January 31, 1978
Page 1556
A CASE FOR DICKEY-LINCOLN
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, the release of the draft environmental impact statement on the Dickey-Lincoln hydro-electric project in Maine has dramatically intensified debate on the project.
An environmental impact statement is by its nature a negative document. It describes in great detail the effects of the project on the land, air, and water, fish, and wildlife in the affected area on the upper St. John River. The document was seized upon by opponents of the project, some of whom implied that it provided dramatic new evidence that the project was not worthwhile and should not be built. Of course, the EIS did nothing of the sort.
In fact, it revealed there were few environmental effects we had not foreseen a dozen years ago when the project was authorized.
I expect opponents of the project to seize every opportunity to make debating points. But I was saddened that the vast majority of the Maine press was taken in by the tactic. The displacement of deer, the flooding of land, the loss of timber became almost a litany, repeated again and again across the pages of our newspapers. It was as if no one had realized before that when a river is dammed, land is flooded.
The environmental effects ought to be brought to light. I have enthusiastically supported the environmental study process because I believe we must know all Dickey-Lincoln's costs, and we must explore all the alternatives.
But we must also weigh the benefits. And in making a final judgment, we must determine what we are willing to give up in turn for the benefits we will receive.
I know as well as anyone that when it comes to energy and the environment, there are no benefits without costs. There are no projects built without environmental sacrifice; there are no projects foregone without sacrifice of another sort, or environmental costs at another place.
We have heard much recently about the benefits of small site hydro, for example, but very little about the cumulative environmental costs of those projects. And there has been no attempt to describe the environmental effects of such alternatives to Dickey as nuclear power or coal-fired generating plants.
The Maine media, with some notable exceptions, have for the most part ignored the story of Dickey-Lincoln's benefits. The editorial writers of our major newspapers certainly could not make a balanced judgment on Dickey-Lincoln just by reading their own newspapers. So it is not surprising that although 74 percent of Maine people recently surveyed favor new hydroelectric projects in Maine, the majority in favor of Dickey-Lincoln was only 48 to 41 percent.
It was a public service then for the Maine Sunday Telegram to publish a lengthy article in last Sunday's edition which dispassionately reviews the Dickey-Lincoln debate.
The article was prepared by John Goodwin, director of Maine Citizens for Dickey-Lincoln, which is attempting to present a balanced view of the project, its costs and benefits. Citizens for Dickey-Lincoln supports the project. And the article was properly printed as an opinion. Yet those who read it will find a more balanced and forthright assessment than could be found in the news columns on any given day.
I want to welcome Citizens for Dickey-Lincoln to the fight for the project, and congratulate them for their effort.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the article, "A Case for Dickey," be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
A CASE FOR DICKEY
(By John Goodwin)
Is there nothing to be said for Dickey-Lincoln?
Are the advocates all black hats determined to ruin the environment, drive people from their homes, chase the deer out of their yards and drown the Furbish lousewort?
And just so people in Boston can more conveniently run their electric toothbrushes? Much of the discussion over the past year or so has made it seem that way.
But the argument, for example, that "all the power from Dickey-Lincoln will be goingout of state," doesn't hold up.
Forty-four percent of the total power generated at Dickey-Lincoln will be available to Maine residents, according to the State Department of Conservation. All the base load power at the site has been earmarked for Maine.
Maine will also get 75 percent of the up to 1,900 construction jobs involved. And benefits from Dickey-Lincoln will flow into Mainelong after it's constructed.
Historically, light but high-energy-use industries have located near a source of relatively low-cost electric power.
Hydro-electric power is low cost, because its source — the water — is free and immune to inflationary pressures that affect oil, coal and wood.
That Dickey-Lincoln will most definitely be a source of low-cost power is borne out by a Department of Conservation study.
It found that power from a coal-fired plant CMP plans to build on Sears Island will be selling for 5.5 cents per kilowatt; Dickey-Lincoln's will sell for 3.9 cents.
This differential is likely to increase even more in the future,
Because of its low cost, the power from Dickey-Lincoln will mean that Maine consumers will save millions of dollars annually on their electric bills: More than 812 million, according to the Eastern Maine Electric Co-operative based in Calais.
All of Maine will benefit, but especially the eastern and northern sections, where more and cheaper power is most needed for development.
Construction of the dam will mean an immediate boost to the economy of Aroostook County, from which the Corps of Engineers estimates that 29 percent of the dam's labor force will be hired.
The minimum wage paid at the site will be$5.70 an hour — good by any standard, but particularly in a state which has had a history of low wages.
Some critics have claimed that high wages will cause an "adverse impact" in Aroostook County, others that the jobs are only temporary and not worth having. And still others claim that people in Aroostook can't do the work.
But if a low wage is a Maine tradition then it's one that should be ended as soon as possible.
And all construction jobs are temporary. When a project is done, the workers move onto something else. This does not mean, however, that Maine people don't take advantage of jobs that do become available.
Aroostook County workers can't do the work? Maine people drive trucks, operate bulldozers and use back hoes, cranes and so forth — the kind of equipment that will be used for Dickey — every day.
Indeed, the Corps of Engineers estimates that 60 of the 68 people actually operating the dams after construction will be from Maine.
Another myth is that the dams involved will flood and destroy a virgin wilderness.
The area is far from a wilderness. It's largely cut over, with hauling roads and skid trails sometimes just yards apart.
Much of it is owned by a Canadian conglomerate based in St. John, N.B. Much of the cutting in the area is done by Canadian workers, and 90 percent of the saw logs taken from the area are processed in Canada by Canadian workers.
One cost of building the project is the flooding of about 88,000 acres of land behind the Dickey dam, but the potential timber loss there can be more than made up by better management of what remains, according to the Corps of Engineers' Environmental Impact Statement and the Department of Conservation study.
Also, because the existing private road system will be disrupted, the landowners in the area might begin processing more timber in Maine, thus creating more jobs for people in this state.
Is Dickey-Lincoln something the state and region needs at all? It is, now more than ever before.
CMP President E. W. Thurlow says that by the mid-1980s, a significantly base load electrical energy deficit in Maine is projected as demand for power outstrips the available supply. "Unless the state continues to expand its generating capacity, Maine could be subject to power outages, power rationing and inordinately high energy costs"
Just a couple of weeks ago newspaper headlines were saying "It Was So Cold The Clocks Slowed Down,"meaning power was so scarce there wasn't enough to keep electric clocks running accurately.
The private power firms have plans to meet a substantial portion of the near-term growth in base load demand (base load is the electric power needed during the normal course of a given day).
In Maine, an addition to the oil-fired plant at Cousins Island in Yarmouth is now nearing completion. A coal-fired plant is scheduled for Sears island. Small hydro plants are also planned at a number of locations around the state.
The private utilities had been planning a second Maine nuclear power plant to be completed sometime in the 1990s.
However, CMP's Thurlow has announced the indefinite shelving of this project pending further clarification of the nation's nuclear policy.
The various projects planned by the private utilities could substantially meet Maine's base load demand if they are built and if the fuel to power them is available at all and at a feasible price.
Coal and oil, for example, are very expensive and will become more expensive in the future. Yet CMP will burn oil at its 600-megawatt addition at Cousins Island and coal at the new Sears Island plant.
CMP has just asked the Public Utilities Commission for a $24.7 million rate increase and it will be back for more as oil and coal prices rise.
Dickey-Lincoln will replace 2.3 million barrels of oil annually, more than 1 million barrels (42 million gallons) in Maine alone. At today's price of about 50 cents a gallon for home heating oil, that could mean a saving of $21 million a year.
Also, when the source of electric power is water, there's no "fuel adjustment charge"involved, for the "fuel" is free. It's also non-polluting, renewable and reliable.
CMP is projecting a total electric power demand growth of 5.5 percent over the next ten years (historically, it has increased seven percent annually).
But this forecast may be too conservative. During 1976, CMP saw demand increase eight percent. The pulp and paper companies alone used 27 percent more electric power in the first quarter of 1977.
Peaking power demands is also expected to leap by nearly 75 percent in New England by 1987-88.
If more electricity is to be consumed in the future, then it naturally follows that dependable sources of supply must be developed.
There should also be a good mix of power sources: that is, we should not rely solely on coal, oil, water or anything else.
Maine is fortunate in now having a fairly good mix and Dickey-Lincoln will put us in an even more favorable position.
For even if the coal, oil, and small-site hydro plants proposed for Maine are built as planned, none would be efficient in meeting peaking power needs.
Dickey-Lincoln, on the other hand, is ideal for this purpose. Its basic energy source can be stored and kept available almost instantly when needed.
This single electrical source will meet 25 percent of Maine's and 17 percent of New England's peaking needs.
Opponents sometimes say that Dickey-Lincoln could only operate two hours a day. Not true.
The dam would operate at varying capacities, depending on peaking power demands.
During periods of low demand, as on weekends and nights during the spring, the generators would hardly run at all.
This is good, for the primary source of the water at Dickey-Lincoln is the spring runoff. This low-demand period is when the Dickey reservoir is replenishing itself.
At peak periods, such as in January and February, Dickey dam would be operated for periods extending up to eight or nine hours daily.
The Lincoln School regulating dam below would normally operate 10 hours a day, seven days a week. When Dickey is operating seven or more hours a day, Lincoln School would be capable of generating electricity for 24 hours a day at full capacity.
Total capacity of the Dickey-Lincoln project is 900 megawatts.
Dickey dam, located just above the juncture of the Allagash and St John rivers, will be capable of generating 1,183 million kilo-watt hours (kwh) annually. This would be primarily peaking power.
Lincoln School dam, 11 miles below Dickey, would have a capability of 262 million kwh of base load power annually, all designated for Maine.
The two dams would increase the capacity of downstream hydro plants in New Brunswick by 350 million kwh annually, half of which would be returned to the United States.
Total cost of Dickey-Lincoln, in 1977 dollars, was projected at $690 million. But taking inflation into account before completion in 1986, the figure is likely to be nearer $1 billion.
Although the U.S. taxpayer will have to meet the initial bill, 98 percent of it will be repaid with interest from revenues derived through power sales.
There has recently been some discussion about the safety of the project. It's been suggested that the dam might collapse or an earthquake may shake it apart.
No dam built by the Corps of Engineers has ever collapsed anywhere in the United States. Not a single life has ever been lost due to a Corps of Engineers dam.
In designing Dickey-Lincoln, the Corps, in consultation with outside seismological and geological experts, has taken into consideration the fact that there is an earthquake-prone region in the St. Lawrence River Valley about 50 miles away from the dam site.
Records dating back to 1638 show no major earthquakes within a 20-mile radius of the dam site. Within a 20- to 40-mile radius, there have been only four recorded events since 1638, all minor.
The dam is designed to withstand the maximum tremor of the largest credible earthquake in the St. Lawrence Valley.
The corps of Engineers, as part of its Environmental Impact Statement on the project, examined 24 alternatives.
The only one close to meeting the peaking power capability of Dickey-Lincoln was to build gas turbine plants which would be fueled by oil.
But oil is becoming prohibitively expensive and scarce. We should be moving away from oil, not building plants to consume more.
The private utilities have been counting on nuclear power to meet a substantial portion of their base load demand. But planned facilities have been long delayed and may never be built.
In any case, there are many unresolved difficulties with nuclear power, such as the disposal of radioactive waste and of the physical plant once its life cycle has been exhausted.
Coal-fired plants aren't trouble free either. The Sears Island plant will burn something like 420,000 pounds of coal per hour, which has to be hauled to the site and an almost equal amount of waste trucked away.
Small dams on the state's rivers are useful for generating moderate amounts of electricity. They have been neglected in recent years, but they can be valuable sources of base load power, and the state's utilities should develop as many as possible.
But these small hydro sites are basically "flow-of-the-river"systems. That is, the power they generate depends on how much water is flowing at a given time. There is no storage behind, and thus no substantial peaking capability.
A spokesman for the American Wildlife Federation said at one Dickey hearing that another alternative would be wood-fired power plants.
But for such plants to meet Dickey-Lincoln's peaking capacity they would consume more than 16,000 tons of wood chips a day. At that rate, all the timber in the Dickey-Lincoln impoundment area would be consumed in just over seven months.
What about the sun and the wind? Isn't there enough energy here to meet our needs forever?
Perhaps someday, but no technology yet exists to harness these sources on a large scale.
Further, if all the heat and hot water in the country were obtained from solar energy, the total electrical power demands would drop by less than five per cent.
Peak load pricing has been held out as another possible alternative to Dickey-Lincoln. Basically, this means paying more for power during peak periods. Alternatively, a box in the house or factory would regulate power usage. People would be allocated only so much power during these periods and no more.
Some idea of what peak load pricing might mean for Maine can be obtained by looking at what's going on in Massachusetts.
Peak load pricing there will be in effect sometime later this year. The proposal before the Department of Public utilities is that peak rates be nine times the normal rate for the weekday hours 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. from June through September. During those same months, power costs from 5 p.m. to midnight and from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. on weekdays would be four times the normal rate.
The lowest rate would be on weekends and daily from midnight to 9 a.m.
Of course, a special meter is needed to tell when you've used electric power. That will cost between $100 and $200.
Central Maine Power has found it would cost its customers $36 million just for the meters and take 15 years to get them installed.
CMP's own proposal now before the PUC is to charge three times as much for power used between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m. on weekdays as would be charged between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m.
The customers would have to buy the meters to take advantage of this pricing, but they could be paid for over a period of time as part of the monthly electric bill.
The latest alternative to grab attention has been pumped storage. In such a system, water is pumped from a lower reservoir into a higher one. When needed, the water from the higher level descends through the force of gravity to turn the turbines.
A pumped storage facility on the Kennebec near Bingham would provide more peaking power at half the cost, it has been suggested.
But to get two kilowatts of power out of such a system, you have to use three kilo-watts to pump the water.
There is no such surplus power available today in the New England system, and there are no plans to have such a surplus in the near future.
Dickey-Lincoln is partially a pumped storage project. One of its four generators is reversible so that during off-peak hours it can recycle water from Lincoln back to the much larger Dickey reservoir.
Dickey-Lincoln makes economic sense even without this feature, and even more with it since it can take advantage of whatever small amounts of surplus power might be available. But the whole project does not depend on the availability of such power.
There are obviously social, environmental and economic costs involved in construction of Dickey-Lincoln.
The Corps of Engineers is now doing a complete life-cycle study, but there are some preliminary figures, and Maine's Department of Conservation has examined them very closely. As conservative as the department was in its approach, it concluded that Dickey-Lincoln would mean very real benefits to Maine now and even more so in the future, most particularly after considering the price of the alternatives such as oil-fired plants.
The environmental cost is principally the flooding of 83,000 acres behind Dickey dam and the loss of about 60 miles of the St. John River in its present state.
In total, the impoundment area behind the dam amounts to less than one-half of one percent of the state's forest land.
There were some 2,328 visitor days of canoeing on the St. John in 1975, but only 447 were represented by Maine people.
Whitewater canoeing is a marvelous experience, however, and it ought to be available even if only a small number of people appear interested.
The Allagash Wilderness Waterway will not be affected at all by Dickey-Lincoln. Indeed, one proposed site for the project was rejected precisely because it would disturb this wilderness river where, among other things, whitewater canoeing is available.
Building Dickey-Lincoln will mean 161 families in Allagash and St. Francis having to move.
All steps have been and will be taken to assure that they can be relocated with as little disturbance as possible.
Federal law requires that they be fairly compensated for their property loss. Further, up to $15,000 can be paid each family to compensate for the inconvenience of moving.
Much mention has been made of the "destruction" of Allagash as a community as a result of building Dickey-Lincoln. I contend that the people don't see it that way.
There's no question many families will have to move if the dam is built, but that's a very long way from saying the community will be "destroyed" .
During the peak construction period at the dam up to 1,900 people will be working, 75 per cent of them from Maine and 29 per cent from the local area.
Past history indicates that construction at Dickey-Lincoln will cause no more of a "boom and bust" than any other project of its size.
For example, at the new paper mills built recently in the communities of Hinckley and Jay, there were approximately the same number of people working as there will be at Dickey-Lincoln.
Both towns were able to absorb this temporary influx without social or economic damage.
It's often forgotten that Dickey-Lincoln is a dual-purpose project, designed to control the waters of the St. John, which periodically overflows its banks, as well as to generate electricity. Construction of the dam will end the threat of flooding.
As with any project of this sort, the costs — social, environmental and economic — have to be weighed against the benefits.
Clearly, I would suggest, the benefits far outweigh the costs. As Senator Muskie has put it, "In 10 to 15 years Dickey-Lincoln will look like a bargain. We should not pass it up."