Duke: Catawba River 'stress' studies unfair

Duke: Catawba River 'stress' studies unfair

By John Marks - jmarks@lakewyliepilot.com

LAKE WYLIE --

Could recent reports describing a troubled Catawba River actually be an outflow of an overachieving system to manage it?

Leaders at Duke Energy, the company managing Catawba River lakes, made that case to state legislators, environmentalists and others at the March 2 meeting of the Catawba-Wateree River Basin Advisory Commission. Their contention – that doom-and-gloom reports of a "stressed" Catawba don't account for what's being done to maintain it.

"We do have a good policy in place," said Mark Hollis, who represents Duke on the commission. "We have a positive story to tell."

Lake Wylie Pilot file photo - Duke Energy dam on Lake Wylie.

A handful of reports in recent years detail reasons why the Catawba is endangered, stressed or otherwise in peril from a variety of sources. In 2008, American Rivers named it the most endangered river in the country. Southern Environmental Law Center named it a top 10 endangered place for 2010. A Union of Concerned Scientists study released late last year placed the river among 25 basins nationwide where power plants "are the major driver of stress on the region," and said Duke has the highest "withdrawal intensity" of the 15 largest electric utilities.

Dr. Kristen Averyt of the University of Colorado, a partner in the most recent study, said a database detailing study results should be online soon and next look at what's being done where power plants are stressing communities.

"I don't think we disagree on anything in our report," she said of her group and Duke. "The next step in our study is to look at the management."

Which is where, Duke argues, the published study fails. Some of the data used to describe problems in the basin actually come from Duke's work to prevent the problems, said Eric Myers, Duke's director of federal energy and environmental practices. For instance, Duke's federal hydroelectric relicensing process to operate along the Catawba past 2008 formed drought and water management stakeholder groups. Those efforts led to a finding the Catawba's demand would exceed its yield by 2048.

That finding was used in both the 2008 American Rivers and 2011 Union of Concerned Scientists studies to describe why the Catawba is in trouble.

"We're not going to close our eyes and keep our foot on the gas," Myers said. "We're not using these models just to predict the future, but to plan for the future that we want to have."

While Ulla-Britt Reeves, regional program director for Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, called last year's report a "check engine light for the Catawba basin," Myers noted national estimates aren't as effective as a "mechanic on duty 24-7 down here" in Duke. He said the report shows how once-through power plant cooling systems withdraw more water than closed-cycle systems, but doesn't properly account for closed-cycle systems actually consuming 40 to 50 percent more water because of evaporation. Of the water withdrawn by Duke plants for cooling, he said, more than 98 percent is discharged back into the river.

"While we are a substantially high withdrawer, we only consume a small fraction of that," Myers said.

Jeff Lineberger, who oversaw much of Duke's relicensing effort, said the company withdraws about 5 billion gallons of water per day from its Catawba River plants. It loses about 75 million gallons per day to evaporation, compared to a hot summer day that might lose 300 million gallons.

"We can't manage that part of it," Lineberger said, "but we can manage the human part of it."

Averyt says there's a "consistency issue" between what is withdrawn nationwide and what federal government sources believe is being withdrawn. Yet both North and South Carolina have mandatory water withdrawal reporting for power plants, at least at the state level.

"It's been mandatory reporting since 2000," said David Baize, with the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control Bureau of Water. "It was voluntary before that."

Myers said he finds reports like last year's "troubling," and Duke's long-term approach could be a model for areas struggling with water planning. He doesn't want local stakeholders to "be discouraged by a report that drew a bulls eye around us and said we have a problem."

Fellow commissioners say understanding water-use data can be tricky, but it's important, as are implications of the decisions made by Duke. A byproduct of Duke's need for water, said N.C. Sen. Dan Clodfelter, is the lake capacity it had to create. Without it, the area would be drastically different.

"You don't need as many lakes, and you don't need as big of lakes, so you don't have as much water for public water intake," he said.

"Stress really means, ask more questions."

Questions and dialogue commission members like Gary Faulkenberry said their group needs to hear.

"This is an example of what I want," he said.