Nov 10 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Mark Freeman Mail Tribune, Medford, Ore.


Entering Gold Ray Dam's 105-year-old powerhouse is not just a stroll into the past, it's a precarious step into the present.

Two .75-megawatt generators sit rusted where they were placed in 1907, with an old and nearly petrified belt still attached to one. Antiquated switches and levers are frozen by time. Sunlight bent by cloudy glass windows gives the main room an aura worthy of a B-grade horror movie.

Just be careful where you stand, because the timbered floor over the Rogue River rushing through the tailrace is so rotten the boards sag beneath each foot.

"The way this wood is, I'm always leery about having too many people stand too close together," says John Vial, Jackson County's roads and parks director.

County officials say it's a long shot at best that reviving the idle dam's hydroelectric power-generation capacity would pencil out to be more profitable than removing the structures.

What it would take to render the dam and powerhouse operable will be explored in an upcoming environmental assessment that is part of the county's $5.5 million contract with a construction firm to design a dam-removal strategy and study its impacts.

The obstacles, Vial says, appear to be many.

State laws already ban new hydropower plants on this stretch of the Rogue, and the county has no water right to divert part of the Rogue for power generation there.

Though the county took ownership of the dam for $1 in 1972 with the hope of making it a recreation area, records show it does not own power-generation rights there.

The concrete dam likely would have to be buttressed, and the fish ladder must be improved to meet state and federal standards, Vial says.

The powerhouse, largely ignored by all but vandals since ropes last spun the old turbines 37 years ago, would have to be replaced, Vial says.

"Everything we're learning is that we'd have to start from scratch," Vial says. "All preliminary indications are leading us to believe rehabilitation would be cost-prohibitive."

Where Vial sees financial liability, however, Morris "Bub" Saltekoff sees opportunity.

A Sams Valley resident and Jackson County commissioner candidate, Saltekoff believes the county should rebuild the powerhouse and get into the hydropower business to generate revenue.

Saltekoff also wants to see the adjoining county acreage turned into a park with a boat ramp that he believes could pay for itself with day-use fees.

Saltekoff says he's so confident in the opportunity that he would like to see the county dip into its roughly $71 million in cash reserves to make a rejuvenated dam and powerhouse a reality.

"It's there and it should be used," Saltekoff says.

"I'd like to see this turned into an asset instead of just ripping it out," he says. "I think this whole thing is wrong."

Vial says there is no proof that a reconstituted dam and powerhouse would pencil out as profitable.

"It's not looking promising, but we also don't know for sure that it won't (be profitable)," Vial says. "We're going to ask that question, and we'll find out in the EA."

The county asked itself that same question in 1982 when it commissioned a study that deemed the powerhouse not salvageable and estimated a cost at that time of $12.8 million to build a new powerhouse and add generators.

Jackson County Administrator Danny Jordan says that cost, adjusted for inflation, would be more than $27 million today. The 1982 study also did not add in any improvements to the dam's fish ladder, Jordan says.

Recently the Eugene Water and Electric Board built a new fish ladder on its Trail Bridge Dam along the McKenzie River, and Jordan says that ladder is gravity-fed like the design on Gold Ray Dam.

EWEB paid nearly $26 million for that ladder as part of its hydroelectric relicensing, EWEB documents show.

"Right now, all we can do is theorize," Jordan says. "I won't commit to any numbers until the study's done. All we know, though, is that it would cost a lot."

The old dam and powerhouse are likely eligible for historic status, meaning a plaque may one day commemorate where the Ray brothers first harnessed the Rogue in 1904.

"I'd expect, as the first hydroelectric facility in Jackson County, that it would be eligible for listing on the National Register (of Historic Places)," says Ashland historian George Kramer, who is studying the facility's significance as part of the EA.

(c) 2009, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services