Hydro project owners share experiences and lessons learned from using the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s integrated licensing process, the ILP.

This report presents a review of economic studies for the United States and relates them to predicted impacts of climate change. The summary findings are organized by region and identify the key sectors likely affected by climate change, the main impacts to be expected, as well as estimates of costs. The report builds on the 2000 Global Change Research Program National Assessment, using additional regional and local studies, as well as new calculations derived from federal, state and industry data sources. From this review and quantification, five key lessons emerge:

1. Economic impacts of climate change will occurthroughout the country
2. Economic impacts will be unevenly distributedacross regions and within the economy andsociety.
3. Negative climate impacts will outweighbenefits for most sectors that provide essentialgoods and services to society.
4. Climate change impacts will place immensestrains on public sector budgets.
5. Secondary effects of climate impacts caninclude higher prices, reduced income and joblosses.

Federal agencies have taken steps to include the public in a wide range of environmental decisions. Although some form of public participation is often required by law, agencies usually have broad discretion about the extent of that involvement. Approaches vary widely, from holding public information-gathering meetings to forming advisory groups to actively including citizens in making and implementing decisions.

Proponents of public participation argue that those who must live with the outcome of an environmental decision should have some influence on it. Critics maintain that public participation slows decision making and can lower its quality by including people unfamiliar with the science involved.

This book concludes that, when done correctly, public participation improves the quality of federal agencies' decisions about the environment. Well-managed public involvement also increases the legitimacy of decisions in the eyes of those affected by them, which makes it more likely that the decisions will be implemented effectively. This book recommends that agencies recognize public participation as valuable to their objectives, not just as a formality required by the law. It details principles and approaches agencies can use to successfully involve the public.

Threats to imperiled freshwater fauna in the U.S. were assessed through an experts survey addressing anthropogenic stressors and their sources. Specifically, causes of historic declines and current limits to recovery were identified for 135 imperiled freshwater species of fishes, crayfishes, dragonflies and damselflies, mussels, and amphibians. The survey was designed to identify threats with sufficient specificity to inform resource managers and regulators faced with translating information about predominant biological threats into specific, responsive actions. The findings point to altered sediment loads and nutrient inputs from agricultural nonpoint pollution; interference from exotic species; and altered hydrologic regimes associated with impoundment operations as the three leading threats nationwide, accompanied by many lesser but still significant threats. Variations in threats among regions and among taxa were also evident. Eastern species are most commonly affected by altered sediment loads from agricultural activities, whereas exotic species, habitat removal/damage, and altered hydrologic regimes predominate in the West. Altered sediment loading from agricultural activities and exotic species are dominant problems for both eastern mussels and fishes. However, eastern fishes also appear to be suffering from municipal nonpoint pollution (nutrients and sediments), whereas eastern mussels appear to be more severely affected by altered nutrient impacts from hydroelectric impoundments and agricultural runoff. Our findings suggest that control of nonpoint source pollution associated with agriculture activities should be a very high priority for agricultural producers and governmental support programs. Additonally, the large number of hydropower dams in the U.S. subject to federal re-licensing in coming years suggests a significant opportunity to restore natural hydrologic regimes in the affected rivers.

Water managers face tough challenges in sustaining the health
and availability of rivers while meeting increasing demands for
their use. One tool that can give hydro project owners guidance
is a six-step framework for ecologically sustainable water management
developed by The Nature Conservancy.

Hydro can out-compete fossil plants if you view the project in its entirety, not just as a dam and powerhouse.

Too often advocates for river restoration through dam removal find themselves in the middle of a project and at odds with potential partners over matters of historic preservation. The goal of Dam Removal and Historic Preservation: Reconciling Dual Objectives is to help dam removal proponents and advocates for historic preservation work together more effectively to achieve their mutual goals, while building constructive relationships and successfully reconciling potentially competing objectives. This report combines a primer on Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act with methods for avoiding, minimizing, or mitigating the adverse effects of a dam removal project and concludes with real life case studies.

Available online at http://www.americanrivers.org/site/DocServer/Dam_Removal_and_Historic_Preservation.pdf?docID=8161 

The events of September 11, 2001 caused a shift in thinking about public access at hydro facilities, but the need to provide recreation remains. A Federal Energy Regulatory Commission team works to help owners keep their projects secure while still providing essential public access.

Systems for management of water throughout the developed world have been designed and operated under the assumption of stationarity. Stationarity-the idea that natural systems fluctuate within an unchanging envelope of variability-is a foundational concept that permeates trainingand practice in water-resource engineering. It implies that any variable (e.g., annual streamflow or annual flood peak) has a time-invariant(or 1-year-periodic) probability density function (pdf), whose properties can be estimated from the instrument record. Under stationarity, pdf estimation errors are acknowledged, but have been assumed to be reducible by additional observations, more efficient estimators, or regional or paleohydrologic data. The pdfs, in turn, are used to evaluateand manage risks to water supplies, waterworks, and floodplains; annual global investment in water infrastructure exceeds U.S.$500 billion.

This paper investigates the sources for regulatory delay in bureaucratic decision making, testing regulatory capture, congressional dominance, and bureaucratic discretion theories of agency behavior.

The empirical context concerns relicenses issued by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for hydroelectric dams, which have taken anywhere from just ten months to over sixteen years to be issued. The reasons for this heterogeneity in regulatory processing times can be expected to be varied and numerous and indeed we find evidence that outside interest groups, the legislature, and bureaucratic discretion are all significant in affecting regulatory processing times. Our most intriguing results concern the effects of environmental interest groups, which, despite their apparent benefit/cost motivation to hasten the relicensing process (independent of relicensing outcomes), overall end up slowing it down.