MESICK — Hodenpyl Dam could have a new owner as Consumers Energy eyes selling it, and the 12 other hydroelectric plants it owns in Michigan, as it reckons with high costs to maintain structures that provide little electricity.
Consumers officials say they are “exploring all options” to keep reservoirs intact “while reducing costs for Consumers Energy’s customers.”
This has the potential to reshape Michigan rivers in a way not seen in recent history.
The company last year launched a lengthy process to consider the future of the dams on five Michigan rivers: Hodenply and Tippy dams on the Manistee, the Mio, Alcona, Cooke, Foote, Five Channel and Loud dams on the Au Sable, the Hardy, Rogers and Croton dams on the Muskegon, the Webber dam on the Grand and and the Calkins Bridge dam in Allegan on the Kalamazoo.
Operating licenses for all of the dams, which are more than a century old on average, are set to expire in the coming years.
That fact prompted Consumers to consider the future of aging structures that no longer generate enough electricity to cover the rising cost of operation and maintenance.
Taken together, the 13 dams provide less than 1 percent of the power used by Consumers’ customers. And the power they produce costs several times more per kilowatt-hour than other energy sources.
Consumers’ sources figure they could replace that output with about 500 acres of solar panels or 16 wind turbines.
When the utility launched its dam review, it put four options on the table for each dam:
• Relicense and continue generating power;
• Sell to a new owner who would maintain the impoundment;
• Remove the dam and restore a free-flowing river;
• Build a new barrier that generates no power, but preserves a reservoir.
Consumers’ reconsideration of the dams has drawn keen interest from several sectors: nearby residents who fear lost property values and dying towns, electric ratepayer advocates who don’t want Consumers’ customers to pay to maintain dams that deliver little power, and environmentalists who see a chance to restore rivers harmed by the impoundments.
Coco Soodek represents the Lake Allegan Association, a group that advocates for landowners on the impoundment created by the Calkins Bridge Dam in the Kalamazoo River. Soodek said she is not optimistic Consumers will find a buyer for the dam.
Any potential sale would be complicated by a number of factors, she said, from PCB-contamination at the bottom of its reservoir, to a deed restriction that limits who could buy the dam, to the fact that the impoundment functions as a barrier to keep sea lamprey from traveling up the Kalamazoo River.
Soodek said, from her perspective, the best option for Calkins Bridge Dam is for Consumers to keep maintaining it.
“The second best option,” she said, “is for them to transfer it to a county-level entity, and fund that entity to alleviate (Consumers) of the burden of dealing with and managing the dam and the lake.”
In the century since many of the dams were built, whole economies have cropped up around their reservoirs, which are now valued just as much for boating, swimming and fishing as for the energy they provide.
But the dams also dramatically alter rivers, warming them and slowing their flow in ways that can be devastating for native fish.
“After numerous conversations over the past year, it is clear the reservoirs are important for economic and recreational opportunities in these communities across Michigan,” said Norm Kapala, Consumers Energy’s vice president of generation operations. “But we also know that the current model for financing our hydroelectric power operations requires customers to pay more than nine times for the cost of energy – compared to other sources of generation.”
Consumers will issue a request for proposals to explore possible dam sales. During public meetings last year, some communities considered the notion of finding a way to buy their local dam from Consumers rather than seeing it razed.
Michigan’s infamous Midland Dams offered a cautionary tale: After two of the impoundments failed following years of poor maintenance by former owners, property owners around the dams took control of them, covering maintenance costs with annual taxes imposed on properties near the reservoirs.
But many of the dams owned by Consumers are in rural places with comparatively few nearby residents to split the cost of buying and maintaining a massive dam.
However, there are companies that buy dams from utilities that no longer want them.
Eagle Creek Renewable Energy is one such buyer, and the Bethesda, Maryland-based company already owns 85 dams across 18 states. Of those, several are in Michigan, including four on the Thunder Bay River that were formerly owned by Alpena Power Company.
Kapala called the utility’s announcement “an initial step we need to take to learn more about what selling the facilities might look like.”
He stressed that no final decision has been made.
The company will kick off another wave of public meetings this summer to discuss the future of these dams, beginning in Allegan on Aug. 29 and ending in Mesick on Nov. 11.
Record-Eagle reporter Jordan Travis contributed to this article.
