A public meeting to solicit input on the power companies plans to modify the dam and reduce the paddiling opertunities below the spillway is scheduled for this thursday eavening in Lancaster, PA. Paddlers interested in preserving this resource are being urged to attend to make their voices heard. See The American Whitewater website, for more information.

American Whitewater.com wrote AW Project Update Paddlers have been in negotiations with the power company for over a year on this issue.  The current hydro project reduces boating days from an average of 197 days per year to 84 days.  The proposed project modifications would further reduce boating days to a mere 51 days.  To mitigate the loss of days, loss of features, and the delay in relicensing, two options have been identified.  The first involves the provision of releases by spilling water over the dam through existing whitewater features to restore boating opportunities.  The second, and likely the more efficient and elegant proposal, involves creating two new whitewater features downstream of a single turbine and providing releases that serve as both power production and recreational releases.  While an unusual solution, this latter proposal will likely be more cost efficient, produce more power and benefit fisheries more than spilling water over the dam.  We hope to reach settlement on this issue in the coming weeks, however at this time no agreement has been reached.   Our interest is in protecting at least the existing boating opportunities, while mitigating ongoing impacts.  Specifically, the 33 (8 hour) days of boating that would be eliminated by the proposed project modifications should be re-integrated into the proposed operations.  Mitigation should thus add a minimum of 264 hours of releases or spills annually to the proposed future operations, which need not be provided as 8-hour days, for a total of 672 hours representative of 84 days of boating opportunities.    Interested paddlers are encouraged to attend these meetings.  If you cannot attend but would like to comment on the Scoping Document or the project in general, please send your comments to carla@americanwhitewater.org and we'll forward your comments to FERC.