[3] Court-Ordered Spill Constrains Emergency Protocols

Earlier this week, federal authorities said the court-ordered spill program at lower Snake and McNary dams would not be curtailed to help BPA deal with a potential power emergency in the next few weeks, unless Judge James Redden OK'd the move. However, a few days later, they seemed to be changing their minds.

Corps of Engineers' spokesman Dave Ponganis told NW Fishletter that BPA was working on a declaration to put before the judge that would add a proposal to cut the court-ordered spill if a serious power emergency takes place, after conferring with plaintiff environmental and fishing groups about the issue. A June 26 ruling by a three-judge panel from the Ninth Circuit Court upheld the spill order (which will end Aug. 31), but remanded the order back to Redden's court for "tailoring."

A potential shortage on July 18 had power schedulers scrambling to find power, but the Corps kept spilling at lower Snake and McNary dams. Ponganis said Justice Department attorneys had advised the Corps that Redden's order trumped any emergency plan designed to solve short-term power problems. Luckily, BPA was able to secure enough power to make up the shortfall, paying nearly twice the rate it had sold power for earlier that morning.

The emergency procedures are getting revised and updated, said BPA staffer John Wellschlager, who represents the agency at the TMT level. He said the spill ruling has put serious constraints on the ability of the hydro system to meet real-time shortages that could occur from such things as a lightning strike on a transmission line. He said over the past 10 summers, BPA's transmission lines have taken 11,000 lightning strikes.

Wellschlager indicated that reducing spill at McNary and the Snake dams would be on the list of possible emergency actions.

BPA program analyst Suzanne Cooper said the Ninth Circuit Court's remand has given federal agencies, including the Justice Department, the opportunity to lay out standard procedures and re-assess the spill order.

"We need to operate responsibly," Cooper said. She said the July 18 power shortage was discussed with plaintiffs in the spill litigation, who were told that the region was nowhere near a blackout. It has provided a chance to discuss how actions should be prioritized to remedy power shortages, she said, noting that fish managers had produced a list of their own, which included outdated actions like cutting power to non-firm customers. Cooper said BPA no longer has any customers with non-firm loads, such as aluminum companies, whose previous contracts allowed for reducing power to their facilities in case of emergencies.

Cooper said the updated emergency protocols will soon be completed and then shared with plaintiffs and the TMT. She said reducing the court-ordered spill would be on the list, but realistically, it would be "one of the last places to go" to generate more power.

A tentative list of operational changes available for a system emergency shows that some actions like ending BiOp spill at Bonneville Dam could add 200 MW during an emergency. Another 225 to 450 MW could be picked up from ending BiOp spill at John Day. Spill at both those dams is not part of the court order.

Another series of measures in the July 25 document were listed under the heading "Coordination with court required to use these steps." Reducing spill at McNary to 20 kcfs could add more than 700 MW, and ending spill at the four lower Snake dams could free up another 560 to 1120 MW.

John Fazio, power analyst with the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, estimated the hydro system could produce 1,500 MW for 2 hours on short notice by ending summer spill at the dams where it now occurs. He pointed to a recent council analysis that estimated summer spill at the Snake dams, along with other factors, could actually contribute to an electrical shortage in the Northwest, even with an overall regional surplus of 1,200 MW or more. However, the probability of such a shortage is still extremely small, rising to 4 percent from zero before the court-ordered spill began. Fazio estimated the Snake and McNary spill had reduced the 5 percent cushion of potential hydro generation that is generally accepted as an adequate reliability factor by about 20 percent.

Fazio said the Council sent a list of questions to BPA regarding the July 18 episode and expects some answers at their Council meeting next week in Missoula. -B. R.

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