WEST ALTON, Missouri — On the rocky banks of the Mississippi River two dozen miles north of St. Louis, there's a clash brewing between clean energy and wildlife conservation, with both sides aiming to repair damage wrought by humans.
On one hand, an Alabama company is working to turn the locks and dam here into a hydropower plant, which could boost renewable energy in the region and reduce a long reliance on coal-fired power plants.
On the other, scientists have just discovered that decades of efforts to save a prehistoric fish, the lake sturgeon, are paying off: The river giant was caught spawning here this spring, for the second time in almost four decades.
But there's an equally gigantic problem: The spawning site — the only known location in Missouri — is directly under the dam. The hydropower plan, scientists say, threatens to ruin that spot for the fish.
"If we were to lose the one known site," said Travis Moore, lake sturgeon recovery leader for the Missouri Department of Conservation. "Well, that would be a step back."
The issue is of critical import to the St. Louis region and the country as a whole. Officials from President Joe Biden to the CEO of Ameren Missouri, the region's electric utility, are laboring to reduce carbon emissions, stem global warming, and, perhaps, trim the violent weather that has already set upon the world. In that battle, the move to green energy is key.
At the same time, those very leaders are also grappling with a worrisome problem: Midwest wind turbines kill birds by the scores. Northeast dams block the path of salmon returning to spawn. And large California solar arrays have been blamed for the deaths of thousands of birds, some of whom may have mistaken the shiny glass for water.
"It's just really impossible for any energy production source to have zero impact," said Wayne Krouse, CEO of Birmingham-based Hydro Green Energy, which is pitching the project in West Alton.
Hydro Green's proposal puts 10 turbines on the west side of the Mississippi next to the Melvin Price Locks and Dam here. They could deliver an estimated 438,000 megawatt-hours of renewable electricity to the region annually — enough to power almost 40,000 average U.S. homes for a year, a fraction of one of Ameren's big coal plants, but still a significant step toward cleaner energy.
"We're talking about literal tons of carbon dioxide that could be removed from energy production in the state," said Krouse.
But the proposal also envisions some new construction at Melvin Price: The water, as it exits the turbines, would flow down a 40-foot by 300-foot concrete channel beneath the dam.
And that channel is drawn on top of the sturgeon spawning grounds.
A dinosaur fish recovers
Lake sturgeon have a flattened head and long, gray-brown body with an armor of bony plates running along their sides and back. They can live to be 150 years old, grow to more than 7 feet in length, and weigh 200 pounds. They migrate hundreds of miles to reproduce.
"They can go through all of those big river systems that are connected with the Mississippi," said Moore, the state conservation leader.
But the species was driven to the brink of extinction in the late 1800s and early 1900s due to overfishing. Dams broke up the rivers, disrupting their migrations and thwarting their hunt for ideal spawning locations, making it difficult for the population to rebound.
In 1974, the Missouri Department of Conservation listed the species as endangered, kicking off a decades-long recovery effort. Eight other states now also list the species as endangered, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will decide whether to federally list the species by 2024. The state conservation department's ultimate goal is to create a self-sustaining population and, eventually, allow sport fishers to catch the giants again.
"If you wanted to have that opportunity to catch a 100- or 150-, 200-pound fish, you're typically gonna have to go to the ocean to do that," Moore said.
In 1984, scientists began raising the fish in hatcheries and releasing younglings. They waited for decades for the fish to reach reproductive maturity. Then, in 2015, scientists confirmed that sturgeon had spawned at Melvin Price, the first time it was seen in the state.
But scientists couldn't find any signs of it the next year. Or the years after that.
So they fell back on the 2015 event. Biologists from the conservation department and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which manages Melvin Price, manipulated the flow of the river below the dam by raising and lowering its two westernmost gates. Their goal was to match the water flow of the successful year, and encourage the fish to spawn again.
"There was something going on there that they liked," Moore said. "We wanted to do what we could to recreate that as closely as we could to help draw them in."
It worked.
One day in April, lake sturgeon started thrashing around the waters on the west bank at the dam, slapping their tails against each other — a sure sign of spawning. Scientists gathered to watch. Fisherman stopped.
"We all kind of nerded out, if you will, on the shoreline there for a little while," said Army Corps biologist Ryan Swearingin.
That was big. It led to scientists establishing a monitoring station where they can observe factors like water temperature, velocity and elevation that are ideal for the fish to reproduce. Eventually, they hope to replicate the habitat to provide more spawning grounds up and down the river.
"The more we can learn from that location," Swearingin said, "the more we can effectively create that elsewhere on the landscape."
'It's gonna last 100 years'
The metal gates of Melvin Price hold back a massive force: a pool of water more than 40 miles long. The pool forms one link in a system of locks created by the Army Corps to increase the depth of the Mississippi. Essentially, it's a series of stairs that stretches all the way from St. Louis to St. Paul, Minnesota.
Those steps were built to make the river deep enough year round for tugboats to move all the way from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, transporting hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of goods like crops and chemicals every year.
Hydro Green's proposal is far from the first power generation pitch on the river. Ameren's Keokuk Energy Center, a hydropower plant on the Iowa border, produces double what's predicted could come at Melvin Price. Many other dams line the river's long length, and developers have pitched at least dozens more, some even at Melvin Price.
And the Hydro Green project has made early progress. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued a preliminary permit for the project late last month. It allows Hydro Green to study the project site, and gives the company priority to file for a construction license within the next four years. If the company decides to build, the project would be years away.
Still, biologists are worried, and not just about the spawning site. Water flowing from the facility could prevent a steady current, which sturgeon need to reproduce. And they could be killed in turbines, caught during migration.
Scientists will consult with the company as it plans for the project.
Meanwhile, they are working to find other spawning grounds in the state. They could, perhaps, even replace the lost habitat there by recreating the rocky surface below the dam on a new section of the riverbank, Moore said.
Krouse, the Hydro Green CEO, said the company is just planning right now. It will conduct studies on the potential environmental impact if it applies for a license.
Melvin Price was an attractive location, he said, because the site is near the St. Louis metro area. Many might be interested in buying renewable energy.
Hydropower has a long lifespan compared to other forms of production.
"You build it, it's gonna last 100 years if you take care of it," Krouse said.
On a hot August afternoon, the towers of Melvin Price loomed over the west bank of the Mississippi. Waves lapped against the rocky shoreline, away from the roaring water at the base of the dam.
Years from now, the hydropower facility's concrete channel could take the shoreline's place. Water from the massive pool above the dam would rush through turbines, spinning their blades to create an electric current, before being channeled back into the Mississippi.
A fisherman trudged up the bank, holding a bucket of small fish caught from the river.
He hoped to use them as bait, he said, to catch something bigger.
