Leaburg Canal & Dam Update

December 1, 2022

Leaburg Canal Update – November 21, 2022

EWEB General Manager to provide recommendation to Commissioners at Dec. 6 Board Meeting

EWEB’s publicly-elected Commissioners met with the Leaburg Hydroelectric Project Strategic Evaluation Team for a Work Session on October 25. Their goal was to find alignment on how they would prioritize the impacts of each of the four alternatives EWEB has proposed for the future of the Leaburg Project: full decommission (Alt. 1), partial decommission [editors note: SWC on charts] (Alt. 4), full return-to-service (Alt. 2), or a partial return-to-service (Alt. 3).

Prior to their three-and-a-half-hour conversation, Commissioners evaluated the alternatives based on a triple bottom line (TBL) assessment of the economic, environmental, and social impacts.

Their TBL exercise had two parts: EWEB staff have assigned a positive or negative score to each evaluated impact for each alternative based on interviews with our subject matter experts and public input.

The scoring for each impact is as follows:

To read a thorough explanation of how EWEB and our consultants assigned these scores, please download the full memo to the Board and go to “Attribute Scoring Approach” on page 13.

Each Commissioner assigned a weight to each impact to help them evaluate how their priorities would amplify the positive or negative tradeoffs.

As a group average, Commissioners placed:

32% of the weight of the decision on the Economic Impacts,
28% on the Environmental Impacts, and
40% of the weight on the Social Impacts.

This weighting applied to the positive and negative scoring above yields Alternative 4: Partial Decommission (SWC) with the highest (least negative) score:

Staff also provided a scoring mechanism that reduces the impacts considered to the top three in each category to simplify the decision. When taking the scores for the top 3 impacts for each Commissioner, their average preference remains Alternative 4:

Despite these results, Commissioners emphasized that the TBL scoring tool won’t be the determining factor for their decision but instead an exercise to help them measure the quantitative and qualitative tradeoffs their decision implies.

At the Work Session, staff presented these results to Commissioners, noting the similarities and differences in Commissioners’ weighting priorities to guide their conversation:

Common/Unique “Weighting” by Commissioners: All Commissioners provided significant TBL weight to the following considerations:
Economic – Project Costs/Rate Impacts, Financing & Bond Impacts
Environmental – Water Quality, Aquatic Resources, Carbon Footprint
Social – Public Safety
Wider discrepancies in weighting occurred in the following areas, potentially warranting further discussion:
Economic – Economic Risk (Power Prices, Licensing, Construction, etc.)
Environmental – Terrestrial/Avian Species, Wetlands
Social – Local Economic Activity, Fish Hatcheries, Recreation
(Note, most variance between Commissioner weighting occurred in the Social attributes/issues.)

Throughout the Work Session, Commissioners asked staff for further context on many of the impacts, each carefully evaluating tradeoffs from the varieties of perspectives of their constituents. (Watch a recording of their discussion on EWEB’s YouTube Channel).

The discussion did not seem to lead Commissioners closer to choosing an alternative, and by the end of the evening, they decided to postpone their decision for at least another month, with President Brown saying “I’ve always believed it’s better to be late than wrong.”

Staff will present additional answers to their detailed questions at the next Board Meeting on December 6.

General Manager Frank Lawson will also propose an official recommendation for a decision representing staff expertise.

Commissioners will have time over the holidays to consider the staff recommendation, with the current plan to reconvene at the start of the new year for their directional decision.

Four proposed alternatives for the future configuration of the project

(nothing new for now – just a refresher)

Alternative 1 represents the full removal of all facilities to pre-project conditions – as if the Leaburg Project were never built.

Alternative 2 would entail a full renovation of all facilities back to peak performance configuration. This plan would address the structural issues by removing and rebuilding certain parts the canal with those issues, and addresses the seepage issue by lining the entire canal with a High Density Polyethylene (heavy plastic) barrier.

These bookended scenarios (Alternative 1: Full removal or Alternative 2: Full restoration) would be the most expensive due to the extensive construction and repairs required throughout the entire project and facilities.

Alternative 3 includes a mix of a “return-to-service” and “stormwater conveyance” strategies. This alternative proposes adding a new power generation facility higher up the canal at the Luffman Spillway (about 1 mile from the dam), with repairs and alterations to the canal downstream of the new powerhouse to transition it to a stormwater conveyance facility. This alternative compares the costs of repairs and alterations to the potential power and revenue generation that EWEB would be able to recoup. It also preserves EWEB water rights for power generation.

Alternative 4 would decommission the canal, combining “stormwater conveyance” alterations to sections of the canal with the restoration of other parts of the Leaburg Project to pre-project conditions, including a new spillway at Johnson Creek and modification to the Luffman spillway. This alternative is a flexible option that converts short-term risk reduction measures that are under consideration into a long-term solution.