Swan Lake North Pumped Hydro Project
What is the Swan Lake North Pumped Hydro Project?
Swan Lake Pumped Hydro Project is a…
2,000+ acre project consisting of constructing two cement reservoirs (64-acre upper reservoir, 60-acre lower reservoir), spillways, embankment, powerhouse, connected to a high-pressure steel penstock, and three low-pressure penstocks, and 32.8 mile long (230 kilovat) transmission line, substation, and miles of service roads.
It is built to last until 2127, more than a century. Swan Lake Energy Storage plans to “utilize” Upper Klamath Lake water for the next 103 years. The water system the project will draw from has been in extreme drought for the past 23 years and has yet to leave this extreme drought condition. The water quantity of the system is also extremely poor, and it has high levels of toxins and nutrients, causing the rapid decline of endemic ESA fish species in the lake. The Upper Klamath Basin water is over-allocated, and the senior water right, the first priority legal right, is continuously disregarded. There is not enough water in the lake to meet Klamath Tribes Senior Water Right, established since time immemorial- upon our Maklak's arrival and distinguished in the Klamath Tribes Treaty of 1864.
How is it legal to grant another project that will undermine a federally recognized senior water right and allow additional over-allocation of water to the Upper Klamath Lake systems?
Place Names within Project Area:
Swan Lake Valley
Swan Lake Rim
Grizzly Butte
Site is within the Division of Ne’luksi (a late sunrise) Klamath Village
Who owns the Swan Lake Project? Who is involved or engaged in the project? the project?
Dutch-Owned Energy Fund Management Company and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners bought project in 2020 from EDF Renewable Development, Rye Development and National Grid (Swan Lake North Hydro LLC)
Oregon Water Resources Department (OWRD), Oregon Water Resources Commission (WRC)
Bureau of Land Management (BLM)
Bureau of Reclamation (BOR)
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)
Klamath Tribes
State, County, and Private Landowners
Klamath County Residents
Where is the proposed project located?
Location: 42°17'14"N 121°35'40"W
11 miles northeast of Klamath Falls (Yulonna)
10 miles from Haglestin & Barkley Springs
2,000 acres:
1,310 acres of state, county, and private lands
711 acres of BLM lands
19 acres of BOR lands
How much would this project cost?
Rye Development estimates the project is more than $800,000,000+ million-dollars.
Estimate of an additional $1+billion being invested in the project during the first 5 years of implementation.
Why does Rye Development want to implement the project?
Manipulation and control of waters
Money
400 Megawatt of electricity to highest paying bidder y
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What you should know about the project:
Massive groundwater withdrawals on aquifer and interconnected surface waters
Critical migration corridor for deer and elk
Extensive open-water and wet-meadow complexes extremely important (important to the land, peoples, and specifically migratory ducks, cacklers, white-fronts, swans, and cranes)
Heavy construction, and a high-power transmission lines, new permanent roads, other infrastructure
Heavy construction = Man camps = increase in Missing & Murdered Indigenous Peoples if Klamath County
A glossed summary of the project- company will build two massive cement ponds, fill these ponds (reservoirs), pump water uphill, and then back down and the electricity generated will be connected to transmission lines, and sent and sold to California residents. should care about it? Why?
Everyone, Everywhere:
Everyone, everywhere, should care about this proposed project. Rye Development owns five pumped hydro projects, and Swan Lake is their pilot project, progressing the farthest through state and federal regulatory processes. This means the Swan Lake region and the other four regions of lands, waters, and communities will be violated and destroyed.
Aside from this project's economic, environmental, legal, and cultural woes, the loss still outweighs any benefits the company or corporate colluders might try to pitch.
Over 200+ significant sites of the Klamath, Modoc, and Yahooskin peoples will be disrupted and destroyed. Still, we ask all peoples, tribal and nontribal, to stand in solidarity to protect these threatened sites and waters.
As humans, we have an inherent responsibility and duty to protect, honor, and love all relatives in our current world, the seven generations after us (our babies and babies), and the seven generations before us (our ancestors and ancestral spirits that dwell at Swan Lake Valley and Rim).
We are responsible for ensuring that this water, land, people, and place are protected for the generations to come in 50 years and for the generations of people who came before us and occupied these lands so we can have them today. ine of
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What is the timeline of the project?
2012- Project proposed, unsuccessful
2019- Project received 50-year FERC license, OWRD initiates public process for groundwater pumping permit (HE 617)
2020- BLM issues Final Environmental Impact Statement and Record of Decision approving transmission power line
2023- Project listed as pending, currently in pre-construction phase. The company is awaiting final approval from FERC to commerce (it was indicated in 2020 that a proposed final order would be prepared shortly after the close of the 2020 comment period, yet there is still no progress)
2014- By 2014, 67 new pumped hydro projects were proposed in the United States; only 3 have been permitted by 2023 (the amount of power required to pump water uphill is massive, and the numbers of operating these facilities do not pan out).
#1: Build Community, Build Power:
The Klamath Tribes need to assert that the proposed project violates their right to water for fish. The Klamath Tribal Community needs to unify and stand in solidarity against this project collectively. Talk to your families and stay up-to-date with the project. Go out to our homelands and exist in these traditional places of the Maklaks. Occupancy is not a threat but the simple existence of Klamath Modoc Yahooskin's identities. Occupy our homelands for yourself, your family, and the peoples you come from. Please show up to this land to protect it and learn the stories of this place. Understand why we must fight to preserve this place, and understand your relationship to place.
If you are an enrolled Klamath Tribes member, engage with our tribal community and politics to ensure the few tribal members working to support Swan Lake Hydro Companies in the desecration of our lands and waters, are outnumbered by tribal peoples that care about their home, water, and people.
Shut down tribal members wanting to accept the energy company’s $40 million-dollar gag order of the Klamath Modoc Yahookskin nation. Clayton Dumont (chairman), Duke Kimbol, and Norma Cummings, working with the corporations to pressure tribal membership to support this destruction of place/water and be compliant with this type of activity, must be called out, and must be stopped.
As for non-Klamath Modoc Yahooskin peoples, reach out to our community and see how we can build relations, foster community, and walk hand-in-hand to protect our homelands. #
#2: Demand State & Federal Agencies Uphold Their Duties: ate & Federalold Their Duties:
The state disregarded its responsibility to ensure Rye Development Can and Will carry out the project, a legal requirement in Oregon and across the West. One direct action our communities can all work towards is demanding the Oregon Water Resources Department deny this project's groundwater pumping application. The Oregon Water Resources Commission oversees the Oregon Water Resources Department's decisions. Not only has the Oregon Water Resources Commission failed to uphold its agency responsibilities, regulations, and laws, but it also failed to conduct sufficient due diligence on the project to provide substance and content that all parties could use in an open and honest consultation process, meaning consultation and free, prior, and informed consent have been foreclosed upon. This results in our Water Resource Commission's support in reviving the conditions for pay-out schemes to Klamath Tribal members, which perpetuate the destructive trauma caused by Termination in 1954 and remediate the damage of these traumas.
You can engage in the three opportunities listed below to demand our state water agency upholds their responsibilities and deny groundwater pumping permit to project:
May 21: Oregon Groundwater Rulemaking Allocations rules public hearing (Online): 30+ years after Oregon passed groundwater management legislation, the state is finally moving to implement it with a rulemaking process. As wonky as it may sound, these ‘rules’ are critical to the health of Oregon’s aquifers AND interconnected surface waters. Click HERE to download the PDF on when and how to attend in-person and Zoom meetings, review the Draft Proposed Rules, and write testimony. We’ll also be circulating an action alert with key talking public testimony and comment points shortly.
NOW through May 24: Oregon Groundwater Rulemaking Allocations rules comment period: 30+ years after Oregon passed groundwater management legislation, the state is finally moving to implement it with a rulemaking process. As wonky as it may sound, these ‘rules’ are critical to the health of Oregon’s aquifers AND interconnected surface waters. Please join us in being a voice for more sustainable and just groundwater management.
#3: Ensure Stakeholders Clearly Understand Maklaks Peoples DO NOT Consent to this Project, and we Refuse to be Complicit to this Detrimental01. Extraction of Our Waters and Homelands:
Plan, Facilitate, Fund, Support Direct Actions and Messaging to:
Dutch-Owned Energy Fund Management Company and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (and EDF Renewable Development, Rye Development, and National Grid (Swan Lake North Hydro LLC)), clearly opposing the project, could support our fight to protect Swan Lake. Direct Parti
Water Resource Commissioners Kathy Kihara,
Jan Lee Weinberg, Joe Moll, Eric Quaempts (Chair), Meg Reeves, Julie Smitherman, and Woody Wolfe;
Oregon Water Resources Department Acting Director Doug Woodcock, Deputy Director Racquel Rancier, Acting Deputy Director Ivan Gall, Water Right Services Division Administrator Dwight French, Hydroelectric Program Coordinator R. Craig Kohanek
Representatives Annessa Hartman, Ken Helm, Bobby Levy, Emerson Levy, Pam Marsh, Khanh Pham, Mark Owens
Senators Michael Dembrow, Lynn Findley, Fred Girod, Jeff Golden, Floyd Prozanski, and Janeen Sollman
Senior Natural Resources Advisor to Governor Kotek, Geoffrey Huntington
Sr. Assistant Attorneys General, Renee Moulun and Jesse Ratcliffe
Oregon Secretary of State Audit Manager Olivia Recheked, Senior Auditor, Bonnie Crawford, Staff Auditors Ariana Denney, and Wendy Kam
Rye Development’s Projects + Websites:
Energy Storage: Swan Lake: https://slenergystorage.com/
Energy Storage: Goldendale ($2 billion + project, Goldendale, Washington): https://goldendaleenergystorage.com/
Energy Storage: Lewis Ridge ($1.5 billion + project, Bell County, Kentucky): https://lewisridgeproject.com/
Run-of-the-River: Pennsylvania Project & West Virginia Project: https://pittsburghhydro.com/