US F&W: We Warned MED
MASSENA - Numerous environmental red flags raised over the past five years should have been enough for the Massena Electric Department to reconsider its now dead Grasse River dam project before millions were spent on several years' worth of studies, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said.
Marci M. Caplis said her agency, as well as the state Department of Environmental Conservation and the Army Corps of Engineers, had been warning MED over the last five years about the potential environmental hazards and difficulties associated with completing a dam.
The Massena Electric Utility Board voted unanimously last week to end its effort to seek a license to construct the dam in the Grasse River near downtown Massena.
"Any of the concerns raised was serious enough that it could have warranted them to take another look at the project," Ms. Caplis said.
A major misconception was that each state and federal agency only raised concerns recently about the environmental impact of the now dead dam, she said.
"There had been a lot of issues raised along the way, so it shouldn't be an enormous surprise," she said.
Among those issues were the dam's impact on the river's Lake Sturgeon and American Eel populations and migration patterns, she said.
American Eel migrate to freshwater sources to spawn, and Lake Sturgeon migrate to the ocean to reproduce, Ms. Caplis said. Installing a dam would harm their ability to travel and reproduce, she said.
"If a fish can't get back to where it was programmed to lay its eggs or to fertilize eggs, then you've lost a generation," she said.
The ability for all fish to pass through the dam was also of deep concern to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the DEC, Ms. Caplis said.
Representatives from the DEC and the Army Corps of Engineers could not be reached for comment Thursday.
State and federal agencies knew the Grasse River used to have an operational dam until it breached in the 1990s, Ms. Caplis said. But in the time since then, fish populations have been allowed to grow, she said.
Installing a new dam would negate the environmental progress made since the dam was breached, according to Ms. Caplis.
"Sure, they're used to be a dam there. They're also used to be a whole lot more fish there," she said. "The population is so small that anything that is built would have an impact on the species."
People don't notice a loss of fish and wildlife over time, she said.
"It's no coincidence that you have the development of dams on all of the rivers in the Northeast, and you had a decline in the populations to the point of extirpation in many rivers of species." she said. "These both happened and it's not a coincidence."
It is now up to state and federal environmental agencies to ensure the protection of fish and wildlife from manmade projects, she said.
"We have been engineering in this nation for hundreds of years," she said. "There's no place left for our wildlife to go."
Andrew J. McMahon, superintendent of Massena Electric Department, said he and other project leaders knew of the environmental concerns raised throughout the four-year licensing effort.
"We were aware of the concerns but our assessment was that we could work collaboratively to find solutions," he said. "But the agencies did not want to work collaboratively to find solutions."
The MED board, in a strongly worded four-page letter sent to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last week, shared their frustration with the process that led them to end efforts to gain a license to construct the dam after spending approximately $5 million on environmental studies and pre-engineering work. FERC was the agency charged to serve as the arbiter in the licensing process.
MEUB members charged it was clear the agencies - specifically naming the DEC, U.S. Fish and Wildlife and the Corps of Engineers - had prejudged the project and intended to wear MED down in the lengthy regulatory process.
"The MED board is astonished at the attitudes and actions of government agencies whose responsibility it was to work with us on this project," the letter noted.
Celeste M. Miller, a spokeswoman for FERC, said even though her agency administers the licensing process, it was up to MED and the state and federal agencies to complete it.
"We did everything we could on our end in moving forward with the process," she said.
