A full Grayrocks Reservoir saves money at Laramie River Station

(Ken Yergler): "It’s nice, it's really nice! I haven't seen it like this for probably 10 or 15 years." Ken Yergler is an instrument lead at Laramie River Station. Part of what he does is monitor the water coming in and out of the Grayrocks Reservoir. (Ken Yergler): "It's about 200 cubic feet per second right now, which is quite a bit of water still, when you figure that last summer we were looking at inflows of about 14 to 15 cubic feet per second coming into the reservoir." The reservoir was built for the power plant in the late 1970s. It's fed by the Laramie River. And everything worked fine for more than twenty years, until a major drought hit. (Ken Yergler): "Kinda sad to sit up there and watch the monitors and see the levels going down all the time." (Brian Larson): "In 2004 when we started losing level, we didn't think we were going to be able to come back again. We thought we were going to be on rancher water or something for the rest of the life of the plant." When Plant Manager Brian Larson talks about rancher water, this is it. The plant was forced to buy well water from local farmers and ranchers to keep the plant running. "All the water that comes into the Laramie River Station has to move through these primary contact basins before going into the plant. The water is pumped up through the middle of this basin and mixed with lime and other chemicals to get rid of silica. Now, the well water that Laramie River Station had been using had a lot of silica in it ...

Channel: YouTube Video Length: 2m 24s Date Found: Wed, Sep 15 2010 5:16 PM Category: Technology Date Produced: Wed, Sep 15 2010 5:08 PM View Count: 0