BELLOWS FALLS — The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is entering its third year of the six year process for re-licensing five hydroelectric facilities along the Connecticut River, in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts.
TransCanada owns the Wilder, Bellows Falls, and Vernon projects to the north; while FirstLight Hydro Generating Company owns the Turners Falls and Northfield Mountain Pumped Storage in Massachusetts.
It is a complicated process along a river that shares interstate boundaries and involves New Hampshire's Connecticut River Valley Resource Commission and Vermont's Connecticut River Watershed Advisory Commission.
These in turn are manned by representatives of the public at large, and various planning and development entities, as well as the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources and Connecticut River Watershed Council members, and numerous other stakeholders on both sides of the river in Vermont and New Hampshire.
Together, these make up the Connecticut River Joint Commissions (CRJC).
The CRJC has the opportunity, for the first time in decades, to conduct studies paid for by TransCanada, that are related to water flow and erosion, water temperature and native species including the rare dwarf mussel, and flood and riparian zones, and how all are influenced by the dams.
A strict schedule of field studies that began last summer will continue through this summer, with a submission date of Sept. 12.
Stakeholders will then have until Nov. 11 to file disagreements with the results of the studies, make modification requests, or, request new studies. Responses from the FERC are due back by Dec. 11.
Preliminary or draft relicensing applications are due Dec. 4, 2015, pending resolution of disagreements, not to exceed 150 days from the date of such resolutions.
Applications must be filed with FERC by April 4, 2016. However, according to longtime state Rep. David Deen, D-Westminster, who is also a CRJC River Steward and a professional fly-fishing guide, TransCanada has asked for a year's extension for filing the re-licensing application.
If granted, this would push the schedule back a year.
Deen noted that there is not adequate time to both conduct the studies, and have experts interpret the studies in the two-month window the FERC schedule provides. At issue are rare dwarf mussel surveys that were unable to locate the mussels last summer.
Deen said he hopes water surveys this summer will discover the new location for the mussels. Also, he said, fish studies around the Vernon dam were delayed a year until after the dam was shut down last fall.
Those studies will be conducted this summer, as well as continuing mitigation studies on erosion caused by rising and lowering waters downstream from the dams.
Public comment on the studies is scheduled for March 2016. However, if the year extension requested by TransCanada is granted, that public comment period may be moved back a year to 2017. Deen urged the public to stay informed of the study results, and the schedule, and to participate in public comment periods when the opportunity arises, either next spring or the following spring.
All schedules, documents and studies for the Wilder, Bellows Falls, and Vernon projects, may be found at the TransCanada re-licensing website at www.transcanada-relicensing.com/overview/documents.