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| The Conowingo Dam (Photo by Christine Condon/Maryland Matters) |
When it comes to the Conowingo Dam, tensions have cooled between leaders in rural Maryland counties and state officials, as well as dam owner Constellation Energy.
That fact was on display Thursday at the Maryland Association of Counties summer conference in Ocean City, when leaders from all three camps convened — this time to discuss a settlement agreement through which Constellation will pay $340 million for various environmental projects over the next several decades, in exchange for a crucial water quality certification from the state.
Initially, Republican officials in several rural Maryland jurisdictions, under the banner of the Clean Chesapeake Coalition, challenged that deal, as they were long aggrieved by sediment overflow events from the at-capacity dam, which is located in Cecil County. But state environmental officials persuaded them to drop their challenge.
Now, the Clean Chesapeake Coalition is no more, replaced by an advisory group with a far more collaborative tone, Cecil County Administrator Dan Schneckenburger said Thursday.
“We pivoted to: Let’s try to work together,” Schneckenburger said. “We’ve always been on different sides of this issue — maybe not addressing it the way we wanted to see it addressed. So we ultimately said, ‘Let’s put together an advisory group, and we can work on implementation of the settlement.’”
But there’s still a possibility that a wrench could be thrown into Maryland’s plans.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission still must decide whether to sign off on Maryland’s certification, and whether to issue a new 50-year license for the dam to continue operating.
And in January, President Donald Trump’s (R) Environmental Protection Agency proposed a rule change, setting new limits on state water quality certifications, known as Clean Water Act Section 401 certifications.
State officials believe that their water quality certification —and the millions of dollars worth of accompanying environmental projects — is not in jeopardy, since they filed the license application with FERC last fall, well before the new draft rule was issued, said Adam Ortiz, deputy secretary at the Maryland Department of the Environment, which negotiated the settlement with Constellation and local riverkeepers. The state is expecting FERC approval next year, Ortiz told the audience.
“We’ve been checking in: ‘How’s it going over there? Are we ready to proceed?’ And there’s no indication that there’s going to be a problem,” Ortiz said during Thursday’s meeting. “That doesn’t mean that there’s not a possibility that is a problem.”
The new rule, if it moves forward, would limit states’ abilities to object to “non-point” pollution sources, focusing instead on “point sources” such as industrial sites that discharge wastewater directly into the environment, Ortiz said.
The dam is considered a non-point pollution source, since it does not generate pollution of its own but instead acts as a pass-through for contaminants flowing down the Susquehanna River, including farm fertilizers from upstream, and into the Chesapeake Bay.
Federal officials believe that the new rule would protect “water quality while eliminating regulatory overreach that has imposed unnecessary burden on critical infrastructure projects,” according to documents released about the alteration.
Conowingo Dam, by intercepting sediments that would otherwise end up in the Chesapeake Bay has been protecting the Bay from excess mud for nearly a century, mud that, except for Conowingo Dams existence, would have ended up in the Bay. But it's sediment holding capacity is now exhausted, as was inevitable. Forcing Constellation to pony up for poorly defined "environmental projects" as the price for continued licensing is simple extortion, and will only result in higher electricity prices in the mid-Atlantic region, already some of the nations highest.
"Once you have paid him the Danegeld/ You never get rid of the Dane."
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