Number: 1983-15
WHEREAS, the Ludington Pumped Storage Plant on Lake Michigan, operated jointly at Ludington, Michigan by Consumers Power Company and Detroit Edison Company, is the world’s largest such plant and kills more fish than any other power plant on the Great Lakes; and
WHEREAS, the power plant generates 1,872 megawatts of electrical power during the day when demand is highest, but at an overall net loss of energy by pumping water uphill at night at a rate of up to 66,000 cubic feet per second (cfs) into a 2.5-mile-long reservoir with a maximum water elevation 362 feet above Lake Michigan, then discharging the water downhill during the day through turbines at a rate of up to 75,950 cfs; and
WHEREAS, the artificial “river” (roughly equivalent to the water flow over Horseshoe Falls, Niagara River) attracts fish during the day, then when the flow is reversed at night fish are drawn through the pumps into the reservoir, including an estimated:
- 50,000 adult salmon and trout;
- 410,000 juvenile chinook salmon (in 1980), which is 14.4 percent of all the stocking of chinook salmon by the state of Michigan into Lake Michigan;
- 126 million alewife and smelt, plus larval alewife and smelt equivalent to an additional 22 million to 69 million adults (depending on assumptions used in estimating survivorship);
- yellow perch larvae equivalent to 84,000 adult perch;
- total fish biomass losses of five million pounds; and
WHEREAS, preliminary estimates by National Wildlife Federation staff of the annual value of the lost fish are $13 million to $20 million; and
WHEREAS, technology to significantly reduce these losses has not been installed, and no compensation or mitigation for these losses is being provided the public after eleven years of plant operation;
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the National Wildlife Federation, in annual meeting assembled March 17-20, 1983, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, supports resolution of the unacceptable fish losses at the Ludington Pumped Storage Power Plant on Lake Michigan through the application of existing technology and the development of new technology if necessary to reduce losses and through adequate compensation or mitigation for unavoidable losses to aquatic life.