Program to Establish and Enforce Performance Standards for Hydropower Dams to Restore Aquatic Diversity
Natural Heritage Institute
- Program Environment
- Program Area Addressing the Freshwater Challenge
- Grant Amount $225,000
- Grant Period July 1, 2004–June 30, 2007
- Location San Francisco, CA, United States
- Geographic Focus Alabama, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina
About this grant
Through its program to establish and enforce performance standards for hydropower dams, the Natural Heritage Institute provides free or low-cost assistance to organizations involved in relicensing processes in the Great Lakes and Southeast United States. Since 1992, the institute has offered strategic advice, scientific expertise, flow modeling assistance and other technical help to national- and state-level organizations working on Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) relicensings.Funding will enable the institute to continue working to restore and protect rivers through the FERC relicensing process. Efforts will focus on providing technical assistance to local conservation groups engaged in hydropower relicensings; and working to improve the hydropower relicensing process. In the Great Lakes basin, the institute will work with New York Rivers United (NYRU) on relicensing proceedings in the Lake Ontario basin. In the Southeast, it will continue to collaborate with American Rivers, as well as state and local conservation groups, on various relicensing proceedings in the region.Recent projects included assisting NYRU in the negotiation of 11 settlements to protect and restore tributaries to Lake Ontario; working with the Nature Conservancy in North Carolina; and developing a hydrologic model for the Santee basin in South Carolina.