Federal regulators moved to deny a key request from rPlus Hydro’s White Pine Water Power, delaying project permitting for nearly two years and rebuffing a request to expedite the hydrologic review for the project that would forever alter Steptoe Valley.
This is a major setback for the project developers — who are pushing for a project that has very little support in the City of Ely and White Pine County. The Decision from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) will have major impacts on the timeline for approval of the water-wasting effort that requires fossil fuel power to push water uphill, all in the name of renewable energy.
FERC’s decision is partially in response to a request by rPlus to fast-track the project’s hydrologic study and limit the review and scope of that analysis — while also requesting that the project’s collective review be on a much faster timeframe.
For opponents, this is a victory in our Step Up for Steptoe campaign. A delay of this kind poses considerable questions about the future of the effort as it relates to project costs and financing. The move also comes as major subsidies and credits for pumped-storage projects like White Pine Waterpower face increasing uncertainty because of the new Administration in Washington, D.C.
rPlus has been looking for a major utility like NV Energy to have ratepayers foot the bill for the project, but the company was not successful in making that happen in a recent regulatory proceeding where those deals are solidified.
Pumped storage projects create energy by passing water from an upper reservoir to a lower reservoir — with the water spinning turbines and generating electricity on the way down. It is traditionally done in open-loop systems near major rivers.
The project, which would be north of Ely in the beautiful Duck Creek Range, requires pumping groundwater in a stressed aquifer system, building two new reservoirs for groundwater, and blasting an 8-story hole in the Duck Creek Range to run a piping system from one reservoir to the other. Federal regulators have never approved a groundwater-backed pumped-stroage hydropower project ever in the arid west. Now is not a time to start doing so in the nation’s driest state.
