Exelon To Relicense Conowingo

Operators of Conowingo dam on Susquehanna River prepare for relicensing

Exelon is currently at the tail end of its seven- to nine-year relicensing process for the Conowingo Dam, a carbon-free, energy-producing dam that has been shrouded in controversy over the amount of sediment coming over the dam and harming the Chesapeake Bay. If Exelon gets approved for the license, it would be allowed to operate the dam for another 46 years.

It's not Exeleon's fault that the pool behind the dam is filling with sediment.  They don't own the land upstream, or control the land use for that land.

Exelon is participating in a sediment study on the Lower Susquehanna River Watershed, which is a three-year ongoing study started in September 2011 that looks at options for managing sediment in the watershed and is being coordinated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Judge said the 14-mile pond behind the dam traps about two-thirds of the sediment that comes from the Susquehanna River on an annual basis.

If I were the EPA Bay Program, or Maryland DNR, I would be doing everything possible to make this relicensing  to go as smoothly as possible.

Michael Bruce, director of the resource assessment service at Maryland Department of Natural Resources, which is involved in the Lower Susquehanna River Watershed Assessment by providing some non-federal money to fund the study, said the study is trying to cover all options for taking care of the sediment issue at the dam. “We understand that this is a huge issue and ... there’s not one single silver bullet that’s going to be able to solve the problem,” Bruce said.

OK, now this is funny.  Somehow, the much vaunted WAPO layers of fact checking managed to miss that the DNR Director of Resource Assessment is Bruce Michael, not Michael Bruce. There's a name for that sinking feeling you get when you read an article about something you really know (I've met Bruce Michael), and you realize that all the news you read and hear is full of the same kind of errors.