Legalectric

So I’m sitting here working and staring out the window, looking up the bluff, and a deer saunters across, about 30 feet above the poop deck outside my office, and then coming down and down the bluff into my back 40 (40″ that is, behind the kitchen and laundry room, 4o” of flat land behind the house before the retaining wall up the bluff).  She liked the day lilies, and over there, there are more than enough to keep a few young deer going.

That’s out the back kitchen window, over the dog kennel, where the deer’s having a little brunch.

There’s deer hunting in Red Wing, this house is in the official “Hunting Zone.”  I could bow hunt off my deck, or open my office window, and the deer are probably glad I’m a veggie… a Sagittarian with a bow is a dangerous thing.

Back to Delaware for the weekend, it’s very strange being here on the east coast and Alan’s in Red Wing with the grrrrrrrrrls.  And speak of the devil, guess who’s in the Philadelphia Inquirer today?  The Valero refinery shut down, one of our neighbors works there, well, I’d guess a lot of our neighbors in Port Penn work there, it’s just up the road, they’ve been shut down for a couple of weeks, and now it’s forever.  I’m curious what Valero will do — $50 says the try to find a way to walk away from the mess they’ve created.  Nearby wells have been contaminated and people are just starting to look around for the source.    We’ll see…

Posted on Sat, Nov. 21, 2009

550 to lose jobs as Valero Energy shuts Delaware refinery

By Harold Brubaker, Jan Hefler, and Jane M. Von Bergen

Inquirer Staff Writers

Oil-refinery workers on the Delaware River yesterday received their second big blow in six weeks, when Valero Energy Corp. said it would close its operation in Delaware City, Del., casting 550 out of work.

When workers heard the news, “it was like a time bomb went off,” said Matt Edler, who has worked for 10 years at the refinery that rises out of the lowlands near the Delaware River in southern New Castle County.

“My grandfather worked there, my father, and I worked there,” said Edler, who yesterday afternoon joined other shocked refinery workers at Red Lion Inn in Bear, Del. “We were all doing the best we could to keep the place alive. That’s our life.”

The loss of Valero as a provider of high-wage industrial jobs adds to the economic woes in Delaware caused by the recent loss of 2,000 auto-industry jobs at General Motors and Chrysler plants.

Coupled with Sunoco Inc.’s idling of its Eagle Point refinery in West Deptford, Valero’s decision shows the refining industry is under intense pressure, not just from the worst economic downturn since the 1930s, but also from expectations that U.S. gasoline demand will never return to the highs of 2007.

The Delaware City refinery, which Valero bought in 2005, when the industry’s biggest problem was lack of capacity to keep up with soaring demand, was losing an unsustainable $1 million a day this year, the company said.
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And what do you see waaaaay in the background?  Why, it’s the Prairie Island nuclear plant!  It’s been there so long that now they want to relicense it, but at the state, there’s an uprate and dry cask docket, and so there’s a state proceeding, not that there’s much chance of impact, but it’s there…

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I’ve been hearing rumblings, and finally am getting around to doing the background on this, and I was shocked and most pleased to find that there are FOUR projects proposed for Minnesota.  FOUR!  One each at Lock and Dams 2, 3, 4, and 7.

Lock and Dam #2 is in Hastings, and that project has been issued a permit by FERC – here’s the permit (the application isn’t there, they’ve got a link mix-up that I hope will be fixed):

Lock & Dam #2 – Hastings – Hydrokinetic Permit Issued

Here are the other ones that I could find on the FERC site.  First is the one for the Lock & Dam by Red Wing, immediately south of the Prairie Island nuclear plant:

Lock & Dam #3 – Permit Application

Lock & Dam#3 – Letter – Permit App is Deficient

After the applicants fix the holes in the application, FERC will have a comment period, probably at least 30 days, I need to look at one that’s been through the process to be sure.

And here we are going south — the Lock & Dam numbers go up as they go south:

Lock & Dam #6 – Permit Application

Lock & Dam #7 – Permit Application

Lock & Dam #9 – Permit Application

This is new, and needs vetting, but I’m excited at this possibility, particularly as back up for wind for dispatchable power.  And I really like that it’s right here in Red Wing.  The Red Wing project is 11 MW, 1% of Prairie Island, but from the FERC site, the projects already on track equal 1500+ MW, and that’s 1.5 Prairie Islands, and that’s significant!  One issue of concern, in addition to fish impacts (do you see fish screens on either of these pictured?), is the implications of further dependency on water for power generation.  There is already concern in the transmission world about the impacts of low water level on power plants, the concern being that if the water’s really low, they shut down, and then what does that do to the grid generally (crash it?).  Increased dependence on water will amplify that problem, I’d think.  On the other hand, the hydrokinetic generation doesn’t take water, it just passively uses it, unlike the millions of gallons a day going through a coal or nuclear plant with a percentage going up into the air through cooling towers and not into the river.

Here’s one of those intense regulatory process charts with circles and graphs and arrows and lots of colors:

US Army Corps of Engineers Regulatory Process

US Army Corps – Mississippi River Primer

Here’s some FERC info:

White Paper – Licensing Hydrokinetic Pilot Projects

And from Fish & Wildlife:

Fish & Wildlife Service – Mississippi River Primer & Concerns

Oh, and duh, here’s the rules:

Speaking of cooling towers, there’s a hydrokinetic project proposed for NRG’s Indian River Power Plant, in the water intakes or discharge… gotta check that out, and it will be on a following post.  But the issue with that project is that the hydrokinetic project may be used as justification not to go to a cooling tower or zero water system… so… it’s mixed…

Here’s another version of a hydrokinetic turbine: