?

John Palmer: We identified a number of actions to help protect these watersheds, and a lot of these programs are in place, which is good. We need to ensure the protection of the riparian areas that provide shade and to ensure that water does not get withdrawn and used, which would decrease the volume of the rivers and tributaries. There are various state programs that are designed to protect these important watersheds. Bolstering those programs is important. Projects to cool the Deschutes and Umatilla Rivers will be important, since they are the warmest of the refuges. The Umatilla needs additional flow in the summer—a lot of water is withdrawn from the Umatilla for irrigation. There are efforts underway to keep more of that water in the river, perhaps by pumping additional water out of the Columbia River to replace the Umatilla water that is currently being used for irrigation.

We recognize that, with climate change, the Columbia will continue to warm. We predict that the temperature of the river will continue to increase by about 1°C (1.8°F) every three decades. That will likely result in the greater use of these refuges. We also think that the tributaries themselves are going to warm due to climate change. We identified a number of actions to restore and cool these tributaries, whether by improving their riparian habitat for shade or by creating better groundwater connection by restoring river functions. We have identified opportunities in each of these watersheds to make those kinds of restoration investments, which align nicely with salmon recovery plans in each of these tributaries. Looking toward the future, we are focused on investing grant dollars in projects that help restore these rivers for multiple needs, including cold water refuges. H

John Palmer is a senior policy advisor at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He can be reached at palmer.john@epa.gov or (206) 553‑6521.

hydroleadermagazine.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE EPA.

Hydro Leader: Is it possible that the states or other entities could require dam owners and operators to carry out mitigation work related to river temperature? Would you tell us about some of the mechanisms by which states might add 401 requirements to EPA permits?

John Palmer: Again, the plan itself merely contains recommendations for actions to cool and protect these refuges. Dams in the tributaries already have important 401 requirements added by the states to Federal Energy Regulatory Commission licenses to help keep the tributaries cool. As I said earlier, the lower Columbia dams could help in some of the mitigation work, even though this is not discussed in the plan. It is possible that the states, through the implementation of the Columbia River temperature total maximum daily load or through 401 requirements added to the final National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits issued by the EPA, could require dams to do some of this mitigation.

Hydro Leader: Is that the kind of thing that could happen at any time, or is there a cycle during which NPDES permits are issued and can be altered by the states?

John Palmer: We’re right in the middle of issuing the NPDES permits for the lower Columbia River dams. We received 401 conditions from the states for these permits, and we plan to finalize the permits this year.

ADVERTISEMENT

Sick of having endless time and an endless budget?

Probably not the case, so you should give us a call!

Assura Software will help you get time and money back with our asset management and business process solutions.

“Assura has provided RWCD with the ability to meet our operational challenges in real time and the opportunity to address them in a 21st century environment.”

- Shane Leonard GM, Roosevelt Water Conservation District

 hello@assurasoftware.com

(480) 477-9283

assurasoftware.com

Leader ydro H

Upcoming Events

April 11–14 Edison Electric Institute, Transmission, Distribution, Metering, and Mutual Assistance, Houston, TX, and virtual April 12–16 United States Society on Dams, Safety, Security, and Emergency Response in the 21st Century, Charleston, SC April 13 & 27 Nevada Water Resources Association, Webinar Series (virtual) April 14 & May 12 Nebraska Water Resources Association, Water Roundtable Series (virtual) April 21–22 U.S. Energy Storage Association, Spring Conference (virtual) April 21–23 The P3 Water Summit (virtual) April 27–29 National Hydropower Association, Water Power Week (virtual) April 28–29 National Water Resources Association, Federal Water Issues Conference (virtual) April 28–30 National Hydropower Association, 2021 International Conference on Ocean Energy (virtual) May 4–7 Texas Ground Water Association, Annual Convention and Trade Show, San Marcos, TX May 5–6 National Water Resources Association, Federal Water Issues Conference (virtual) May 10–21 United States Society on Dams, Virtual Annual Conference May 12–13 Association of California Water Agencies, Spring Conference and Exhibition (virtual) May 17–19 Utah Water Users Association, Annual Workshop, St. George, UT May 23–26 Edison Electric Institute and American Gas Association, Spring Accounting Conference, Pueblo, NM June TBD Groundwater Management Districts Association, Summer Conference, TBD June TBD Idaho Water Users Association Summer Meeting, TBD June 7–8 Nebraska Natural Resources Districts, Basin Tour, TBD June 13–16 Edison Electric Institute and American Gas Association, Accounting Leadership Conference and Chief Audit Executives Conference, Pueblo, NM June 14–17 Nevada Water Resources Association, Well and Water Week, Reno, NV June 16–18 Texas Water Conservation Association, Summer Conference, Horseshoe Bay, TX June 20–23 American Public Power Association, National Conference, Chicago, IL June 22–23 National Ground Water Association, Fate of PFAS: From Groundwater to Tap Water (virtual) July 12–13 North Dakota Water Resource Districts Association, Summer Meeting and North Dakota Water Education Foundation Executive Briefing, Dickinson, ND July 13–15 North Dakota Water Users Association, Summer Meeting, Grand Forks, ND July 14–16 Hydrovision International, Spokane, WA

To sign up to receive Hydro Leader in electronic form, please contact us at admin@waterstrategies.com. hydroleadermag

hydro_leadr

hydro.leader

hydroleadermagazine.com