Increasingly, considerations of how production, transportation, or distribution of energy might affect the environment are coming to influence public decisions. An outstanding example is the Storm King controversy, which has reached the courts and may well turn into a landmark case. To begin with, in March 1965, the Federal Power Commission granted a license to the Consolidated Edison Company of New York to construct a very large pumped storage project at a site on the Hudson River considered by many to possess unusually attractive and unique landscape features. In December of that year the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit set aside the Commission’s orders.
The sweeping character of the Court's finding is reflected in its remark that "the Commission's proceedings must include as a basic concern the preservation of natural beauty and of national historic shrines, keeping in mind that, in our affluent society, the cost of a project is only one of several factors to be considered ..." With this, the Court remanded the case for further proceedings, though it left wide open the question of whether that basic concern should be put into the cost calculations or should constitute a separate criterion for permitting or preventing the project's realization.
A new round of hearings, covering everything from the project's impact on the sex life of the striped bass to the economics of jet engines for power generation, began last November with a list of witnesses from public and private interests so long that the hearings were expected to stretch well into 1967. The outcome is very much in doubt; at stake is an investment close to $200 million and an installed generating capacity of 2 million kilowatts.
Pumped storage, which came into significant use in this country only during the past decade, utilizes steam-generated electricity at hours of slack demand to pump water from a river or natural or man-made lake to a specially built reservoir at a higher altitude, from which it can be released at a moment's notice when added power is called for to meet peak demand.
Several years ago Storm King Mountain, on the western shore of the Hudson River not far above West Point, was selected by Consolidated Edison as a preferred site for such an installation. River water would be raised to a 240-acre reservoir; power would be generated as needed by letting the water rush back through a set of generators down into the river, a thousand feet below, and transmission lines would carry the electricity to the city.
It did not take long for opposing voices to be heard. Emphasis was on the likelihood that the man-made features of the project would mar the landscape not only at the generating site, but also along the transmission lines. Danger to the Hudson's fish population and the river's general ecology was pointed out; and alternatives were proposed.
Perhaps not unmindful of public opinion, which had played so large a role a few years earlier in the plan eventually abandoned to build a nuclear reactor in New York City, the company gradually modified its original proposal to meet the objections. Above all, it provided for underground installation of the entire power plant and the part of the transmission lines closest to the river. Moreover, as the opponents gathered with the common rallying cry, "Save the environment!" the company replied that it, too, was concerned with environmental quality, and that the proposed installation would increase its capacity and improve reliability of service without adding polluting substances to the air through the use of fossil-fuel-burning plants. Thus, the banner of conservation was held aloft by both sides to the conflict. Essentially, however, what is at issue is the feasibility and cost of alternative arrangements that would eliminate the need for the project.
The Storm King affair is by no means the only one of its kind. There are the struggle over Grand Canyon dams and the stringent new regulations in New York City which severely limit the emission of sulfur from burning of coal and fuel oil (each discussed on pages 6 and 4). The federal government is trying to limit air pollution caused by heat and power generation in government buildings. There is rising concern over the effects of coal strip-mining on landscape features and water resources (still not strong enough in 1966, however, to prompt the adherence of the necessary number of states, at least four, to bring the proposed Interstate Mining Compact into force). The Bureau of Land Management is seeking to compel all oil and gas explorers on public lands to post bond for any damage to surface features and re-sources. The trend of locating distribution lines underground is gaining strength. These are samples of the adjustments facing producers, processors, and distributors of energy and energy materials.
Recognition of the problem and of the need for solutions other than the settlement of disputes by commissions or courts has gone a long way if not farthest in California. One reason for this is public awareness: one can scarcely erect an industrial structure in that part of the country without risking a charge of defacing the rivers, seashore, hills, forests, or other treasured features of the California landscape. Another is the activity of the state's Resources Agency, which provides guidelines on site location in the light of possible effects on recreation, fish and wildlife, and other aspects of the natural environment; in some cases the Agency has signed formal agreements with utilities on what they will or will not do. A third and related reason is that in the long run the utilities have found it more useful to make selections through a process of sifting alternatives by means of advance consultation and arrangement with all interested parties, than to make unilateral choices and thus face certain opposition.
A more efficient way of arriving at a consensus is a step in the right direction but does not provide answers to some of the issues underlying such controversies. Since we must have larger and larger amounts of energy, and since each form interferes, at one stage or another, with the environment, questions of trade-off arise with increasing urgency. When, as in the case of Storm King, fossil-fuel-burning or nuclear plants are suggested as substitutes for pumped river storage to meet peak demand, one form of interference—landscape pollution—is traded for more traditional forms of pollution or for problems of waste disposal the same general locations. In addition, other undesirable consequences are simply shifted from the banks of the Hudson River to the Texas or Louisiana gas fields, coal mines, spent nuclear fuel disposal areas, refinery sites, and points along the transportation routes.
At any one of these locations more or less objectionable side effects may arise, and the cost imposed by them on others or the cost of containing them must be weighed against similar costs occasioned by pumped storage. And even in the case of pumped storage, avoidance of pollution is not absolute. More than an equivalent amount of steam power has to be generated elsewhere in the system to drive the storage plant's pumps. Which eggs should be broken to make the omelet?
As in other segments of the economy, many of the newest energy problems in the United States result from affluence and abundance. Were it not for the prodigious amounts of energy we consume, expressed in terms of petroleum, about six gallons per person per day—we would not need to press so hard on the environment. And were it not for the abundance and range of our energy sources, we would neither be able to satisfy the demand at low prices nor could we afford to to look with relative indifference upon the higher costs that might arise from current and prospective efforts to safeguard land, water, and air surrounding us.
A version of this article appeared in print in the January 1967 issue of Resources magazine.
