CASPER, Wyo. — A proposed pumped storage hydroelectric facility at Seminoe Reservoir drew strong criticism Wednesday at a public meeting in Casper that featured dozens of community members, conservationists and elected officials. The event was hosted by a number of organizations, including Friends of the North Platte, Trout Unlimited, the Wyoming Wildlife Federation and the Wyoming Wild Sheep Foundation.

In an April presentation to the Natrona County Board of County Commissioners, representatives from rPlus Hydro — the company behind the proposed project — said the facility would generate 970 megawatts of power. The planned system would pump water from Seminoe Reservoir to a new 120-acre upper reservoir during periods of surplus energy, releasing it back down through turbines when demand peaks to provide up to 12 hours of full-output energy storage. The project requires the construction of an access bridge, an underground powerhouse, a main access tunnel and a 29-mile transmission line to the Aeolus substation.

However, community members at the meeting voiced a wide range of concerns about possible drawbacks to the project.

Trout Unlimited representative Jim Hissong said the project could have serious impacts on the fish populations of Miracle Mile, a 5.5-mile tailwater stretch of the North Platte River located about 50 miles southwest of Casper, where the project is planned to be built.

Hissong said the impact on fish and insects will be twofold. First, he said the facility is expected to raise water temperatures, which would endanger the fish.

“Trout, when it’s about 68–70 degrees — when you hook them, the stress on the fish will be so great that it’ll kill them,” he said. “That’s why Game and Fish puts on the restrictions where once it hits a certain temperature, you pick up your rods and go home.”

Hissong added that the expected increase of sediment in the water could kill insects like mayflies and stoneflies, as well as suffocate trout eggs.

However, the project could impact more than just the aquatic species in the area, Wyoming Wild Sheep Foundation Executive Director Katie Cheesbrough said. According to Cheesbrough, the area’s bighorn sheep population — which she said is the biggest in the state and critical for the species’ health in the region — could also be harmed.

“For those of you who don’t know, you have a very special bighorn sheep herd above and around the Miracle Mile,” she told attendees at the meeting. “It’s a huge success for bighorn sheep conservation. This is a reintroduced herd and it went from 13 sheep maybe in 2003 to close to 400 sheep now. That effort came with a lot of partnerships, funding and work. Currently, it’s the healthiest bighorn sheep herd in the state. … This is the only bighorn sheep herd that we can use to reintroduce sheep to their native range in other parts of Wyoming or other parts of the country.”

But it wouldn’t be the impacts to the water that would pose the largest threat to the sheep. Instead, Cheesbrough said, the sheep would likely be driven away by blasting that is expected to take place over several years as the project gets underway.

When the sheep are driven out, Cheesbrough said they will migrate east to the Pedro Mountains in Carbon County, though they are not allowed to live there and will be subsequently removed. From there, she said, the animals will likely die.

“Removal is killing,” she said.

With impacts to the animals and environment expected, Trout Unlimited Wyoming Government Relations Director Patrick Harrington said impacts to outdoor recreation and tourism would follow. Citing a draft environmental impact study, Harrington said the area is projected to see roughly 117,000 lost recreation visits during the five-year construction period. Once completed, he said, the disturbance to the water, wildlife and landscape would likely continue to affect recreational visits.

“I think we’ll see a decline in the fishery, first initially in construction, when we may see large fish kills from large plumes of sediment going downstream. But over time, through consistent operation, we’ll see what was once a world-class fishery decline into just an average fishery,” Harrington said.

Sen. Larry Hicks, who represents Wyoming’s 11th district, said that the electricity generated by the project likely won’t be used by Wyomingites.

“This is going to go out of state, folks. We don’t need this electricity in Wyoming,” Hicks said, adding that 75% of the energy consumed in Wyoming is generated by oil and coal. “Let’s just make that clear: We’re a net exporter right now.”

“It isn’t going to be the people in Las Vegas or southern California or Phoenix that suffer the impact — it’s you and your family. Sometimes you just have to know what’s not for sale,” Hicks added, drawing applause from attendees.

On Thursday, the Travel, Recreation, Wildlife & Cultural Resources Committee of the Wyoming Legislature will meet at 8:35 a.m. at the Thyra Thomson State Office Building, 444 W. Collins Drive, to discuss the project.

Harrington urged those in attendance to attend the Thursday morning meeting, and said he was encouraged by the turnout at Wednesday’s event.

“This is a community that cares about their river and their wildlife, and it was awesome to see so many turn out to support it,” he said.

Related

If your mailbox is anything like mine, it’s starting to fill up with gaudy campaign mailers from politicians who are trying their damnedest to channel Chris LeDoux (and we’ll tip our Stetsons when that name is mentioned) and failing miserably. It’s comical to watch these dudes and dudettes try to cowboy up just to get the voters’ attention!

I don’t own a television, but I’ll bet a dollar to a donut the same stuff is assaulting your eyeballs from the boob tube screen.

Their mailers and ads show politicians standing nervously next to a photogenic horse, forcing smiles through their fear. That’s because there isn’t enough money in the campaign budget to convince them to climb aboard a critter as big and scary as a horse. They wear a sombrero that looks like it was purchased under the stands at Frontier Days, and a brand new pearlsnap shirt with the price tag still attached.

Or they pose in front of a buck n’ rail fence in some rustic Wyoming meadow, clutching a gun with their trigger fingers outside the guard, as the director instructed. You can almost hear the photographer’s voice off-camera suggesting, “Now, try to look tough.”

What we are seeing in our mailboxes and on our screens is the classic Madison Avenue ploy of manufacturing opinion through an appeal, not to the consumer’s logic or reason, but to emotion and attachment to symbols. The American cowboy is one of the most powerful symbols in the propaganda professional’s toolbox, and he gets trotted out to work his magic every election season.

Decades ago, I worked on several Marlboro commercials as a wrangler and background model. The producer, from Leo Burnett advertising company of Chicago, told me that the image of the Marlboro Man was worth several billion dollars a year to the tobacco company, because the cowboy symbol sold cigarettes to folks in countries like Libya and North Korea who hated America but loved cowboys.

Think about that for a moment. One simple image is powerful enough to sell a carcinogenic American product to millions of people who hate America but identify with cowboys. That is the psychological power of advertising symbols.

Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud’s nephew, is widely regarded as the godfather of modern advertising, public relations and propaganda. Bernays understood, in the early 20th century, how symbolic images and slogans could bypass critical thinking and implant a message directly into the subconscious reptilian part of the human brain, where instinct and emotion rule. When that part of our brain is stimulated, we act instead of think. We just say “ditto!”

That is precisely how political media manipulation works on us.

The political advertisements, resplendent with drugstore cowboy politicians, that bombard us every election are the direct lineal result of Bernays and the public relations/advertising/propaganda machine he created, and it has made vast fortunes and influenced our society for over a century.

The irony is that these mailers and videos never show politicians doing real cowboy stuff — like indulging in a three-fingered dip of Copenhagen, drinking Wild Turkey 101 straight from the bottle or getting bucked off into cactus and rattlesnakes. Images like that aren’t very mythological and won’t gather many votes.

But I digress. Every election season, we become lab rats in an ongoing experiment in politics and psychological manipulation, and the laboratory is our own brains. We are inundated with evocative pictures and slogans intended to short-circuit our intellects and engage our emotions. We are force-fed politicians who wrap themselves in appealing images and focus group-approved slogans that are intended to make us switch off our brains.

We confront Edward Bernays’ ditto-ism machine whenever we open our mailboxes or look at our screens. With every political advertisement, we are invited to suspend our intellects and just go along with the crowd.

A real cowboy would call bullshit on that nonsense.

So, it is critically important that we understand how and why political advertisers try so hard to make us act without thinking. Knowing the forces at work during a political campaign, and how they try to worm their message into our noggins, builds a healthy immune system that can resist manipulation by seductive but meaningless symbols.

A healthy skepticism toward political messaging is a necessary component in a functioning bullshit detector. Here endeth the lesson.