A 10-year-long study is providing stakeholders along the Connecticut River new insight into the river’s dams, water flows and restoration potentials to help them make better decisions about how they use the river and its tributaries.
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers media relations officer Tim Dugan and Project Manager Timothy Hatfield said that in 2008 The Nature Conservancy asked the Corps to look at all of the major dams in the watershed, as well as the flows of the river, to see how any changes could benefit it and its tributaries ecologically.
“We looked at 73 of the river’s largest dams — we own 14 of them,” Hatfield said. “Then, we looked at what the river would look like if there were no dams.”
Hatfield said the Corps, which also worked with the University of Massachusetts Amherst, looked at hydropower, the environment, flood control and more.
“We wanted to see what it would look like if we optimize the flow of the river and its tributaries for all of the different stakeholders along it,” he said.
Dugan said effecting the best balance and most positive change for stakeholders and the river was the goal.
“Before anyone can do anything, we have to understand the dams and how they operate,” said Hatfield.
He said, for instance, a company like FirstLight Hydro Generating Co. should understand the river as it seeks re-licensing from FERC. More than five years into that re-licensing process, FirstLight is hoping to shuffle its Northfield Mountain and Turners Falls projects into two separate holding companies.
FirstLight spokesman Leonard Green said, “We are simply trying to align the projects by the type of service they provide. We envision Northfield Mountain to be part of a FirstLight storage company,” while the two Turners Falls hydro plants would remain in a “conventional hydro company” along with its Housatonic and Scotland projects in Connecticut.
Franklin Regional Planning Board member Thomas Miner said in February that federal and state fisheries and wildlife agencies want more flows to protect endangered species, like shortnose sturgeon below the Turners Falls Dam, while American Whitewater and Appalachian Mountain Club have plans to make that area a premiere whitewater boating opportunity.
Hatfield said all of the stakeholders are served by the report. He said the Connecticut River watershed is the largest in New England, flowing through New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut, and the main stem and its tributaries have been heavily modified over the decades for power generation, flood control, water withdrawal and other purposes. He said those uses are important, but the changes in flow they have brought about often have detrimental effects on the natural environment. The study looks at seasonal high flows, seasonal low flows and daily flows.
The Corps said the negative impacts associated with human uses could be improved with better management, meaning those uses, as well as recreational, can be continued, but in ways that reduce or minimize the impacts to traditional species and habitats.
Hatfield said the report doesn’t tell anyone what they have to do, but instead makes suggestions about how to do the things they’ve been doing and will continue to do in a better way, with the health of the river in mind.
Hatfield said stakeholders will have the opportunity to use the Corps’ basinwide hydraulic model and decision support tool, which will give them a comprehensive understanding of positive and negative effects on the environment, as well as social and economic consequences of their actions.
“We are certainly very interested in seeing the report,” said Green. “We’d like to see what the Army Corps of Engineers has put together, and we’ll certainly take into consideration the results.”
To see the full report, visit: bit.ly/2CItblg