The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued a May 6 notice about a May 2 application from the Utah Board of Water Resources for a major unconstructed license for the Lake Powell Pipeline Project, to be located in Washington and Kane counties, Utah, and in Coconino and Mohave counties, Arizona.
The project would occupy 449 acres of federal land managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
The applicant contact is: Bill Leeflang, Project Manager, Utah Division of Water Resources, Telephone (801) 538-7293, billleeflang@utah.gov.
The proposed Lake Powell Pipeline Project would consist of: 140 miles of 69-inch-diameter pipeline and penstock; a combined conventional peaking and pumped storage hydro station; four conventional in-pipeline hydro stations; a conventional hydro station; and transmission lines.
The proposed project’s water intake would convey water from the Bureau of Reclamation’s Lake Powell up to a high point within the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, after which it would flow through a series of hydroelectric turbines, ending at Sand Hollow reservoir, near St. George, Utah.
The energy generation components of the project would include: an inline single-unit, 1-MW facility at Hydro Station 1 in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument; an inline single-unit, 1.7-MW facility at Hydro Station 2 east of Colorado City, Arizona; an inline single-unit, 1-MW facility in Hildale City, Utah; an inline single-unit, 1.7-MW facility above the Hurricane Cliffs forebay reservoir; a two-unit, 300-MW (150-MW each unit) hydroelectric pumped storage development at Hurricane Cliffs, with the forebay and afterbay sized to provide ten hours of continuous 300-MW output; a single-unit, 35-MW conventional energy recovery generation unit built within the Hurricane Cliffs development; and a single-unit, 5-MW facility at the existing Sand Hollow Reservoir.
FERC’s milestones from here on this project are:
- Notice of Acceptance / Notice of Ready for Environmental Analysis – January 2017;
- Filing of recommendations, preliminary terms and conditions – March 2017;
- Commission issues Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) – September 2017;
- Comments on DEIS – November 2017;
- Modified terms and conditions – January 2018; and
- Final EIS – April 2018.
