[6] State Study Clears Way For Further Condit Removal Permitting

A five-year state environmental review of PacifiCorp's plan for the removal of the 14.7 MW Condit project has been completed, opening the way for state and local permitting, including a section 401 water quality certificate. FERC has been waiting for the 401 to inform its decision on the utility's application to surrender the license for Condit, which is on the White Salmon River a few miles north of its confluence with the Columbia River in south central Washington.

The supplemental final environmental impact statement (SFEIS), prepared under the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) and published in March by the Washington Department of Ecology, did not select a preferred alternative but merely evaluated the proposal put forward by PacifiCorp. Derek Sandison, the department's central region director, said the SFEIS is aimed at providing information to officials who will make permitting decisions. "It provides more specific information upon which the permitting decisions can be made," which in turn will drive the conditions FERC includes in the surrender application. Other DOE staff are already working on the 401 application, which has been filed and withdrawn three times. Construction and storm water permits will also be needed.

The SFEIS was prepared because the state did not feel FERC's reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act adequately addressed all the issues. Sandison said the SFEIS has "added more to the conversation about what species will be impacted over what period of time, and has shed more light on the upstream effects of opening up the stream for fish migration."

He said it also provides a great deal more detail about the broad areas of known impacts, such as the possibility of sedimentation and turbidity in the White Salmon and Columbia Rivers, loss of wetlands, impacts to surrounding land use, noise, air quality, aesthetic effects and provisions for public safety, services and utilities.

PacifiCorp filed a $20 million, 23-party settlement in 1999 that called for removal to begin after the cessation of generating operations in 2006. FERC issued a "final supplemental final environmental impact statement" under the NEPA in 2002. Last year, FERC approved the utility's request, based on a supplement to the settlement, to postpone the cessation of operations to October 2008 so the utility could raise an extra $2 million from power sales to cover rising permitting costs. Among other things, the plan calls for draining the 1.8 mile-long reservoir through a tunnel that would be built through the dam; removing the dam and other appurtenances; and filling in the tailrace at the powerhouse. It is hoped the work will provide access to 33 miles of river and tributary habitat for anadromous steelhead and salmon and restore habitat for bull trout.

"It's been a long process," Sandison acknowledged. "And there are thorny issues because we don't remove many dams." He said it would not have been prudent to begin the state review before FERC completed the NEPA process, and that the length of the state review was due in part to its being a "third party" EIS. A lot of time was spent negotiating with PacifiCorp over the cost reimbursement, which he said came to about $300,000. Additional time was spent waiting for information from the utility. "We could have moved faster ourselves," he allowed. DOE published a draft of the document in 2005. "It was a situation where one side or the other was waiting for analyses that needed to be conducted to fully evaluate the impacts."

Sandison said it was not possible to say whether the SFEIS' additional information on the impacts of the removal plan will increase or decrease the scope of the work or its costs. "That will be dictated by the permitting conditions." -Ben Tansey

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