Hydropower Licensing Transparency Act

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 3657, which will provide transparency into the hydropower licensing process at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, FERC.

Today, FERC is responsible for issuing licenses for hydropower dams, but it is often dependent on other regulatory entities, such as the Army Corps, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service, or State water agencies, to provide information and approvals that FERC relies on to issue licenses. It can also be dependent on the dam developer itself to give FERC necessary information.

With all these different entities involved in the process, it is often difficult to monitor from the outside and understand where things stand on a particular project.

This bill helps to bring more transparency to the process. It requires an annual report to Congress on the status of each license application and outstanding actions that are required of regulatory agencies or the applicants themselves. This is particularly important now because 15 percent of the electric capacity at hydropower dams will come up for relicensing in the next decade.

Forecasts for electricity demand also seem to be increasing by the day, and that is why it is critically important that we have transparency into where the hangups are in the hydropower licensing process.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative Schrier for her hard work on this bipartisan bill. I also thank Representative Fulcher, Chairs Guthrie and Latta, and Republican committee staff for accommodating commonsense, bipartisan amendments to the bill, such as expanding it to cover new hydropower projects.

Schrier), who is the sponsor of the bill.

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Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I urge bipartisan support for this important bill related to hydropower dams, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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