Dear HCN,
In response to your
article about benefits from releasing water from Glen Canyon Dam
(HCN, 7/22/96), I called the Bureau of Reclamation in late April,
and their best projection was that 104,000,000 kwh of hydro
generation would be lost due to the release.
It
takes more than 60,000 tons of coal to generate that much
electricity in the average conventional power plant. So, the
environmental downside of releases that bypass the turbines is more
air pollution and an increase in justification for constructing
additional power plants.
Eric
Wagner
Walden,
Colorado
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Catch-22.
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