Hydroelectric: As 'renewable' as it gets!

Just how stupid are Washatonians?  Given the passage if I-937 in '06, I'd say the majority are idiots.

Who in their right mind would pass a 'reweable energy' act that doesn't include our current hydroelectric generation as a renewable source of electricity?  It's cheap, clean and certainly available.

I support clean energy.  I'm not a tree-hugging believer in global warming by any means, but common sense tells me we should be reasonably kind to our planet, especially if it makes economical sense.

Dam-generated electricity has a pretty low impact as far as I'm concerned.  Yes, it does change the landscape.  So does Mother Earth, naturally, over time.  Yes, many times dams cause fish migration problems.  But this is only an engineering issue and can (and has been) overcome.

Wind power isn't a bad thing, in the right environment.  I used to be a bigger supporter, but even I'm getting tired of seeing new turbines popping up.  The bigger issue though is that wind energy isn't constant and we can't yet store the excess when we have it.  And then there is moving the power around, which requires more ugly transmission lines.

I love the idea of solar.  Not large scale solar farms, but small home-based systems.  But this too is costly, sometimes not pretty, and you still don't have power all the time without a back-up source or battery storage.

But getting back to I-937, our state passed an initiative that says our local power companies need to source 15% of our electricity from 'renewable' sources (excluding hydro) by 2020.  So that means you and me get to pay more as local utilities invest in more 'renewables', (since renewable energy costs more to produce), while our local hydro plants produce a surplus... that gets sold to other parts of the country that don't have this silly mandate.

It's possible the legislature will improve this situation.  SB 5964 and HB 2124 are offering to "Eliminate the requirement for utilities to purchase unneeded electricity, renewable energy credits, or electric generating facilities that are not needed to serve their customers' loads."

Only time will tell if this situation is fixed with a little common sense...