Brookfield Renewable told Maine regulators that its decision to sell four dams on the Kennebec River was influenced by the state's "overburdensome" fish passage requirements to relicense the four hydropower generators.
In an Oct. 16 letter to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, the international power company said standards imposed by the state in a draft water quality certificate conflicted with state law, would be prohibitively expensive to implement and were "arguably unattainable."
One of the motivating factors for the sale "is the increasingly complex, expensive and uncertain regulatory landscape surrounding hydroelectric operations on the Lower Kennebec River," the company said in its letter.
The Nature Conservancy last month unveiled an agreement to buy the dams around Skowhegan and Waterville with the goal of decommissioning them and ultimately returning a natural flow to the river and allow fish including Atlantic Salmon to swim to spawning grounds in its tributaries.
Brookfield has sought a new water quality certificate for its Shawmut Dam for years in order to get it relicensed by federal regulators. And it has tangled with the DEP and other Maine agencies over the need to add new kinds of passages that would aid the migration of sea-run fish.
Now the company said it is withdrawing its certificate application and asking the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for an abeyance to keep operating while The Nature Conservancy files plans to decommission the dams.
In its letter, Brookfield said Maine DEP was asking for fish passages that exceeded federal requirements and would cost far more than the $100 million plan it submitted. And the draft water quality certificate also imposed standards that could threaten the continued operation of the other hydroelectric projects the company operates in Maine, it added.
In a statement, the Maine DEP spokesperson David Madore said the agency was "taken aback" by Brookfield's response and "strongly disagrees" with its characterization of its draft order.
The standards in the draft certificate incorporated federally recommended requirements for endangered species and included measures to meet those standards, Madore added.
The agency "will continue to wok with whatever owns the four Kennebec River dams to implement science-based fish passage measures that are consistent with Maine law," Madore said.
Nature Conservancy spokesperson Jeremy Cluchey, in a statement, said Brookfield's withdrawal of a water quality certificate application doesn't change its commitment to work closely with local communities and businesses "on a restoration plan that restores the ecology of the Kennebec and strengthens the region's economic vitality."
