Run-of-the-river Hydroelectricity - Concerns

Concerns

Many of the impacts of this technology are still not understood or well-considered, including the following:

  • Diverting large amounts of river water reduces river flows, affecting water velocity and depth, minimizing habitat quality for fish and aquatic organisms; reduced flows can lead to excessively warm water for salmon and other fish in summer. As planned, the Bute Inlet project in BC could divert 95 percent of the mean annual flow in at least three of the rivers.
  • New access roads and transmission lines can cause extensive habitat fragmentation for many species, making inevitable the introduction of invasive species and increases in undesirable human activities, like illegal hunting.
  • Cumulative impacts—the sum of impacts caused not only by the project, but by roads, transmission lines and all other nearby developments—are difficult to measure. Cumulative impacts are an especially important consideration in areas where projects are clustered in high densities close to sources of electricity demand: for example, of the 628 pending water license applications for hydropower development in British Columbia, roughly one third are located in the southwestern quarter of the province, where human population density and associated environmental impacts are highest.
  • Water licenses issued by the BC Ministry of Environment, enabling developers to legally divert rivers, have not included clauses that specify changing water entitlements in response to altered conditions; this fact means that conflicts will arise over the water needed to sustain aquatic life and generate power when river flow becomes more variable or decreases in the future. However, it should also be noted that under section 101 of the BC Water Act, regulations regarding a water licenses can be changed by the government at any time, including the amount of water that a power plant is required to release to protect aquatic life.

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