FREE THE KERN
What’s at stake: the North Fork Kern River
We believe the time has come to stop taking water out of the North Fork Kern to produce a very small amount of electricity.
The North Fork Kern is an amazing river. It can offer sublime beauty and set the stage for incredible recreation, whether it be hiking, camping, angling, or boating. But it does so all-too-infrequently due to the operation of the KR3 hydroproject, which takes large quantities of water out of the river at Fairview Dam, dewatering the next 16 miles of river. More than half the time, there’s more water in KR3’s tunnels than in the natural riverbed. Many times, the river is left flatlining at an all-too-low fish flow while KR3 takes as much as ten times that flow for itself. All the time, KR3 renders the North Fork Kern a shadow of what it could be for our community.
KR3 started taking water out of the North Fork Kern 101 years ago. It may have made sense then, but times have changed, and our energy market is changing at an ever-increasing rate. The explosion of renewable energy — solar, wind, and storage — in this state is undeniable, its pace of adoption is quickening, and ever-increasing amounts of our power come from renewables. At times, renewables produce so much energy that energy prices go negative, and solar and wind generators are ordered to shut down for fear of over-generation. These technologies are not nearly as devastating to the environment as KR3. Taking water out of a river is inherently harmful to the natural fishery and the interconnected riverine ecosystem, damaging elements from water temperature and oxygen levels to flora, natural habitats, and the food chain. Yet KR3 continues to weaken the North Fork Kern even as it produces the bulk of its power in spring, when demand for power is low and renewables are plentiful, produces almost no power in summer and early fall, when the threat of blackout is at its highest, and provides less than 1 part in 3,000 of this state’s electrical consumption overall. The bad timing and small quantity of electricity KR3 produces does not justify its encumbrance of the North Fork Kern any longer. KR3 no longer affords much benefit to our society; its main beneficiaries are the Edison hydro employees who need water to divert and their well-paid executives who need hydroprojects to manage.
It is for this last reason, coupled with decommissioning costs, that Edison is currently seeking a license to continue operating KR3 for the next 40 years. The permitting agency — FERC — will only consider shutting down the project if Edison asks for it; FERC is not in the business of denying licenses based on community opposition. However, we believe the managing agencies gave Edison a pass in the last license proceeding on environmental and social requirements, and that if a fair balance of operating conditions based on contemporary values and defensible science were included in a new license, Edison would be likely to give up the project on economic grounds. Once a new license is issued, it is essentially set in stone; for instance, we are still operating under the same inadequate fish flow regime that was agreed to almost 30 years ago. Our river and our community deserve better than what we have now: We deserve a healthier, safer, more beautiful, and more enjoyable North Fork Kern. The current license proceeding is this community’s only chance to speak for itself and two generations to come about how our society will use this incredible river, this incredible public resource, Southern California’s most important river: the North Fork Kern.
We have teed up information about six areas in which KR3 harms our river, the natural environment, and the human environment:
Please send your views on these issues to FERC and other managing agencies. Do not simply assume the agencies will resolve these issues in the public’s favor; they failed in the past and Edison is well funded and politically connected. Speak up now for yourselves and the future. Together, we can Free The Kern.
