Hydropower Versus Fish

By: Jessica Robertson

With the challenge of answering the biggest environmental problems of our age comes the responsibility to simultaneously bring balance to all aspects of the planet. Unfortunately, harmony does not always exist between the various strategies for environmental improvement, but it is our responsibility to establish and preserve healthy relationships between all aspects of the environment.

One not-so-harmonious relationship is represented in the current battle between the fish population and the high-pressure dams powering the hydropower industry. Hydropower is an essential component of the new environment-focused energy industry. Renewable, clean energy is produced and stored by capturing the potential of flowing water, often with dams and turbines in rivers. However, these mechanisms are detrimental to fish in their locale.

Fast, coursing water churns powerfully around the dam area, creating a pressure change that is so dramatic that it can cause serious internal injury or death to fish. The forces can burst a fish’s swim bladder, an organ responsible for maintaining buoyancy at a particular depth; it is designed to inflate and deflate as needed, but the pressure changes in this phenomenon, known as barotrauma, simply cause too much change too fast for the swim bladder to withstand. Besides these serious internal injuries, fish can also become disoriented in the raging waters around the machinery, and they are at risk of being thrashed about by blades of the turbine.

Even with the great success and promise of hydropower, the industry is aware of the dangers to local fish populations. Hydropower is too crucial to the development of a sustainable planet to be forgotten, but, at the same time, it is intolerable that our ecosystem suffer at the hands of “clean” energy. Is hydropower truly “clean” or “sustainable” if whole populations of water-dwelling animals are lost?

The dilemma is being quickly addressed across the globe in laboratories and in real-life application. Strategies are being implemented for preventing the dangerous pressure change around the dam, making rivers again safe for their inhabitants, and making clean energy truly clean.

Citarum River: What Happened?

By: Kate M. Serrano

Located forty miles east of Jakarta, Indonesia the river Citarum runs over 186 miles from the Wayang Mountain to the Java Sea. This river was once a tropical paradise but has now become notorious for possibly being the world’s most polluted river containing dangerously high levels of heavy metals, rubbish and sewage. The Citarum provides 80% of surface water to Jakarta’s water supply, irrigates farms that supply 5% of Indonesia’s rice, and is a source of water for around 2,000 factories. With the increasing urbanization in the 80s, both human and industrial wastes are common debris seen floating– plastic and packaging makes the river’s surface invisible beneath its carpet of junk. The main contributors to the river’s pollution are the textile factories in the Bandung and Cimahi area. The dyes and chemicals (read: lead, arsenic and mercury) used in the industrial process are churned into the water and at times turn the water color to red, green and yellow coupled with an acrid odor. Plus, the locals in nearby villages do not have a waste management system so trash is directly dumped into the river.

We all know what this means; we cannot underestimate its devastating effect on the local ecosystem. Yes, cancer rates as well as skin diseases, mental illness and slow development among local children are after effects. And instead of catching fish, local fishermen rummage the river for plastic, which they sell for recycling.

The Citarum River has been in desperate need of an effective solution to its pollution problem. What has the Indonesian government done? For a start, the Asian Development Bank approved a $500 million loan for cleaning up the river in December 2008. And to restore the Citarum, an effective and cost efficient waste management system for the locals would be the long term solution.  Currently, a “garbage barge” is used for a trash disposal service. The barge travels up and down the river collecting trash and waste will be transported to a landfill in the village of Sukaharja. If nothing is done to prevent waste from entering the water, the Citarum River will continue being one of the world’s most polluted rivers. Imagine the effect to millions of Indonesians who depend on the river for survival.