By CHRISTINA K. MOONEY
During the past two decades, many hydropower facilities in the Great Lakes basin came up for relicensing before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Because licenses are valid for up to 50 years, this represented an opportunity to bring these facilities up to current environmental standards.
With Mott Foundation support, organizations such as New York Rivers United (NYRU), American Rivers and others were able to address significant environmental issues during relicensing. And in the process, they achieved much more.
“These groups helped pioneer a more collaborative, multi-stakeholder process in developing operating licenses for hydropower dams,” said Sam Passmore, Mott program officer for the Environment program.
"The relicensing process has led communities, agencies, tribes and other constituents to develop a much broader respect for the operations of an entire watershed.
“FERC is now using that process as the standard in licensing across the country, including the Southeast, where Mott now also funds," Passmore added. "That, coupled with the fact that a whole generation of dams in the Great Lakes are now operating with modern licenses that take environmental issues into account, are the most important legacies of this grantmaking.”
Mott begain its hydropower grantmaking in 1992, and since that time has provided more than $4 million to groups working in both the Great Lakes and Southeast.
Bruce Carpenter, NYRU executive director, has been closely involved with many dam relicensings in New York state.
“Initially, relicensing was very adversarial,” he said.
But as all parties, from government officials to citizens to non-governmental organizations to the power companies came together, it became clear to everyone that a collaborative course was beneficial to all involved, Carpenter said.
New York recently completed the last major relicensing for some time in the Great Lakes basin with the Niagara Power Project, just downstream from Niagara Falls. Although this was one of the largest, most complex processes to date, the relicensing was completed in a timely fashion, thanks to experience gained from earlier projects.
“The power company took its time and everyone had a voice,” Carpenter said. “In the end, the improvements to the project and the mitigation enhancement were tremendous, and they will last for the next 50 years.”
Robbin Marks, American Rivers senior director, has seen similar progress across the country.
“The process is different now than when we started,” she said. “A lot of important precedents with public participation and environmental protection have been established. We have also been able to use this very complex process of hydropower relicensing as a river restoration tool, and that is significant.”
The long-lasting benefits can include restored fisheries, improved recreation, better water quality and restoration of rivers as a community asset.
In New York, those collaborative efforts have had a positive ripple effect, impacting not only rivers, but entire watersheds as well, Carpenter said.
“The dams have now become one point in what has become a much larger focus. In my opinion, this has been one of the most successful environmental restoration efforts to date,” he said.