The Massachusetts power deregulation law of the late 1990s, which allowed the building of so-called "merchant" power plants unrelated to the old regional utilities, is leading to the rise of small new power companies with their eyes on one of the Valley's most important resources: its water.
The Advocate has previously reported on issues related to the 885,000 gallons of water per day the developers of the Russell Biomass plant want to draw from the Westfield River ("Quiet on the River," Feb. 19, 2009). But the developers of the proposed Pioneer Valley Energy Center, a gas-fired electricity generating plant to be located in Westfield, have asked for even a larger drawdown: two million gallons a day of potable water from the Tighe-Carmody Reservoir in Southampton, which is owned by Holyoke.
Publicity for the PVEC includes the statement that its developer—which has the same corporate parent as the company that wants to build the controversial wind farm off Cape Cod— understands that "The Westfield River is everyone's," and that the Barnes Aquifer, which underlies the area from Westfield to Easthampton, shouldn't be touched. So, the company says, it turned to the Tighe-Carmody and will buy the water from the City of Holyoke, providing some revenue for that city. Still not clear are the possible effects on the Manhan River, which flows from one end of the reservoir, and the issue of whether the combined demands from existing customers and the PVEC might push the total drawdown over the state-mandated limit of 8 million gallons per day (in 2004 6.29 million gallons per day were drawn from the reservoir, though in 2007 the number fell to 4.48).
Leaving aside the question of whether the developers of the PVEC let the Westfield alone out of altruism or because of possible difficulty getting the state to allow two sizable drawdowns from the scenic river, we proceed to a more important point: these plants could be cooled with air instead of water, but air cooling is said to be less efficient and more expensive. The question of whether money is more important than water, especially as climate change endangers water supplies, needs to be pressed more urgently. Nearly two years ago, Gov. Deval Patrick announced that demand for electricity in the state could be frozen indefinitely if state-of-the-art conservation measures were introduced here. But some such measures, such as introducing energy-smart devices that would turn home appliances off at peak demand hours and back on at low-traffic times, that were being pushed by the Department of Energy Resources a few years ago now seem nowhere on the horizon.
Projected increases in energy use together with strapped city budgets create powerful pressures in favor of the commodification of water, especially for plants generating what is called "green" energy because it doesn't come from oil or coal. But how green is energy that over a few years would draw down billions of gallons of drinkable water?"
