Hydroelectric Project on the Futaleufú to be Chile’s Second Largest

The word Futaleufú is almost unpronounceable the first time you see it.  But it becomes unforgettable the first time you paddle down the river.  For anyone who has spent time on the Futaleufú, the rapids and the landscape become etched in the mind.  Located in the inaccessible northern hinterland of Chilean Patagonia, the river (and the land it nourishes) is one of extremes.  As rugged as any mountain river valley found in the contiguous United States, the Futaleufú valley has a 6,000 ft. vertical relief between the valley floor and the glacier-topped mountains encircling it.  For the truly ambitious, it is possible to go rafting and swimming in the morning and be camping up on the snowline by nightfall.

The whitewater season on the Futaleufú River is a short one.  It only lasts about four months before the hostile weather of the Andes closes in, returning the river to another eight months of winter hibernation.  Unfortunately the life of this river and the landscape it inhabits may be as comparably short.

What’s threatening the Futaleufú?

In 1996, just five years after the first successful raft descent of the river, it was announced that the water rights to the Futaleufú River were purchased by Endesa, the largest private electricity multinational in Latin America.  Endesa plans to generate 1,367 megawatts of power by placing three dams along the Futaleufú River. Because of the river’s strength and reliable year-round flows, a hydroelectric project on the Futaleufú River is too big to pass up.  Together, the dams will comprise about one third of Endesa’s total hydroelectric portfolio in Chile.

Having lain fallow for almost fifteen years with little more than rumors circulating around, the project has now entered the development pipeline and is well on its way to becoming a reality unless local communities and businesses can unite to stop it.

This project will be the second-largest hydro project in Patagonia, following Endesa’s more well-known HidroAysen project south of the Futaleufú, on the Baker and Pascua Rivers. Endesa envisions a Patagonia where the Baker and Pascua serve as a southern anchor to a massive power line snaking through the entire region. The power line will serve like a zipper, opening up the landscape to the mining and logging industries which for decades have avoided the region due to unreliable sources of energy and poor infrastructure.  With the transmission line established, projects up and down Patagonia will be able to receive or transmit power to and from the national grid. The Futaleufú valley, which is largely unprotected from development, will become a boon for not just for Endesa’s dam-building operations but also the ever-expanding mining sector.

Nobody wants to see this happen, which is why the people in Chile need your help.

How you can help

A new organization, the Futaleufú Riverkeeper, was launched in 2012 by a Chilean environmental attorney to protect the Futaleufú from being destroyed. They need your help. O.A.R.S. has already joined the Futaleufú Riverkeeper as a supporter. In addition to donating a portion of their proceeds from running trips on the Futaleufú each year, O.A.R.S. is also donating $1 for every new Facebook like they get through the end of March, 2013 (up to $2,500). Please help raise funds for the Futaleufú by liking and then sharing the O.A.R.S. Facebook Page.

Another big way you can help is to give directly. There are two ways to do this. The Futaleufú Riverkeeper is a Chilean nonprofit with 501(c)3 fiscal sponsorship in the U.S., meaning you can make a tax-deductible donation online through the Waterkeeper Alliance. Waterkeepers around the world (with help from people like Edward James Olmos) are fighting to protect local watersheds and the communities who depend on them for survival.

In Futaleufú, communities have adopted a tourism-oriented future that has tremendous potential for economic growth while keeping the river and its tributaries intact.  These communities are willing to fight to protect their right to enjoy and benefit from their environment.  Local opposition is no small obstacle for Endesa, which has had trouble getting projects approved in Chile since its overtly aggressive approach to damming the Bio Bio River in the mid-1990s. (Read more about the Bio Bio River in an interview with the Riverkeeper’s Executive Director). Community opposition combined with the legal strategies being developed by the Futaleufú Riverkeeper can stop this project in its tracks before Endesa and its investors become completely committed.

Finally, you can also support the Riverkeeper by booking your own adventure down the Futaleufú, on a trip National Geographic recently highlighted as one of ten great adventure trips that give back.

Photo: Neil Rabinowitz

The Future of Patagonia

After two decades of gaining fame the world over among whitewater and adventure sport enthusiasts, the Futaleufú River is now caught up in the global quest for more natural resources. The mantra of developers is always that one more dam or one more mine will solve the world’s resource problems.  But if history is the judge, the exploitation of Patagonia will only momentarily sate the world’s appetite, not quench it. Large dam proponents like Endesa want us to permanently trade away the world’s most amazing rivers for a few decades of shareholder returns for their investors. Meanwhile, regions like Patagonia are trying to decide their own destinies, and they are choosing economic growth that incorporates the protection of irreplaceable landscapes, valleys and rivers. For many the answer is clear: ¡Patagonia Sin Represas! With your help, large hydro and mining will stay out of Patagonia, and future generations will get to experience the thrill of paddling and rafting down the mighty Fu. Please join the fight today.

Related Articles:

7 of the Best Whitewater Rafting Trips in the World

How The Tatshenshini-Alsek Wilderness Avoided Mining Disaster

The Green River Makes the Most Endangered Rivers List

The post The Future of Patagonia is in Your Hands appeared first on River Currents.

The not-for-profit conservation organization American Rivers has just announced its 2012 list of the country’s most endangered rivers. Unfortunately, the historic and spectacular Green River, which flows through parts of Wyoming, Utah and Colorado, made the list.

What’s the threat?

There is a proposal under consideration to divert 250,000 acre-feet of water from the Green River across the state of Wyoming to fuel ever-expanding growth in Colorado’s Front Range communities. The plan, in effect, would be to build a 500-mile pipeline to funnel water to Denver and its suburbs.

And as if that weren’t enough of a threat, there’s also talk of a nuclear power plant being built near the town of Green River, which would suck up an estimated 53,000 acre-feet of Green River water each year to prevent a catastrophic meltdown.

Naturally, we’re biased in our opinion that the water should stay in the river. There’s no doubt we have a vested interest! After all, we’ve been guiding whitewater rafting trips on rivers of the American West for over 40 years and, along with our subsidiary Don Hatch River Expeditions, we’re the largest commercial outfitter on the Green River in Dinosaur National Monument. And at over 700 miles in length, the Green is the largest tributary of the Colorado River, which is the cornerstone of our organization. But these threats, of course, have more far reaching consequences than just our business interests.

Water shortages caused by these proposals could have a devastating effect on the robust recreation and tourism economies of the Colorado Plateau, as well as a potentially enormous negative impact on rural agriculture, native species and downstream water needs.

According to Trout Unlimited, which also opposes the pipeline project, the Flaming Gorge Reservoir and Green River above it contribute $118 million annually to the local economy. (That’s in addition to the estimated $4.3 million Green River whitewater rafting contributes to the economy.)

Why Is This River So Important To Paddlers?

The 4-day river trip that O.A.R.S. operates on the Green through the Gates of Lodore in Dinosaur National Monument is one of the world’s great introductory river trips.

The camping is on sandy beaches among scattered boulders, rustling willows, junipers and giant cottonwoods. Clear creeks–perfect for swimming–tumble out of shady side canyons and the wildlife abounds.

The whitewater is moderate and fun, even for kids as young as seven. The side hikes are rich with history, ancient and not-so-ancient.

The geology is some of the most fascinating on the planet. A billion years are captured in these canyon walls, along with the remnants of various life forms that existed long before humans.

The scenery features vertical yellow and red sandstone walls that tower as high as 1000 feet and tiger-striped walls alternate in blonde rock and black manganese oxide. It’s not uncommon to hear from people that they consider the Green River through Lodore Canyon to be every bit as spectacular as the Grand Canyon.

And on the final day of a Green River trip in Dinosaur National Monument, Split Mountain Canyon awaits. The Class III rapids are so much fun, we run that part as a single-day trip as well. And, if you ask me, it’s the most scenically spectacular one-day river trip in North America.

What Will Happen To The River?

The very water in the river is what’s at stake here.

A pump and a 500-mile pipeline threatens to divert water from the river to slake the thirst of an ever-growing population.

And when the water is drained from the Green, a classic American river could be forever altered. Critical fish habitat, home to endangered species and countless others, will be jeopardized. A sustainable economy built on recreation and tourism in this magnificent place could take a big hit. Rural agriculture and urban water use downstream could be severely impacted. One of the best rivers for first-timers–one we love to share with people again and again–could dry up.

What Can You Do?

O.A.R.S. has joined with American Rivers in opposition of the proposed pipeline.

We recognize the importance of preserving the Green River’s recreational opportunities and natural ecosystems and think you should too.

If you want to pitch in, if you love rivers and wild places like we do, then here are a few things you can do to help:

• First, visit the American Rivers website and complete the pre-formatted message to Utah’s Gov. Herbert.
• Then, share a photo or message on Facebook and Twitter. American Rivers has prepared some for you on that same page, so it just takes a couple clicks.
• If you’ve got a blog or website, there are banners and graphics that you can embed to help spread the word.

It only takes about 3 minutes. Less, even. Thanks for joining us in support of protection for one of America’s great natural treasures.

The post The Green River Makes The Most Endangered Rivers List appeared first on River Currents.

On the eve of the 19th annual World Water Day, our friends at Teva® will launch the Teva World Water Day Challenge asking participants to give up water in one simple area of their life for the day. From no showers, laundry and teeth brushing to waterless culinary creativity, the day promises to be one full of stories and building awareness.

“Teva has a long standing passion for clean water, the source of both life and our recreation,” says Will Pennartz, Teva Lifestyle Marketing Manager. “It is our responsibility to help in the protection of these playgrounds for future generations. Through the World Water Day challenge we hope we can inspire a larger community to join us as we raise awareness for clean water.”

The details of the challenge are purposely simple: starting now you can visit Teva’s Facebook page and share, post, tweet or pin the provided water info-graphic. Participants can make their voices louder by visiting the Teva Collect blog for specially designed World Water Day social media cover photos and pinable posters. The brand will also share water-related facts and blog posts while encouraging participants to join in the conversation with stories from their experiences throughout the day. Through thoughtful water consumption, Teva hopes to inspire permanent change for the future of clean water.

The post Teva’s World Water Day Challenge Calls For A Day Without Water appeared first on River Currents.

When, Where & How Bright

Anybody can talk about the weather, but nobody can do anything except predict, wait, and watch. So it goes with the next “solar maximum” cycle, when peaking storm activity on the sun will lead to increasingly spectacular light shows in the northern skies here on earth known as the Northern Lights. The last minimum was in 2008, and the next predicted maximum currently ranges from 2012 through 2014.

Depending on the source, we should be preparing for communication interruptions if the next round of solar storms comes in fast and furious, or global chilling if the storms miss a cycle (a possibility, in one recent forecast).

Somewhat calmer prognosticators at NASA have adjusted their own expectations of a frenetic solar maximum rivaling 1958, when the Aurora Borealis was sighted in Mexico, to predict a cycle slightly busier than the modest maximum of 1907.

Confused? Fair enough, me, too. But let’s move on to “where” and “how,” and we’ll revisit “when” and “how bright” later.

Solar Storms = Aurora Borealis

Some North American natives explained the earthly displays of the Aurora Borealis as torchlight from sky-dwellers to guide the spirits of earth-people after death, and others said the torches revealed where the manabai’wok (giants) were spearing fish that night.

When can you see Aurora Borealis? Chinese and Greek scholars recorded solar storms as early as the 4th century BCE, and a regular 11-year solar minimum/maximum cycle was first described by astronomers in 1843. Solar storms = sunspots = Aurora Borealis, via magnetized “solar winds” that sweep from the poles of the sun across the earth’s magnetic field.

Collisions with atoms in our atmosphere cause auroral light rings around the north and south poles — and just maybe, a whistling, hissing, bristling, or swooshing sound. According to the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska, only one recording has been confirmed so far, but the people of the North warned 19th century explorer Ernest W. Hawkes that when the sky-dwellers communicate, one should only answer in a whisper.

Back To The Future

The solar maximum cycle now seems on track to bring ever-increasing Aurora Borealis displays through 2012 and 2013, so when traveling high latitudes, keep a weather eye on the pole-ward horizon. Look for curtains of greenish-white light dancing in the night, and if sky-dwellers communicate, remember to whisper your answers to the giant solar storm.

This essay was originally created for the 2012 O.A.R.S. catalog. For more compelling stories from other renowned writers, request your catalog copy today!

The post How Do You See The Northern Lights? appeared first on River Currents.

Giant peaks 15,000 feet high gnawed at our vista. So many exist here that most guides cannot keep their names straight. One, however, everyone knows. Windy Craggy Mountain. This pipsqueak tops out at a mere 6,000 feet in British Columbia 15 miles east of the Alaskan border and 10 miles from the confluence of the Tatshenshini and Alsek rivers, not far from our camp.

Windy Craggy could be instead called Mount Doom. This is because Windy Craggy is a Triassic pillow basalt containing 3 percent copper — 100 million tons of it — worth at least $5 billion. Windy Craggy lies in between Yukon’s Kluane National Park and Alaska’s Glacier Bay and Wrangell-St. Elias National Parks and Preserves in a region where mineral extraction was up for grabs. In mid-1993, Geddes Resources Limited of Vancouver pushed for a permit to pulverize the top 2,000 feet of Windy Craggy then gouge its nub into a mammoth, open-pit mine. This meant excavating a staggering 265 million cubic feet of rock by gnawing 60 million pounds off the mountain daily for fifteen years and piping it as slurry 150 miles to port in Haines. From there, Geddes would ship it to Japan.

A simple plan.

The Complication

Too simple. The complication? Windy Craggy is also 40 percent sulfide. When the 375 million tons of crushed tailings the mine would produce as waste became exposed to atmospheric oxygen it would unleash immense quantities of sulfuric acid to flow through the wilderness. This acid would leach out heavy metals like cobalt (0.1 percent of Windy Craggy is cobalt). This combination of acid and heavy metal contamination is so sinister it has its own name, Acid Mine Damage, or AMD. AMD permanently poisons a drainage ecosystem. It devastates fish and the creatures that eat fish—from grizzlies and otters to sea gulls and eagles. AMD is so hideous that already the USA was spending $1 million per day to mitigate AMD heavy metals along 4,000 miles of its poisoned streams.

The estimated cost to de-toxify Windy Craggy Crater once Geddes sucked it dry stood at $1 billion. If nothing went wrong.

Geddes planned to hide their hundreds of millions of tons of sulphide tailings from atmospheric oxygen under a 2.5-mile long reservoir three miles from the river. The problem? Windy Craggy sits in the most active earthquake zone in North America, one triggered by the Fairweather Fault. In 1899, the second largest earthquake in North American history, 8.6 on the Richter scale, hit 75 miles northwest of Windy Craggy and lifted entire mountains 47 feet higher! The quake also sent glaciers slamming down their canyons half a mile in five minutes. In 1958, a Richter 7.9 quake epicentered 30 miles from Windy Craggy shook it like a rag doll.

The upshot? No dam can withstand such force. Indeed, British Columbia’s Commission on Resources and Environment (CORE) estimated that an ecological disaster would occur here every twelve years.

It Gets Worse

But Geddes’ overall plans proved even more frightening. They aimed to build hundreds of miles of roads, bridges, and pipelines through virgin wilderness and to construct a town and processing plant on site. These alone would be the ecosystem’s kiss of death.

An economist might argue that losing some wilderness was worth the metals. Yet an economic analysis of Geddes’ mine made no economic sense even in the short run. To gross $65 million non-sustainably per year for fifteen years, the mine would permanently devastate sustainable fisheries worth almost as much, forever. Fisheries in the Tatshenshini-Alsek system and the Lynn Canal into which Geddes planned to dump slurry effluent are worth $49.5 million yearly. Spills from Geddes’ slurry line would also endanger the world’s largest concentration of bald eagles, 3,500 of them, who converge on the Chilkat and fuel a lucrative tourist industry.

Grizzlies Threatened

The icon of the north is the grizzly mainly because men have wiped it out nearly everywhere else south into Mexico. As with sex, religion, and politics, grizzly bears never plod a neutral path across the convolutions of the human brain. For nearly a century, California’s only grizzly has been Samson, the bear depicted on its state flag. Oregon also extirpated its thousands of grizzlies. As did Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah.

The most important stronghold of this threatened species lies along the Tatshenshini, a habitat so perfect that one grizzly exists for each three square miles. AMD from Windy Craggy Mine would devastate the ecosystem. Geddes’ roads would expose bears to hunters. Geddes’ tailings reservoir would block their migration. “Grizzly bear populations,” reports Stephen Herero, head of the I.U.C.N. Bear Research Group, “would be lowered, degraded, fractionated, and alienated from prime habitat … The most important area in the Tatshenshini drainage known for grizzly bear denning would likely be abandoned.”

The Fight To Protect And Preserve

After spending $47 million developing the mine Geddes said, “[Windy Craggy Mine’s] impact on the environment would be negligible.” Besides, explained Geddes’ president Gerald Harper, the Tatshenshini region “isn’t wilderness, it’s barren land.”

In contrast, British Columbia’s Bureau of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources decided: “It is clear that there is a serious lack of understanding [by Geddes] of the actual potential for AMD from the pits, both during and following mine operations.”

Because AMD caused by mining Windy Craggy Mountain would violate the World Heritage Convention, the U.S.-Canada Boundary Waters Treaty, the Pacific Salmon Treaty, and the Migratory Birds Convention, a coalition of 50 conservation organizations urged British Columbia’s provincial government to create Tatshenshini-Alsek Provincial Wilderness Park. Combined, this 36,000-square mile protected region of the Yukon, British Columbia, and Alaska is the world’s largest international park and Global Biodiversity Reserve.

On the Tatshenshini-Alsek things have gone well. The area was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994 for the spectacular glacier and icefield landscapes as well as for the importance of grizzly bear, caribou and Dall sheep habitat.

We soon rowed a mile-wide river flowing into the heart of the Saint Elias Mountains, arguably North America’s most remote — and now protected — region.

This essay was originally created for the 2011 O.A.R.S. catalog. For more compelling stories from other renowned writers, request your catalog copy today!

The post How The Tatshenshini-Alsek Wilderness Avoided Mining Disaster appeared first on River Currents.