BABBITT SUPPORTS FEDERAL ENERGY REGULATORY COMMISSION EFFORTS TO BROADEN DEBATE OVER RELICENSING 250 HYDRODAMS DURING DECADE AHEAD

Noting three recent landmark settlements of FERC dam relicensings, Interior Secretary calls for more and earlier cooperation between federal agencies; strongly opposes Congressional attempts to cut back river habitat protection

Office of the Secretary Contact: James Workman (202)208-6416

For release: July 8, 1998

Text:Dams Are Instruments, Not Monuments: We evaluate them by the health of the watersheds to which they belong

Remarks of Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt FERC Distinguished Speakers Series, Washington, DC, July 8, 1998

Last November 25 the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission made history. After careful deliberation, and consideration of hundreds of documents from dozens of interested parties, FERC decided that the 917-foot long, 19-foot high Edwards Dam must be removed from the Kennebec River. It was denied a license to operate, against the wishes of the owner. Instead, the dam must to make way for the stocks of shad, sturgeon, sea bass and salmon it had locked out of fertile spawning grounds for 161 years.

That decision attracted attention beyond Augusta and New England. With roughly 75,000 large dams, and 2 million small dams blocking America's waterways, everyone wondered: Is this just the beginning?

In one respect, it may be. Over the next decade, the operating licenses for 250 hydro dams, built in the 1930s and '40s, will expire. In the West alone, that's approximately two-thirds of nonfederal hydropower capacity. As operators approach FERC to renew their long term licenses, they find that Americans don't look at dams simply as engineering marvels as we did in the heyday of the New Deal.

A nationwide debate is underway, asking: What should we consider when relicensing dams? What should be measured, along with kilowatt hours?

Modern conservation science reveals more about the environmental costs of dams, how they exact a toll from rivers both upstream and down. Fifty years ago, no one foresaw how drastically dams might alter the natural cycle of rivers from the headwaters to the estuaries. Now we do. Few then ever saw dams as disrupting the spawning runs of anadromous fish up from the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Now we all do. No laws back then required protection of aquatic habitat for rare or declining species. Now they do.

Moreover, now we increasingly see the issue not merely in terms of a single dam, but an entire river. We see that river as part of a whole watershed. And the fate of a watershed involves all the people who live in it, and from it, and who share responsibility in deciding the future of their river.

Yet even as we come to this greater understanding, there are proposals in Congress to "simplify" the hydro dam relicensing process. Some want to narrow the participation, weaken voices outside the hydropower industry, and downgrade the status of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service and other conservation agencies who work with FERC toward balanced solutions.

That "simplification" would be a mistake. It would exacerbate conflict and make compromise and consensus virtually impossible.

Is the FERC relicensing process -- as critics claim -- rather slow? Complex? Sometimes frustrating? Yes. But it is also democratic, and producing good results. Like democracy, it is often messy, cumbersome, and far better than any other process around.

Most important, a progressive new approach to relicensing is emerging which holds great promise. Strongly supported by this Administration, it invites federal agencies, states, businesses, sporting groups and conservationists to come together and participate in a negotiated river restoration plan as part of the relicensing process.

I have seen this new process work out on the landscape. I have seen, first hand, how this process unites those who in the past would usually have met face to face only in adjudication. I have seen it pull states closer together. Stakeholder negotiations, however difficult and contentious, can often yield consensus. Edwards Dam in Augusta exemplifies this.

Virtually every interest in Maine and New England, from conservation groups to Governor Angus King, had come to support removal. The potential for fisheries restoration was so great, the electricity generated so minimal, that the consensus for removal was almost inevitable. After your landmark decision was announced, the dam operator first promised a long, drawn out fight. But your FERC decision was so persuasive that major parties in the watershed -- including other dam operators upstream, a Maine shipbuilder and environmentalists -- eventually agreed to jointly fund the costs of removal.

The age, location, high environmental costs and low generation at Edwards set it at one end of the hydrodam spectrum. Most cases you face are more complex, especially as we move west towards larger, more modern projects. But here, too, FERC has seized opportunities for constructive change.

Six months before Edwards became national news, and several hundred miles due west of Augusta, FERC endorsed stakeholder consensus that overhauled operations of not one but eleven dams, three of which would be removed for fish passage. A looming FERC relicensing was the catalyst as the Wisconsin Electric Power Company, state and federal officials, and conservation groups all came together to restore a more natural flow in three watersheds, replenish 160 river miles, and protect more than 22,000 acres of pristine lands in the Menominee River Basin of Wisconsin and Michigan.

That landmark settlement represents perhaps the first time in America that a utility, public officials and environmentalists have negotiated a cooperative agreement prior to the start of the relicensing process. It was a watershed agreement in all meanings of the term. For stakeholders, and ultimately FERC, began looking at the entire Menominee basin, took into account all current and future needs of the stakeholders who live in it, and even included dams that were not yet up for relicensing.

The settlement will allow Wisconsin Electric, serving many thousands of customers, to continue profitable, low-cost energy production. And by restoring the watershed for brook trout, lake sturgeon, smallmouth bass and walleye, as well as for hunting and rafting throughout the area, the agreement will boost and broaden the diverse, renewable recreation-driven economy.

Moving farther west to Nebraska, Kingsley Dam impounds the Platte River. The original licenses, issued in 1937, authorized retention of up to 1.8 million acre feet to supply electricity and water for half a million acres of productive farmland. Yet decades of experience made clear that Kingsley's operations, along with other upstream water developments, were threatening wildlife in the "mile wide, inch deep" river below. Whooping cranes, sandhill cranes, in total some 9 million waterfowl gather along the river each spring to breed and fatten up for the long migration north. The fate of nine endangered species, from piping plover to the pallid sturgeon, hung in the balance.

For 20 years, people pointed fingers. Nothing changed. Tensions grew. It took the formal FERC relicensing process to bring Interior, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, the EPA, environmental organizations and over 50 other parties together to hammer out a solution which would restore river habitat for wildlife. Once again, on a scale unprecedented in conservation history, the FERC process was the catalyst to end the stalemate.

What is emerging in each of these cases is an entirely new style of regulation. Your process is moving beyond the narrow confines of a quasi-judicial process, encouraging all stakeholders to work out their differences and to find inventive new ways to share and maximize the water resource for all. A key ingredient in these successes is FERC's willingness to consider, where the facts warrant it, denial of relicensing, and decommissioning of dams.

Can the process be improved? Absolutely. We are, together, on a steep learning curve. Speaking for Interior's agencies with a significant statutory role in this process, we can work faster, closer, and earlier to get our positions focused and up front. We can all be more efficient with practice and time. And in fact our agencies have begun a promising dialogue with FERC staff to achieve these goals.

But we must be clear: The process is complex for good reasons. It involves new thinking and new scientific insights. The licenses that FERC issues last many decades, affecting our grandchildren. Economic concerns remain front and center, but not to the exclusion of larger values and broader constituencies.

Let us remember that dams are not, in the end, monuments to mankind. They are simply instruments that serve the needs of the people who build them. Those needs change, often quite rapidly, over the course of a generation. Our challenge is to find the measured balance appropriate to the values of this age, which evaluates dams by the health of the watersheds to which they belong.

That's a tough challenge. Yet as long as the process remains inclusive, as long as the decision is based on science and diverse perspectives, I am confident we can, working together, transform what had been a narrow licensing event into a broad consideration of how we live with our landscape, our rivers, our heritage. Thank you.

  U.S. Department of the Interior