In 2008 Logan City, Utah decided to install a micro-hydro project in its culinary water system. The city’s assistant engineer recognized the opportunity to generate clean, low-cost electricity for the city by installing a turbine in the city’s culinary water pipeline.
Logan City’s project would power 185 homes, and would not require any new construction. At the same time, it would also help reduce excess water pressure in the system. Because the project was so small, and would not affect anything outside of an existing pipeline, city officials thought the permitting process would be a breeze. […]
As project managers in Logan City learned firsthand, a complex regulatory nexus surrounds all hydropower projects, no matter how small. As far as regulatory requirements are concerned, it didn’t matter that the project would have little to no environmental impacts.
The city still had to go through an intensive permitting process overseen by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Logan City’s project began in 2008. By 2012 the city’s project had finally been completed after four years of delays and almost 3 million dollars of total costs.
h/t Larry
Maybe now the city officials know how the ratepayers see them.
This is the natural progression of bureaucracy, a little like sand in the gearbox, a little ain’t good but it will get you home,a lot and you don’t have any movement.
Federal governments must be constrained, watched carefully and shrunken at every opportunity.
Local matters must be locally managed.
Kate & Larry,
I think that you’ve been punked. April fool is long gone.
Did some searching and found the following articles:
http://mercatus.org/publication/logan-city-s-adventures-micro-hydropower-how-federal-regulations-discourage-renewable?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=RSP&utm_campaign=Newsletter
Published Dec/3/2013
and from January 31, 2011:
http://news.hjnews.com/news/article_e74432e6-2d01-11e0-b5f1-001cc4c002e0.html
Shows some out of the box thinking about the reasons for the micro-hydro project and what they were looking at originally.
Clearly everyone involved is monumentally stupid.
Logan pumps the water to begin with.
The laws of thermodynamics tell us, there will be some loses between source and destination.
Therefore, it is impossible to ever operate this project at a profit, or even break even. Any gorilla or bacteria level intellect could have foreseen this. Logan will lose money forever.
Hope logan enjoys getting exactly what they deserve, good and hard.