American Rivers

Reservoir-based hydropower systems represent key interactions between water and energy systems and are being transformed under policy initiatives driven by increasing water and energy demand, the desire to reduce environmental impacts, and interacting effects of climate change. Such policies are often guided by complex system models, whereby divergence in system representations can potentially translate to incompatible planning outcomes, thereby undermining any planning that may rely on them. We review different approaches and assumptions in hydropower representation in water and energy systems. While the models and issues are relevant globally, the review focuses on applications in California given its extensive development of energy and water models for policy planning, but discusses the extent to which these observations apply to other regions. Structurally, both water-driven and energy-driven management models are similar. However, in energy models, hydropower is often represented as a single-priority output. Water management models typically allocate water for competing priorities, which are generally uninformed by dynamic electricity load demand, and often result in a lower priority for hydropower. In water models, constraints are increasingly resolved for non-energy components (e.g. inflow hydrology and non-energy water demand); few analogues exist for energy models. These limitations may result in inadequate representations of each respective sector, and vastly different planning outcomes for the same facilities between the two different sectors. These divergent modeling approaches manifest themselves in California where poorly reconciled outcomes may affect decisions in hydropower licensing, electricity grid flexibility and decarbonization, and planning for environmental water. Fully integrated water-energy models are computationally intensive and specific to certain regions, but better representation of each domain in respective efforts would help reconcile divergences in planning and management efforts related to hydropower across energy and water systems.

From 2005 to the present, American Rivers and the Milwaukee Riverkeeper have been involved in the installation of a variety of LID practices in the Johnson's Park neighborhood of Milwaukee. During that time, the two organizations worked to educate homeowners and cultivate interest in a grant program to design and install rain gardens, rain barrels, and downspout disconnects to volunteers within the neighborhood. The goal was to reduce stormwater pollution in an urban area and to explore the basic social and economic factors that might affect the installation. Rain barrels were installed at four houses and bioretention cells were installed at seven houses. While the installations themselves were successful at mitigating stormwater challenges arose with homeowner/non-profit communications and expectations. Some participants were unhappy with the natural landscaping of the rain gardens and replaced native plants with turf grass. The modified soil that was applied during the garden construction phase is the primary medium in infiltrating water, and the cells have turned out to be very effective even with turf grass. We concluded that homeowners should be given a choice of designs and rooted plants should be used as opposed to plant seeding. Minimizing the different varieties of plants would also be helpful in more clear identification of weeds during maintenance. Additionally, turf grass should be considered an option as an infiltration cover medium for residential projects.

Operations at the Hanford Site since 1944 have resulted in the discharge to the ground of large volumes of process cooling water and low-level liquid radioactive waste. Radioactivity and chemical substances have been carried with these discharges and have reached the Hanford ground water. For many years wells have been used as ground-water sampling structures to gather data on the distribution and movement of these discharges as they interact with the unconfined ground water beneath the Hanford Site. During 1980, 317 such structures were sampled at various times for radionuclide and chemical contaminants. Data collected during 1980 describe the movement of tritium and ruthenium-106 and the nonradioactive nitrate plume as well as their response to the influences of ground-water flow, ionic dispersion, and radioactive decay.