(HOST) As teacher, writer and commentator Deborah Luskin watched the spring run off and the flooding of local rivers this year, she got to thinking about the possibility of generating clean energy right in her own backyard.
(LUSKIN) I live on the Rock River, just downstream from what was once a thriving industrial center. At the turn of the nineteenth-century, the Rock River powered more than twenty different industries. Both the stage coach and the West River Rail Road made regular stops in Williamsville – a village now so reduced in economic vitality that we no longer even host a general store, just a standard-issue Post Office.
In Williamsville’s industrial age, there were at least three dams on the river. The largest of these – a cedar crib dam – lasted into living memory. As a young girl, I would swim in the mill-pond, but access to the site became the subject of a legal battle, and maintenance started a conflict between historical preservationists and fish biologists. While everyone argued, the same power the dam had been built to harness destroyed it, and only enough remains now to challenge kayakers who flock to the river in high water.
Indeed, the river is used only for recreation these days, but as the water roars through the village, I wonder if there isn’t a way to harness some of the water’s mesmerizing power as it tumbles through town.
Other people must be wondering the same thing. I recently toured a small hydro project under development in Greensboro. Two years ago, a town energy committee developed a business plan. Last year a civil-engineering class from UVM designed the route for a pipe to carry water from Caspian Lake to turbines in a powerhouse – plans that have all yet to be approved.
Like the river near my home, the proposed water route has a long history of providing power. Beginning in 1791, the lake’s outflow turned a gristmill for 130 years. Water still flows under the old mill building, which now houses the local store. Thanks to new technology, water will continue to flow, even when the Greensboro Small Hydro Project goes on line.
"Run of the river" technology minimizes the environmental degradation formerly associated with hydro-power. Additionally, the Greensboro project is miniscule in the context of conventional power generation, but he town plans to sell the power back to the grid and use the income to offset its energy bill. In addition to income, Greensboro will have the satisfaction of reducing the town’s carbon footprint. What Greensboro is proposing is the energy equivalent of eating local.
Instead of generating and transmitting high-voltage power to distant end-users, it’s time to start thinking about how we can generate smaller amounts of power closer to home. In many parts of the country this strategy may not be practical; but in Vermont, it could be. The folks in Greensboro hope to serve as a prototype for other small communities with rivers running through them – and that’s just about every small town in Vermont.