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Lower Merced Hydropower Relicensing
by Cindy Charles, NCCFFF
December 20, 2009 -- Two dams operated by the Merced Irrigation District (MID), the McSwain and New Exchequer dams, are undergoing relicensing. As part of the relicensing, FERC determines which studies need to be done to determine the effects of the dams which would include impacts on fish and their habitat. MID has been strongly and stubbornly opposed to doing any fish studies downstream of their projects, arguing that they don't directly have an effect there even though they control all the flows of the Merced River. There is a small PG&E dam (Merced Falls) which MID operates in between their Crocker Huffman Diversion dam and their McSwain dam, but that is a run-of-the-river project. Initially, FERC sided with MID about not requiring any anadromous fish studies, but due to a dispute filing on the part of the Conservation Groups and the fishery agencies, FERC called a Study Dispute Resolution Panel. This is a new proceeding for FERC as well and the fishery agencies and State Water Board had to justify why they needed these 14 studies.
The Dispute Panel was made up of three people: one person from NMFS, one person from FERC and one outsider who was with the Forest Service out of state. The Panel submitted recommendations to FERC and they did conclude that the project's compliance point is well downstream of MID's dams which added another 20 miles to the scope of the project. Some of the studies were recommended by the panel and some were recommended with modifications, however, two of the three members of the panel held off on recommending studies which would aid fishery agencies in their plans for anadromous fish restoration on the Merced River due to some technicalities involving the uncertainty of whether anadromous fish can sometimes get over the Crocker-Huffman dam and thereby would be impacted by the MID dams upstream. The Conservation Groups, which include Trout Unlimited, The Friends of the River, the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, the Merced River Conservation Committee, American Rivers as well as NCCFFF and GWWF, filed a 19 page letter to FERC advocating the need for these important studies as well as improvement to the Study Dispute Process which was diffuse and unorganized. US Fish and Wildlife also filed an excellent and detailed letter. FERC is expected to release their decision on the disputed studies on December 21. Meanwhile, we are now working on studies for the Merced Falls PG&E project which is just now starting their relicensing. Whew, the work is never done!