Defending the Clean Water Act in the Northeast

With ongoing efforts to weaken federal environmental safeguards, American Whitewater and its partners from throughout the Northeast are defending the Clean Water Act in state legal challenges to hydropower dam permits. American Whitewater, represented by the Environmental Litigation Clinic at Pace University law school, filed an appeal of the DEC water quality certification of the West Canada Creek Hydroelectric Project. State certification that hydropower dams meet water quality standards is required before the dams are licensed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

In New York, DEC failed to require that Erie Bulevard, a subsidiary of Brookfield Renewable, provide public access and boating flows at Prospect Falls and Trenton Falls. In other challenges to state water quality certifications of hydropower dams in the Northeast, American Whitewater along with other environmental groups will be filing state legal challenges to dam licensings along the Connecticut River in Vermont and New Hampshire, where Great River Hydro, a subsidiary of HydroQuebec, is seeking state permits to continue operating three hydropower dams that divert and dewater sections of the river, restrict public access, and create other environmental harms. At Bellows Falls on the Connecticut River, the dewatering, lack of access, and the presence of an obsolete low-head dam has eliminated all recreation opportunities in a section of the river that would otherwise provide whitewater boating opportunites.

American Whitewater and partners also joined in a legal challenge to Maine's certification of the Rumford Falls Hydroelectric Project on the Androscoggin River. Looking ahead, American Whitewater expects to focus more advocacy efforts on states to protect rivers through the Clean Water Act and other state environmental laws.