(Dave Manning tribute, continued)
DAVE MANNING HAS A DREAM, A DREAM THAT'S COME TRUE
Dave Manning has had a dream for so many years, there may have been times when it seemed like a dream. But his dream to harness and keep the high waters of the Yellowstone River are getting close.
Said Rodger Foster of the Morrison-Maierle News and Views:
"Each year 42,000,000 acre feet of water is exported from Montana via the Clark Fork, Kootenai, Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers. The Yellowstone River alone exports 9,300,000 acre feet of water which falls 3,194 feet in elevation between the Wyoming and North Dakota borders. This is almost twice the fall that remains in its journey to the Gulf of Mexico.
Sen. Dave Manning of Hysham, Montana's senior legislator, has had a long time committment to developing a plan which would allow Montana to use "our God given resource of 'white oil' and our inherited hydraulic gradient to leave a legacy less dependent on the flame of fossil fuels."
Sen. Manning continues in his explanation of what he feels is his and his state's responsibility.
"With our proven state-of-the-art technology in hydraulic engineering and construction there is much we can do and undo to create a great net in non-polluting energy.
"We need not place dams across live river channels for impounding flood water that to any degree at all inundates fertile soils.
"We can design, within our broad expanse of selection, major stations at which we cut into river banks, draw off excessive flood waters; confine it in buried conduits, deliver it by gravity with a portion of the ample slope in our terrain and fountain it with the silt it carries into high head man-made storage on our poorest ground; release it from there in controlled year around channeling, through turbines back to the streams.
"We have the capability to build and place the plumbing facilities to substitute, by gravity flow, for our enormous energy-wasteful practice of allowing water to flow to our feet, only to pump it to higher elevations to satisfy the multitude of service demands for water under pressure we have grown to depend upon."
In 1981 the 47th legislature took that first step toward bringing Sen. Manning's dream to reality with the passage of his bill initiating preliminary studies to develop the concept and prepare a demonstration project in the Yellowstone River Basin.
Under the direction of the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, this company was engaged to develop the concept and evaluate the feasibility of gravity diversion, offstream storage and hydro-power generation from the mainstem of the Yellowstone River. The task, which began in September, 1981, is to provide the 1983 legislative session with a preliminary engineering report for a project which will demonstrate the concept and allow Montana to assume its position in setting regional and national water policy.
In the recently completed first phase of the project the entire Yellowstone Basin has been searched for potential off-stream storage sites. Many of the sites had been examined previously by various agencies and interested individuals, but never with an eye toward developing an integrated net of projects to produce hydropower.
Thirty sites were identified for preliminary screening as a first step to selecting a demonstration project. These ranged in scope from incorporating canal drop facilities at the Park Branch irrigation project near Livingston to a new 970,000 acre foot reservoir site on Big Porcupine Creek near Forsyth.
Sites were screened from 30 to six based on an evaluation of potential power revenues, project costs of diversion, conveyance, project dam and power generation facilities, environmental concerns and water availability. To reach this level of screening a water allocation model of the river was used and combined with data of existing water diversions and water reservations for the various reaches of the river. The maintenance of required instream flows was a basic condition of the feasibility evaluation.
The six projects selected for final consideration were: Park Branch Canal Drop, Canyon Mountain Canal Drop, Lower Deer Creek, Valley Creek, Starved to Death Creek and First Hay Creek.
The six sites were evaluated in more detail looking further at operation and costs, financing rates, escalating power revenues and fish and wildlife impact. Two final sites were identified as potential demonstration projects -- the Lower Deer Creek Project and the Starved to Death project.
The concept of developing a network of off-stream projects throughout the basin which would use and reuse the water would require that several of the sites be investigated further and developed at a later date. It is possible future projects could be considered.
Efforts are now in progress to prepare a preliminary design of all major components of a demonstration project. As a result of these efforts, DNRC will be able to present to the 1983 legislature a plan which may provide the opportunity for Montana to show the rest of the Missouri River states and the nation, the state's willingness to accept its responsibilities in properly managing such a valuable resource.
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