When we moved here in 2001 the Wenatchee Valley Chamber of Commerce promised 300 days of sunshine, so I get depressed when our Christmas/News Years holiday haze hides my clear skies. My mood darkens when I read in the World that ozone pollutants are suspended in the aired when western winds blow in contaminated air from Asia. Mission Ridge’s snow sparkled views of the Northern Cascades lift my mood, but otherwise I obsess on ways to reclaim my 300 days of sunshine.
    Those obsessions have generated threads of ideas to clear up our skies and my gloominess. First I’ll list the threads and then weave them together. Wind farms could blow away the air and generate electricity during other seasons. The legislature has required PUD to generate electricity from renewable sources as wind power. Growers are studying a water reservoir to replace declining aquifers. Water stored in reservoirs can be used to generate electricity. Waterfalls once roared down from the sides of Grand Coulee.
    The idea to move air out of the valley with wind farms arose while driving under towering blades on wind farms along the Columbia River south of Goldendale. What if those blades were reversible or convertible to fan blades that would blow stagnant air or fire smoke out of the valley and generate power the rest of the year?
    The state might subsidize the cost because legislators required our PUDs to generate renewable energy such as wind power. State funding is the wildest idea, but the PUDs have to invest in the renewable energy so why not investigate alternatives that make us healthier and happier? Wind farms could generate electricity other seasons to meet the state mandate.
    What if electricity to move the blades costs too much?  That is where generating electricity from a water reservoir comes in. During the 1970s Consumers Power in Michigan used a water reservoir to store electrical power above the coast of Lake Michigan. Lake water was pumped into the reservoir at night with excess power at low cost. Water flowed down to the lake during the day through turbines that generated electricity sold at a higher rate.
    Present plans for an irrigation water reservoir are difficult to cost justify. If those reservoirs could generate power the increased income might justify the project. We have a place where water could flow downhill through turbines.
    The Grand Coulee has miles of precipices over which spectacular waterfalls flowed thousands of years ago. A friend drove the Grand Coulee during a pounding rainstorm. He pulled off the highway to marvel at countless waterfalls plummeting over the edges, each one rivaling Multnomah Falls. If we re-supplied the upper ridges of the Grand Coulee cliffs with water for irrigation, wintertime hydropower might generate electricity for wind farms to blow away our weather born blues.
    These ideas are outlandish, but when we’re shrouded under holiday haze 300 days of promised sunshine seems equally outlandish. Rather than stay melancholy we can brainstorm our ways to better moods. Visions of clear skies, irrigated crops, and abundant electricity transform my mood when I’m not on Mission Ridge. And who knows, maybe one idea leads to another and something practical comes out of the daydreaming.