Hydropower Relicensing meeting for Falls Village & Bulls BridgePublic Outreach Meetings:December 4, 2000, Lee Kellogg Elementary School, Falls Village, CTDecember 6, 2000, Northville Elementary School, New Milford, CTDecember 7, 2000, First South Congregational Church, Hartford, CT1 pm – 3 pm December 5 and 6, 2000 8:30 am Meet at the Northeast Generations Services-CT Hydro Office parking lot in New Milford and travel by bus to the facilities returning about 4 pm.Dec. 5 trip will visit the Falls Village facilities and possibly the BullsBridge.Contact Robert Gates of Northeast Generation Service byDec. 1 to confirm locations and your attendance. He can be reached by email: Gates@nu.com”or 860-354-8840.The purpose of these meeting is:Site visit – inspect the Housatonic Project facilities, gain an understanding of the operational characteristics of the Project, and discuss potential licensing issues.Formal Agency/public outreach meetings – receive input on theenvironmental issues, take statements from experts and the public on issues, identify those issues that require a detailed analysis, solicit all available information, especially quantifiable data on the resources at issue.Marks New Stage in Ongoing Relicense Proceeding:These scoping meetings kick off a new phase, the FERC stage,in the ongoing relicense proceeding for the Falls Village and Bulls Bridgehydropower plants as well as three more power facilities further downstream on the Housatonic.The public meetings provide an opportunity for the whitewater community to lobby FERC staff to consider all values of the river in their environmental analysis.FERC needs to hear from the boating community the issues we want analyzed:Encourage FERC to consider a wide range of alternatives meetingwhitewater needs.Avoid a fishing verses boating argument.Focus on solutions rather than past problems.It’s extremely important for members of the whitewater community to be present at the public meetings. We need to conduct ourselves in a professional manner.Comments to make at Public Meetings:-FERC must do an environmental impact study (EIS) rather than an environmental assessment (EA)-FERC must consider a range of alternatives for each hydropower facility and corresponding river reaches balancing power and non-power uses of Housatonic River.-Alternatives must include objective environmental analysis of all river uses particularly listed beneficial uses such as whitewater-Whitewater Alternatives to consider:Decommission Falls Village and/or Bulls Bridge power plantsOperational restrictions of Falls Village and Bulls Bridge based on inflows (i.e., cease power generation when forebay inflows are equal to or greater than boating flows in respective reaches on weekends and holidays)All alternatives should include comparative economic analysis of power and non-power uses of the Housatonic RiverWritten comments will be accepted by FERC through Sunday,January 8, 2001.Comments should bemailed to:David P. Boergers, Secretary, FERC, 888 First Avenue, NE, Washington, DC 20426.FERC regulations require that the original and eight copies be submitted to FERC. All correspondence with FERC on this proceeding must clearly show at the top of the first page “Housatonic River Project FERC No. 2576-023 and Falls Village Project FERC No. 2597-018”.American Whitewater will be filing formal comments by January 8. We encourage local paddling groups to coordinate with American Whitewater. Please contact John Gangemi if you would like to assist with and sign on to comments: phone/fax: 406-837-3155/3156;Email: jgangemi@digisys.net