NC Water Rights Blog:

A recent article titled "Whose water is it anyway!?" ran in the Greensboro-High Point-Winston-Salem publication Yes! Weekly (http://www.yesweekly.com/article-8358-whose-water-is-it-anyway_.html) Read more...

The N.C. Water Rights Coalition (www.ncwaterrights.org) is commending Gov. Bev Perdue for filing evidence on September 18, 2009, with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in Read more...

Good news: Six months after finding PCBs in fish in Badin Lake, the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services has finally posted a fish consumption advisory for pregnant women,Read more...

A new Web site called LeaveThatDamAlone.com recently blitzed media outlets with announcements and radio ads containing numerous inaccuracies about the Yadkin Hydroelectric Project.Read more...

Alcoa proclaims in its quest to retain a monopoly on water rights for the Yadkin River via the Yadkin Hydroelectric Project that some stakeholders in the licensing process approved of its plans by signing the Relicensing Settlement Agreement, or RSA.Read more...

The N.C. House Water Resources and Infrastructure Committee conducted a hearing on July 7 on Senate Bill 967 (Creation of Yadkin River Trust). The legislation would allow the state to acquire and operate the Yadkin Hydroelectric Project as opposed to Alcoa Power Generating Inc.Read more...

Given the recent flurry of activity surrounding the Yadkin Hydroelectric Project, the N.C. Water Rights Coalition wants the citizens of North Carolina to know the truth and not rumors or misinformation about where things stand with the Project.Read more...

In a big blow to one of Alcoa's main points of contention regarding its relicensing application for the Yadkin Hydroelectric Project, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission announced April 17 that it would accept a motion by N.C. Gov. Bev Perdue to intervene in the application.Read more...

Among a recent list of "facts" Alcoa provided regarding its application to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for a license to operate the Yadkin Hydroelectric Project was this statement which was more fascinating about what it did not say than what it did.Read more...

The way Alcoa reacts in efforts to continue its monopoly of water rights for the Yadkin Hydroelectric Project makes you think it opposes everyone in state government who oversees it.Read more...

Alcoa's public relations specialists have repeatedly stated that the State of North Carolina is attempting to take Alcoa's private property during the current relicensing process for the Yadkin Hydroelectric Project. But there is no "taking of private property" without just compensation as Alcoa implies.Read more...

Attention, members of the N.C. Division of Water Quality and the Department of Environmental and Natural Resources (DENR): Your decision of whether Alcoa will receive a 401 Water Quality Certification to operate four dams on the Yadkin River (a/k/a the Yadkin Hydroelectric Project) is being watched and waited around the state, the nation and even the world, not just in Stanly County. Read more...

We celebrate the efforts of the members of the N.C. General Assembly, who passed the bill UNANIMOUSLY in the North Carolina House and Senate. Those votes, from both parties representing all areas of the state, clearly indicated that our legislators believe water rights are an important statewide issue worthy of review. Thank you, state leaders, for this important step to protect our rights to the waters of the Yadkin. Read more...

When Alcoa declared May 5 it received an annual license from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for the Yadkin Project, it conveyed the idea that this merely was just another step towards its final goal – receiving a 50-year license for exclusive water rights for the Yadkin Project from the FERC. This might be the case, but it also is the case that the delay in receiving a new license provides North Carolina with an opportunity that might otherwise have been lost. Read more...

A law enacted 88 years ago is a key reason why the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) should seriously consider whether Alcoa is entitled to receive yet another 50-year license for hydroelectric operations on the Yadkin River in Stanly County for the Yadkin Project. Interestingly, it is the same law that created the FERC in the first place. Read more...

The issue of water rights in the United States came to prominence in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when certain large industrialists (or as detractors might call some of them, “robber barons”) and conservationists fought over who had the rights to control natural resources. These rights were worth fortunes and were not easily subject to the laws of the free market. Where water for power production was concerned, the rights too easily became equivalent to monopolies. [Roger: the early developers were in fact free enterprisers who risked capital; most of them later got taken over by the utilities and Sam Insull who blocked their paths to the capital markets and transmission. Hence, the deletions] The battles extended to Congress as well, where water rights divided politicians as much along the lines of those favoring states’ rights versus federalists as well as industrialists versus conservationists. Read more...

When a company applies for a license from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, to use water for hydroelectric generation from a river, stream or other body of navigable water covered by the United States, it is asking for more than just that power. A licensee has rights to use the water of the river, as well as owns the dams, equipment and the land up to the high water mark. Read more...

As we mentioned in our previous Blogs2009 The History of Water Rights Part I & II, the federal licensing process for a nonfederal hydropower plant includes standards that must be met before the administering body, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), issues a license either to construct a brand new project (initial license) or renews a license to a company for an existing, licensed plant (strangely enough, this is called a “new” license and the process is called relicensing). We on the North Carolina Water Rights Coalition believe there are several standards Alcoa has failed to achieve. To help you better understand them, a little history about the Yadkin Project is in order. Read more...

Virtually every list of great American presidents includes the names of Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. To us, the members of the North Carolina Water Rights Coalition, Teddy and FDR are related more than just by blood and acclaim. They are also two principal – and principled – leaders in speaking out against private interests having too much control over the public’s water rights. Read more...