FERC on Thursday ordered the former operator of an upstate New York dam to pay $600,000 in civil penalties for failing to make needed repairs over six years and retain possession of all property needed to access the facility (P-9685-034).
Ampersand Cranberry Lake Hydro has 60 days to pay the fine for violating its hydroelectric license for the Cranberry Lake Project, located in St. Lawrence County, N.Y.
The project is owned by the Oswegatchie River-Cranberry Reservoir Regulating District Corp. (OR-CRRDC), a state municipal corporation. It includes a 57,400-acre-foot reservoir contained by dam that is 195 feet long and 19 feet high.
“The dam has a high hazard potential rating, which means that a failure of the project works would result in a probable loss of human life or economic or environmental losses,” FERC said.
Under FERC rules, hydro licensees are required to maintain property rights to their projects to provide access to the land associated with a dam in order to make repairs when necessary.
“In this particular case, Ampersand didn’t maintain those access rights. And thus, if something does go wrong or might go wrong, they don’t have the ability to access the site to make repairs that are necessary,” FERC Chairman Richard Glick said in a statement Thursday. “And this particular dam is classified as having a high hazard potential, so that’s something that we take very seriously.”
Thursday’s order follows an October 2021 commission issuance directing Ampersand Cranberry Lake to explain why it should not be assessed a civil penalty for violating its hydroelectric license and a November response by the company acknowledging that it failed to retain possession of all project property, in violation of its license. (See FERC Hits NY Hydro Plant for Delayed Repairs.)
FERC granted Ampersand Cranberry a license for the project in 2015 after the company promised to complete safety work related to the facility’s fuse plug spillway in the dam’s embankment and to raise the earthen embankment crest. The company notified the commission last July that it had agreed to terminate its lease and give up access rights to the project site to settle litigation with OR-CRRDC, which sued the company in 2019 over its failure to make rent payments.
FERC said the settlement came despite its repeated warnings that terminating the lease would violate the company’s license and would not relieve it of its responsibility to complete the outstanding work on the dam.