Last edited Tue Sep 13, 2016, 09:49 AM - Edit history (1)
Municipalities where such locks and dams existed were given the option to electrifying those locks and dams. The problem was under state law any municipality along a river could claim any dam on that river. In western Pennsylvania one such municipality did so for all of the locks and dams on the rivers in western Pennsylvania. Thus tied up all of those locks and dams from being electrified. This is still the legal situation in westerm Pennsylvania, thus no electrification of the locks and dams.
Please note locks and dams are for maintaining river levels for barge traffic, thus were NOT built to generate electricity. Given coal was the main source of electricity for western Pennsylvania since electricity the late 1800s and nuclear power was all the rage in the 1950s, installing electricity generation on the locks and dams had lower priority.
I can NOT find any evidence for this, but the local electric company had very good reason to oppose such conversion. In tge 1950s the local power companies had built up their electrical generation capacity to support the Steel industry in Pittsburgh Area. The Steel industry was marginal by the 1960s, by the late 1970s the Steel industry was on its last legs, and died in the early 1980s.
The result was excess electrical generation in western Pennsylvania. Various plans has been proposed since the 1980s to build power lines to the east coast to get this excess power to the east coast, but the Appalachian Mountains are in the way. Massive opposition had defeated each proposal (along with co-generation plants coming on line in the 1990s).
Western Pennsylvania still has excessive power generation, without any power from the locks and dams. Thus the local power companies have done all they can to prevent such conversions. I suspect this is also true elsewhere in the country.
Now some dams built without electrical generation capacity has had them installed. One such dam is the Conemaugh River dam. The Conemaugh River dam was built in the 1950s as a temporary holding dams during massive rains. Most the the year, it holds little water, just enough to run the electrical generator installed in the late 1970s. The power goes to the local rural electric co-op. Once or twice a year it fills up with water after heavy rains.
Please note the Conemaugh River drains an area with a history of coal mining, it is heavy with acid mind runoff, and has no fish in it for that reason. The Conemaugh flows into the Kissikimiss River which flows into the Allegheny river, which flows into the Ohio River, which flows jnto the lower Mississippi River and then into the Gulf of Mexico.
Do to its high acid mine runoff, after a heavy rain, the water can not be released right afterward, for the water with its high acid mine runoff content would kill off the fish in the Allegheny River. The Corp of Enginners release water from the Conemaugh River Dam to mix with water released from the Allegheny Kizmas dam to delute the Acid Mine Runoff to minimize fish kills in the lower Allegheny River and the Ohio River.
We are slowly working to reduce Acid Mine Runoffs from the various mines, but many such mines were played out in the 1800s and were poorly designed and mined. We have some real bad acid mine runoffs in Cambria County Pennsylvania, and smaller but numerous smaller polluters all through Western Pennsylvania. Till those sources of Acid Mine Runoff are corrected, the Conemaugh dam will always slowly release its waters.
Now the main way to correct such runoff is to seal the mines AND when that can NOT be done to build holding ponds for the water for the minerals that make the water Acid falls out of the water. You need an almost swamp like series of ponds to do that (swamps are nature's way to remove such materials from water). We are slowly building them, many can generate almost as much power as they use (actual power usage is low, the water is only permitted to seep from one holding pond to the next, with each pond designed to hold the maximum expected flow from the source of the Acud Mine Runoff).
The slow water flow permits the acid causing material to drop to the bottom of the pond. The material is then collected when it is determined the pond has reached a ser level.
Most times you see a series of three ponds, with each pond less polluted then the next. The first ponds tends to be filled with acid loving plants, that help remove even more acid from the water. The last pond the water looks almost blue (I am a native of Western Pennsylvania, and I have seen a lot of Orange water and creek beds, orange is a sign of heavy acid mine runoff).
I bring acid mine runoff for the dams that holds water makes the water stand still. Standing water can NOT hold objects, thus the materials that produce acid mine runoff tend to fall to the bottom behind dams, including the locks and dams installed on the rivers to maintain water levels for barge traffic. Thus we in western Pennsylvania tend to like dams to hold water back, such dams do help clean up the rivers from Acid Mine Runoff.
Power generation also tends to slow down water, permitting it to become cleaner. Now standing still water ends up heavily polluted, but a slow flowing stream of water will tend to clean itself, thus the policy of the Corp of Engineers has been to slow down water drainage in western Pennsylvania, not to stop it for later use (stopping water flow for later use appears to be the rule in the Southwest).
Sorry about this tangent, but electrical generation using hydro power in Western Pennsylvania is tied in the the collapse of the Steel Industry AND the need to handle Acid Mine Runoff (and the municipality that took up the options on all of the locks and dams in the 1970s was hurt badly by the collapse of the Steel Industry thus took the money it could get quickly when it bid and then did NOT exercise their right to electrify the local Locks and Dams).
Things do not happen in a vaccum, other factors kick in and when it comes to electrifying the locks and dams other factors kick in big time.
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