Workers have begun installing Albany's new

500-kilowatt generator and turbine at the end of the Santiam Canal. The timing one day after Earth Day was appropriate because this project harnesses a resource that has gone to waste for too long.

This kind of low-head power production has no environmental downside. It does not burn fuel. It does not waste water. (The water is taken from the South Santiam River above Lebanon, but after its detour through the canal it again ends up in the river system.)

It does not kill fish. The city installed a fish screen and renovated the dam that channels some of the river into the canal.

All this project does is make use of the power of water falling roughly 30 feet from the end of the canal into the Calapooia River.

The project replaces a 1925 generator that was shut down in 1991 because repairs would have been too costly. If the flow in the canal was greater, it might be possible to replace its shut-down twin as well. But all the plans over all these years have been about replacing only one.

At the start the project did not look economical. The dam and fish screen construction would have made it too expensive. But somewhere along the line, it was decided that those improvements needed to be made anyway, so they should not be counted against the power project.

Resumption of power generation at the old Vine Street powerhouse has historical significance. It links us to the early years of Albany, when water power gave the community its economic base.

The power to be generated isn't much - enough to supply the equivalent of several hundred average houses. But it's nothing to sneeze at either. The more such projects can be built or revived, the less we need to rely on burning coal or natural gas to get us the electricity we need.

Perhaps this project will give others new ideas. For example, when Thompson's Mill east of Shedd was still a business in private hands, it generated power from the same water that turned its grinding wheels. The state parks department no longer does that, but as long as low-head hydropower is such a good idea, one has to ask: Why not? (hh)