Putting water, wildlife, and people back in rivers
The Aesthetics Flows Guide (pdf) provides a common framework for requesting, designing, or reviewing flow-aesthetics studies, and reviews specific methods for conducting those studies in a hydropower licensing or water adjudication proceedings to protect aesthetics values of rivers.
Visit this website to learn about the effects of dams on rivers and the environment. It also explains how dams and hydropower projects can be operated differently to reduce their adverse impacts.
The Hydropower Licensing Guide first published in 2005 has been updated. The update includes addition of 2005 EPAct Hearing provisions under the Integrated Licensing Process as well as reorganization of Appendices.
Eighty conservation, recreation, faith-based and business groups sent a letter to the Department of Energy urging the Department to explore existing dams instead of building new ones to increase our nation’s hydropower capacity.
A coalition of conservation, recreation and business groups sent a letter yesterday to members of Congress urging them to strip the hydropower provisions from the final conference report on the comprehensive energy bill currently being reconciled by a conference committee.
The United States Congress is currently considering reconciling the energy bills passed by the House and the Senate for a comprehensive energy bill. Under consideration is the hydropower industry’s wishlist contained in H.R. 8 (North American Energy Security and Infrastructure Act of 2015).
This week, the Department of Energy (DOE) released the much-anticipated Hydropower Vision Report, which states that the nation could add 50 GW of new hydropower capacity by 2050. However, of that, 35 GW is just from pumped storage hydropower, while 13 GW could come from upgrading existing projects and retrofitting non-powered dams with hydropower.
