week of 3/27/02
 
 
 


Changes on the Tuckasegee
Dam removal included in long list of initial proposals in relicensing
By Don Hendershot
Duke Power has offered its first “trial balloon” of proposals for changing the way it manages rivers and reservoirs in Western North Carolina. The proposals are a preliminary step in the company’s federal relicensing effort, which usually requires concessions to environmental and recreational uses in exchange for allowing utilities use of public waterways for power generation.

Duke Power Nantahala Area (formerly NP&L) floated the proposals at a March 21 Tuckasegee Stakeholders meeting. The purpose of the trial balloon was to “stimulate discussion within the Tuckasegee River Cooperative Stakeholders Team concerning how the interests could fit together in a consensus agreement.”

The Tuck stakeholders team was created nearly two years ago. It is a project of the Natural Resources Leadership Institute, a joint venture of North Carolina State University and the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service. Its mission is to develop a set of consensus recommendations that will provide enhancement of the Tuckasegee River, its tributaries, Duke Power reservoirs and the related natural resources of the basin.

The stakeholders team was originally scheduled to complete its recommendations by February 2003. However, Duke Power representative Jeff Lineberger told team members that the relicensing schedule “is at a point where we need to fast forward the group.”

“It’s time to roll up our sleeves and get to work,” Lineberger said.

Licenses for Duke Power’s generating plants along the Tuckasegee are scheduled for relicensing by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in 2005 (Bryson, Franklin, Mission and Dillsboro) and 2006 (East Fork and West Fork.) Duke is mandated to have draft licenses to FERC by mid-2003.

The trial balloon contained eight general areas — recreation facilities, public information, lake levels, minimum flow and bypass flow, angling and recreational flow, resource enhancement project, shoreline protection and cultural resources. Some general actions and some particular actions were listed under each topic.

Some of the proposals are sure to be hotly debated. Take, for example, a proposal under the “resource enhancement” category: to remove most or all of the dam on the Tuckasegee River in Dillsboro.

T.J. Walker, a new member of the stakeholders team, owns the Dillsboro Inn Bed and Breakfast a couple of hundred feet downstream of the dam. He said he considered the dam a historic landmark.

The rock and masonry Dillsboro Dam, built in the early 1920s, is 12-feet high and 310-feet long. It was purchased by NP&L from Dillsboro and Sylva Electric Company in 1957. The Dillsboro Dam is the smallest of Duke’s 31 hydro plants and the second smallest hydro plant licensed by FERC in North Carolina.

According to a Duke handout, dam removal could “add about 11 miles of unimpeded Tuckasegee River for boating, bringing total unimpeded river above Fontana Lake to 32 miles; and permit some aquatic species to move more freely up and down the river.”

The impacts listed were “loss of a waterfall over the 12-foot dam; loss of waterfall sound that somewhat masks road noise from the nearby U.S .441 bridge and possible temporary downstream effects of sediment movement.”

“I am grateful Fred Alexander (Duke Power district manager) contacted me. I am going to be involved myself, and I hope other stakeholders who will be impacted will get involved also,” said Walker.

Walker said the generator building was simply a metal skin set over a beautiful old post and beam construction.

“The aesthetic value, the sound and appearance of the waterfall are of great commercial value to my business. I am disappointed they haven’t maintained it and don’t look at the dam as a resource. I think it would be a loss to the area, historically and environmentally. The ecology of the river has adapted to the dam,” said Walker.

Others present also had concerns about removal of the dam.

Mark Cantrell of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said sediment buildup behind the dam was an issue that would have to be addressed if the dam was removed, but that it was not insurmountable.

Lineberger pointed out the trial balloon was completely non-binding and could be withdrawn in whole or in part at any time prior to signing an agreement.

“This is a snapshot. The goal of this group is to reach consensus, and consensus will look different from this trial balloon,” he said.

Cantrell said he thought the trial balloon was a good start.

“It addresses most of the main issues, but the details will have to be fleshed out.”

Steve Smutko of N.C. State, facilitator for the Tuckasegee Stakeholders Team, told members they were there Thursday to “decide how we are going to talk about” the proposals, not to debate them. In the end, the group will be asked to assemble a set of agreements that Duke will be able to pass on to FERC.

Steve Reed, an environmental planner for N.C. Division of Water Resources and the original facilitator for the Tuckasegee group, told members it was important to realize their task was to make recommendations, and that they were separate from the relicensing project.

The relicensing of Duke’s Western North Carolina hydro plants is unusual because it falls between the two models commonly used by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

According to Ron McKittrick of FERC, traditional relicensing efforts simply follow FERC’s official protocols that determine what issues must be addressed, what agencies must be included and what agencies should be included. FERC’s involvement in traditional relicensing is minimal. In an alternative relicensing project, FERC enters the process earlier and the NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) process begins earlier.

While Duke’s hybrid process brings more stakeholders to the table, FERC will still have to come in and implement the NEPA process. McKittrick said the NEPA process would proceed more smoothly depending on how many issues the stakeholders reach a consensus on. There will also be two or three more opportunities for public comment on Duke’s relicensing application, according to McKittrick.

James Johnson, who owns a rafting company on the Tuckasegee and is a member of the stakeholders team, said Duke’s first set of proposals was simply the start of negotiations.

“They’ve put an offer on the table; now it’s our turn to come up with a counter offer,” he said.