Volume 2 Issue 5 May 2021
The Multidisciplinarity of Hydropower By Kris Polly Hydropower is multidisciplinary by nature: It involves civil and electrical engineering, turbine design, and hydrology, but it also touches many fields of law, including environmental and endangered species law, historical preservation regulations, natural resources law, and administrative law. All that means that hydro law is no simple field. […]
The Bright Future of Innovative Dam Construction: Pumped Storage, Twin Dams, Off-River Reservoirs, and More
By François Lempérière and Luc Deroo Almost all countries have built dams across rivers, mainly for supplying hydropower or storing water. The reservoirs are filled by gravity. The average per capita world hydropower supply is about 500 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year, making up about 10 percent of the total use of energy. The average per […]
Restoring Utah’s Historic Olmsted Power Plant
Over the last 7 years, the Central Utah Water Conservancy District (CUWCD) has replaced the historic Olmsted power plant and transformed the century-old original building into a heritage feature. The early-priority-date water right associated with the full capacity of the original plant means that its continued operation is critical to the CUWCD’s continued ability to […]
Building a Hydropower Engineering Master’s Program at the University of Toronto
Hydropower engineering is a specialized and highly multidisciplinary field, but perhaps because of the long-established nature of hydropower as a technology, there are now few university programs dedicated specifically to it. Bryan Karney, a professor at the University of Toronto (U of T), Sharon Mandair, the program coordinator for waterpower at the U of T, […]
Restoring the Thermalito Pumping- Generating Plant After a Catastrophic Fire
California’s Department of Water Resources (DWR) is charged with overseeing the State Water Project (SWP) through the constructing, operating, maintaining, and ensuring the safety and efficiency of the SWP’s dams and hydropower infrastructure. The SWP provides water and power to millions of Californians and their homes, farms, and businesses. This charge was tested in 2012, […]
Chuck Sensiba on Troutman Pepper’s Expertise in Hydro Law
The law firm Troutman Pepper has the largest hydropower practice in the country in terms of professionals who devote all or a substantial part of their law practice to hydropower matters. Dating to its earliest beginnings over 100 years ago, the firm has been deeply involved in energy and natural resources issues on behalf of […]
