A push for pumped storage redux

Prior to the 2016 election I wrote an article regarding the proposed Big Chino Valley Pumped Storage plant. The estimated initial drawdown from the Big Chino aquifer to fill the plant’s two storage reservoirs is nearly 9 billion gallons—1.5 times the estimated annual base flow of the Verde River and nearly twice the estimated annual recharge rate for the entire aquifer.

After the initial fill, Big Chino’s storage reservoirs would need regular replenishment due to evaporation. The evaporation rate would be greatest during periods of drought. Consequently, the most extensive pumping from the aquifer would occur when the aquifer is most in need of replenishment.

Is it remotely possible this extraction would not affect base flow of the upper Verde River?

The project would require approximately 151 miles of 500kV transmission lines with a 200ft right-of-way.

Profitability of Big Chino Valley Pumped Storage relied on Democrat-supported federal subsidies for both plant and transmission lines. When hope for subsidies died after Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss, Farallon Capital Management LLC divested their entire 3.88 million shares of Big Chino’s Michigan-based parent company.

Farallon Capital is a hedge fund management company founded by Tom Steyer.

In February 2018 it was reported Big Chino had again found financial backers. I don’t know who, but I can speculate why.

Tom Steyer-financed Proposition 127 would have required Arizona electricity providers (in our case APS) to buy electricity from inefficient back-up sources during periods when intermittent wind and solar sources are not producing. Big Chino Pumped Storage is the only storage source waiting to be built. Its output could be sold at a price that justifies the project’s cost if electricity providers were forced to buy it. This could be the reason upcoming Gen IV nuclear reactors—the only non-fossil-fueled source that could support electrified transportation—were excluded from the energy mix.

Fortunately, 69% of Arizona voters who don’t want their state to become another California said “no.”

Unfortunately, Big Chino Pumped Storage is not giving up. It was formed to benefit investors for whom the future of the upper Verde watershed is not likely a major concern. And if Democrats take control of government in 2020, we may see fresh subsidies and mandates that make the project profitable.

And that is worthy of concern.

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Could the presidential election determine the fate of the Upper Verde River?

The “Project for A New American Century” (PNAC) was a neoconservative think tank co-founded in 1997 by Robert Kagan and William Kristol. In February 1998, PNAC members produced an open letter to President Clinton advocating regime change in Iraq due to Saddam Hussein’s persistent non-compliance with U.N. mandates. In October 1998, Congress passed the “Iraq Liberation Act” stating that “it should be the policy of the United States to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.” President Clinton signed the bill and two months later pulled weapons inspectors out of Iraq and initiated a 4-day bombing campaign. But without public support, that is as far as Iraqi “liberation” got — until the 9/11/2001 attack on the U.S. provided an opportunity.

Deputy Secretary of Defense and PNAC member Paul Wolfowitz advocated using the 9/11 attack as an excuse to invade Iraq, and President Bush enthusiastically agreed. PNAC member Richard Perle, Wolfowitz, and others hit the Sunday morning news shows promoting an invasion, which Congress effectively green-lighted in October 2002.

And so the blame for the Iraq invasion was placed on Bush and the neocons. But before there was a PNAC, there was the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). The DLC, founded in 1985 (and chaired by Bill Clinton from 1990-1991) also endorsed the invasion of Iraq after 9/11, and supported many Bush policies. In fact, much of the DLC philosophy is no different from the PNAC neocons’.

As senator, Hillary Clinton was a prominent DLC member. She and other congressional DLC members gave Bush the authority to invade Iraq. They did not do it because they were “fooled,” and it’s no surprise that the Bushes, Kagan, Perle, and Wolfowitz favor Clinton over Trump or Johnson in the 2016 election.

Neocons and neolibs are unapologetic corporatists. Clinton has not raised more than $500 million in political donations by favoring “plain folk.” She travels on a Boeing 737 jetliner with a custom paint job. She netted more than $3 million in one day’s fundraising at the Martha’s Vineyard estates of Lady de Rothschild and former Universal Studios CEO Frank Biondi, events that were interspersed with a 20-mile flight to a fundraiser at the Nantucket Island estate of the former Portugese ambassador.

The global elite are buying what those at the top always crave: the status quo. Clinton will not rock the boat that keeps her afloat. Promises she will give us stuff at the expense of those she represents are as empty as “hope and change” and “compassionate conservatism.”

There is, however, one campaign pledge that could come to fruition: the costly escalation of the government’s war on climate.

The Democratic Party platform promises to “streamline federal permitting to accelerate the construction of new transmission lines to get low-cost renewable energy to market, and incentivize wind, solar, and other renewable energy over the development of new natural gas power plants.” It promises to globally address the “climate crisis…on a scale not seen since World War II.”

Which brings us to the Verde River.

Investments in two proposed energy projects in the Upper Verde Watershed depend on federal subsidies. NextEra Energy has proposed the largest wind farm in Arizona on leased Yavapai Ranch land. Longview Energy Exchange has proposed a $4 billion pumped storage plant over the Big Chino Aquifer. The wind farm has yet to be added to the Yavapai Ranch development plan submitted to the county. The pumped storage plant’s preliminary permit was extended by Federal Energy Regulatory Commission until April 2017.

Given sufficient tax credits, taxpayer guaranteed loans, and government-mandated pricing to ensure investor profits, these two projects could help justify each other’s construction, forcing taxpayers and ratepayers to foot the bill for inefficient storage of inefficiently produced electricity. After an immediate pump out of 17,500 acre-feet of water to fill the storage reservoirs, evaporative water losses would require additional pumping, especially when aquifer recharge would be at a minimum. It’s hard to imagine how this would not reduce outflow from the aquifer into the already depleted Upper Verde.

Bad as that sounds, it could be even worse.

Back in 2008, Texas billionaire T. Boone Pickens proposed using eminent domain to open a corridor for transmission lines from the panhandle to Dallas, where he could sell electricity generated by his tax-subsidized wind farms. He also wanted that corridor for a more profitable business. Once the corridor was open, pipe could be laid to sell water pumped from the Ogallala aquifer under Pickens’ property. Public outcry put an end to that project, and Pickens wound up selling his water rights to local governments and quitting the wind power business.

The so-called “Pickens Plan” can be imagined here. NextEra builds the wind farm, Longview builds the pumped storage plant. One transmission line connects the two projects, another connects Longview to APS’s 230KV line at Willow Lake. The right-of-way to Willow Lake could then be used to pipe Prescott’s water allotment from the Big Chino.

Bye bye, Upper Verde.

The European Union isn’t just tyrannical, it’s stark raving mad.

Kicked into survival mode by the Brexit referendum, the EU stood on its tippy-toes, waved its arms, and roared through its media mouthpieces. Alas, most Brits were not frightened into submission. They were mad as hell and not willing to take it any more.

The mandated placement of “refugees” in EU nations against the best interests of those nations’ citizens is rightfully cited as a major source of discontent. But there is more to EU mandates than forced acceptance of foreigners.

Thanks to EU “green energy” mandates, Indonesian and Brazilian rain forest is burned and converted to oil palm, soybean, and sugar cane plantations. Meanwhile, forest is cut in the Southeast U.S. and pelletized for use as a less-efficient fuel for coal-burning power plants.

Millions of tons per year of these “biofuels” are produced with fossil-fueled machinery and shipped to Europe and the UK in cargo ships powered by some of the dirtiest-burning fossil fuel on Earth.

It’s mandated anti-ecological insanity.

Brexit is the “end of the world as they like it” for global corporations who will no longer be able to bribe just one especially corrupt regulatory agency to pave their path to guaranteed profits.