"Hullo, Fred Wilkins."
"Hi, Mr. Goldman!" the technician offered a brief "good morning" to the visitors, then continued writing.
"Where we are standing," Nim announced, "is five hundred feet underground. This plant was built by sinking a shaft from above, the way you would for a mine. There's an elevator goes from here to the surface and, in another shaft, high voltage transmission lines."
"Not many people working here," Sacramento Bee commented. He was looking through the window at the generator floor where no one was in sight.
The technician closed his logbook and grinned. "In a couple of minutes you won't see any."
"this is an automated generating plant," Nim explained. "Mr. Wilkins here comes in to make a routine check"-he queried the technician-"how often?"
"Just once a day, sir."
"Otherwise," Nim continued, "the place stays tightly locked and unattended, except for occasional maintenance or if something goes wrong,"
Los Angeles Times asked, "How about starting up and shutting down?"
"It's done from the control center a hundred and fifty miles away. Most new hydroelectric plants are designed this way. They're efficient, and there's a big saving in labor costs."
"When something is wrong, and there's a panic," New West inquired, "what then?"
"Whichever generator is affected-or even both-will send a warning to control, then shut down automatically until a service crew gets here."
"It's this kind of generating plant," Teresa Van Buren interjected, "that Devil's Gate z, the proposed pumped storage plant, will be removed from view so it won't mar the landscape, also non-polluting and economic."
Nancy Molineaux spoke for the first time since coming in. “There's one teensy item you left out of that snow job, Tess. The goddam great reservoir that would have to be built and the natural land which would be flooded."
"A lake in these mountains, which is what it will be, is every bit as natural as dry wilderness," the PR director retorted. "What's more, it will provide fishing . . ."
Nim said gently, "Let me, Tess." He was determined, today, not to let Nancy Molineaux or anyone else ruffle him.
"Miss Molineaux is right," he told the group, "to the extent that a reservoir is needed. It will be a mile from here, high above us and visible only from airplanes or to nature lovers willing to make a long, hard climb. In building it we'll observe every environmental safeguard . . ."
“The Sequoia Club doesn't think so," a male TV reporter interrupted.
"Why?"
Nim shrugged. "I have no idea. I guess we'll find out at the public hearing."
"Okay," the TV man said. "Carry on with your propaganda spiel."
Remembering his resolve, Nim curbed a sharp reply. With media people, be thought, it was so often an uphill battle, a fight against disbelief no matter how straightforward anyone involved with industry and business tried to be. Only radical crusaders, and never mind bow misinformed, seemed to have their viewpoints quoted verbatim, without question.
Patiently, he explained pumped storage-"the only known method of hoarding large quantities of electricity for use later at times of peak demand.
In a way, you could think of Devil's Gate 2. as an enormous storage battery."
There would be two levels of water, Nim continued-the new reservoir and Pineridge River, far below. Connecting the two levels would be massive underground pipes-or penstocks and tailrace tunnels. The generating plant would be between the reservoir and river, the penstocks ending at the plant, where the tailrace tunnels start.
"When the plant is producing electricity," Nim said, "water from the reservoir will flow downward, drive the turbines, then discharge into the river beneath the river surface."
But at other times the system would operate the opposite way around. When electrical demands everywhere were light-mostly during the night-no electricity would be produced by Devil's Gate 2. Instead, water would be pumped upward from the river-some three hundred million gallons an hour-to replenish the reservoir, ready for next day.
"At night we have great quantities of spare electric power elsewhere in the GSP & L system. We'd simply use some of it to operate the pumps."
New West said, "Con Edison in New York has been trying to build a plant like that for twenty years. Storm King, they call it. But ecologists and lots of others are against it."
“There are also responsible people who are for it," Nim said.
"Unfortunately nobody is listening."
He described one demand of the Federal Power Commission-proof that Storm King would not disturb fish life in the Hudson River. After several years of study the answer was: there would be a reduction of only four to six percent in the adult fish population.
"Despite that," Nim concluded, "Con Edison still doesn't have approval, and someday the people of New York will wake up to regret it."
"That's your opinion," Nancy Molineaux said.
"Naturally it's an opinion. Don't you have opinions, Miss Molineaux?"
Los Angeles Times said, "Of course she doesn't. You know how totally unprejudiced we servants of the truth are."
Nim grinned. "I'd noticed."
The black woman's features tightened, but she made no comment.
A moment earlier, when speaking about Hudson River fish, Nim had been tempted to quote Charles Luce, Con Edison's chairman, who once declared in a public moment of exasperation, “There comes a point where human environment must prevail over fish habitat. I think in New York we've reached it." But caution prevailed. The remark had got Chuck Luce into trouble and produced a storm of abuse from ecologists and others. Why join him?
Besides, Nim thought, he already had public image problems himself over that damned helicopter. It was coming this afternoon to Devil's Gate to return him to the city where urgent work was piled up on his desk. He had made sure, though, that the chopper would not arrive until after the press contingent had departed by bus.
Meanwhile, disliking this chore and relieved that it would end soon, he continued fielding questions.
* * *
At 2 pm, at Devil's Gate Camp the last few stragglers were climbing aboard the press bus, which had its motor running and was ready to leave. The group had lunched; their journey back to the city would take four hours. Fifty yards away, Teresa Van Buren, who was also going on the bus, told Nim, "Thanks for all you did, even though you hated some of it."
He said with a smile, "I get paid to do a few things, now and then, that I'd rather not. Was anything accomplished, do you . . . ?"
Nim stopped, not certain why, except for a sudden chilling instinct that something was wrong in the scene around him, something out of place. They were standing roughly where be had been this morning when he paused en route to breakfast; the weather was still beautiful clear sunshine highlighting a profusion of trees and wild flowers, with a breeze stirring the fragrant mountain air. Both bunkhouses were visible, the bus in front of one, a couple of off-duty employees sunning themselves on a balcony of the other. In the opposite direction, over by the staff houses, a group of children was playing; a few minutes earlier Nim had noticed among them the redheaded boy Danny, whom be had spoken to this morning. The boy was flying a kite, perhaps a birthday present, though at the moment both boy and kite had disappeared from view. Nim's gaze moved on to a GSP & L heavy-duty service truck and a cluster of men in work gear. among them he caught a glimpse of the trim, bearded figure of Wally Talbot Jr. Presumably Wally was with the transmission line crew he had mentioned earlier. On the road leading into camp a small blue tradesman's van appeared.