Dam license faces appeal

Saying the conditions imposed upon it would pose an unfair financial burden on ratepayers, the Pend Oreille Public Utility District on Friday appealed portions of its new 50-year license to operate the Box Canyon Dam.

In a motion filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the utility said certain license requirements would cost more than $2.4 million to implement in the first six months and more than $5 million in the first two years.

Any of the parties involved in the relicensing process has the right to appeal parts of the license to FERC within 30 days of its issuance. They also have the option of appealing FERC’s decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals, a FERC spokesperson said.

The utility objects primarily to a requirement by the U.S. Department of the Interior that it build fish passageways both above and below its dam, said the district’s manager, Bob Geddes. Though the Interior Department has the right to impose mandatory conditions on the license, two FERC commissioners disagreed that the utility district should have to follow the requirement because, they said, the science behind it is faulty.

“Our Environmental Impact Statement concluded that fish passage at the project has not been established because of the lack of data indicating that substantial numbers of target species are attempting to migrate past Box Canyon Dam and the low numbers of these fish found below the dam,” wrote FERC Chairman Pat Wood. “For these reasons, I do not believe that the results of our EIS warrant the construction and operation of expensive fish passage facilities at this project.”

Rick Donaldson, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, disagreed.

“We think there is substantive information on the record to support our fish-way prescription,” Donaldson said. “It’s hundreds, if not thousands of documents on the record.”

Deane Osterman, director of natural resources for the Kalispel Tribe of Indians, said he expected the utility district’s appeal. The Box Canyon Dam reservoir occupies almost 500 acres of the Kalispel Indian Reservation. Osterman said he’d rather see the money spent over the last 10 years on consultants and attorneys used to address some of the environmental impacts of the dam.

“We could have moved forward years ago and been implementing mitigation measures,” Osterman said. “All it does it delay the time when that implementation is going to come due.”

The utility district wrote in a motion filed Friday with FERC that the fish passageway and other conditions could irreparably harm the district’s ratepayers.

“The District is not a large utility with millions or even hundreds of thousands of customers,” the district wrote in its motion for an emergency stay of certain licensing conditions. “Rather … the very viability of the county’s largest private employer, Ponderay Newsprint Company, is at risk, and should it close, all costs of relicensing will be directly passed on to the district’s remaining 7,000 customers with devastating economic consequences.”

If the company closed as a result of rate increases, the document continues, remaining customers likely would see rates rise by over 350 percent. The county could lose 671 jobs by 2010, nearly 15 percent of its total employment, the motion predicts. And personal income could fall by nearly $50 million, or over 13 percent, it said.

“These losses would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for the Pend Oreille County economy to absorb because the county is already burdened by high unemployment, high poverty and low per capita income,” the motion said.