LAWRENCE — Power plant operator Patriot Hydro LLC in July proposed removing the historic North and South Canals from the boundary of its Lawrence hydroelectric project in its draft application for a federal license to operate the plant for up to 50 years.
The canal proposal has been opposed by members of the public and other stakeholders including the city of Lawrence, the Lawrence History Center, The Lawrence Historical Commission, Groundwork Lawrence and Lawrence Community Works.
In another ongoing federal application to operate a hydro-plant, in nearby Lowell, Boott Hydropower, represented in federal filings by Patriot Hydro, has reversed itself on its original proposal to remove the downtown Lowell canals from the project boundary.
The change has some Lawrence stakeholders wondering why Boott reversed itself in Lowell, amending its project application license to keep the canals in the project, while Patriot Hydro seeks the canals’ removal from the hydro project in Lawrence.
Patriot Hydro did not respond to a question on the seeming inconsistency.
Meanwhile, state and federal fish and wildlife agencies have filed comments and raised concerns at hearings over the failure of the Lawrence project to provide appropriate fish and eel passage beyond the Great Stone Dam.
The dam is the first barrier migratory Merrimack River fish face in attempts to reach upriver spawning grounds.
Herring and other fish without passage are preyed upon by striped bass. Fish heading downriver are also imperiled at the dam.
At the same time that Patriot Hydro has been preparing its final application to operate, with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, due in November, the company has been meeting with an advisory committee to develop possible futures for the Great Stone Dam, the Merrimack River, and Lawrence’s riverfront.
Patriot Hydro’s current license expires in 2028.
The company’s recent draft application is its latest attempt to shed the Lawrence canals from the project footprint.
The owners previously tried to remove the canals, unsuccessfully, in 2022 — just before relicensing started.
Opponents say removing the canals from the license would strip the waterways of federal regulatory oversight.
They warn this risks further deterioration of the historic canals and infrastructure and threatens millions of dollars in mixed-use development along the canals.
Opponents also say the canals’ removal breaches the Lawrence waterways’ historic protection and undermines the agreement under which the historic canals were originally licensed in 1978 by FERC.
Patriot Hydro, parent company of the Essex Co., the registered owner of the project, states in its July 6 draft license application:
“Under the new FERC license, Essex is proposing to remove the North and South Canals from the Lawrence Project boundary as they do not serve any Project purpose. It is questionable whether the canals ever served any Project purpose … .”
Lawrence City Councilor Marc Laplante said in an interview this week that the canals have been and can again be an integral part of hydropower production.
Furthermore, Patriot Hydro’s desire to remove the canals from the project can be seen as an attempt to shirk responsibility for maintaining the canals, he said.
The Lawrence History Center’s director, Susan Grabski, said in an interview that she’s not surprised by the owners’ attempt to remove the canals from the project boundary since they do not generate power for the project anymore and the canals are in disrepair because of the owners’ poor custodianship of the structures for decades.
“I think it’s shameful for them to remove the canals from the boundary without at the very least finding a proper custodian of the historic resource going forward,” Grabski said.
The chairman of the Lawrence Historical Commission, Jonas Stundzia, said the commission rejects Patriot Hydro’s canal proposal to subdivide property on the National Register of Historical Places.
The North Canal and Dam National Historical District is recognized by the U.S. Department of the Interior, he said.
Patriot Hydro is the third company in six years to own the hydro project. The two others were Central Rivers Power and Enel Green Power.
All the companies have been represented in filings and other capacities by Patriot Hydro stakeholder relations manager Skip Medford and licensing manager Kevin Webb.
In 2023, Patriot’s parent company, LS Power, bought the Lawrence hydro project and other holdings from Central Rivers Power’s parent company, Hull Street Energy.
New York-based LS Power Development LLC is a large energy infrastructure developer and operator with a private equity arm called LS Power Equity Advisors LLC.
The canal waterways in Lowell are privately owned by Patriot Hydro through its subsidiary/operation entity Boott Hydropower LLC, according to a 2023 online document from the city of Lowell.
The Lawrence hydro-project includes the 35-foot-high and 900-foot-long Great Stone Dam, once considered an engineering marvel and remains a testament to immigrant labor.
The project also includes the hand-dug, 1-mile-long and 15 feet deep North Canal and the 3/4-mile-long and 10-feet deep South Canal; two 8.4 megawatt power generating units; the water rights to a 9.8 mile Merrimack River impoundment area; fish elevators; a powerhouse; and an underground transmission line.
The dam, canals and infrastructure are at the core of Lawrence’s history dating back to 1845 when the state legislature granted a group of Boston businessmen, the Essex Co., water rights and the authority to buy land.
The developers were also granted power to sell real estate and the flow of water to mills, thereby building an industrial city modeled on upriver Lowell.
Historically, the canals channeled water from the Lawrence Great Dam to intake pipes at mills along the canals to spin turbines and generate power for machinery that manufactured textiles.
In 1978, developers sought and received a FERC license to build a hydro-plant at the dam and sell the power it generated for residential, commercial and industrial uses.
A federal legal notice on the project from 1977 reads, in part, “The Essex dam, which is 130 years old, and the North Canal are recognized historical sites.
“The applicant proposes to preserve these historical properties and provide public access and recreational facilities at the project.”
Over in Lowell — a key cog in America’s industrial revolution — Boott Hydro filed its final FERC application for a license to operate its Lowell hydroelectric project in 2021, two years before the project license expired in 2023.
After the owner proposed removing the downtown Lowell canals from the project boundary, Lowell stakeholders — including residents, the city of Lowell, federal and state agencies and UMass Lowell — objected and the project owner entered negotiations.
Boott still does not have its license, but in an amended final application, the company now proposes leaving the canals within the project boundary with a plan for maintaining them.
Early on, in comments filed with FERC in 2023, Brad Buitenhuy of the Lowell Conservation Commission objected to the Lowell project owner’s canal proposal.
To remove a large portion of the Lowell Canal System and its hydroelectric infrastructure from the project boundary would also end oversight by the Conservation Commission, Buitenhuy said.
“This would leave this valuable historic resource without a meaningful comprehensive plan for its maintenance, which would adversely affect its value as a historic property, and leave downtown Lowell exposed to the blight which had plagued the city during the decades prior to its recent revival,” the comment read.
In Lawrence, Patriot Hydro has in recent years spent money on the canals including repairs to the Lower Locks of the North Canal and repairing major sinkhole damage off the South Canal.
On June 25, in comments filed with FERC, Brad Buschur of Groundwork Lawrence requested that Patriot Hydro improve its study of historic properties and the canal system.
Groundwork Lawrence, a local nonprofit focused on environmental and public health, wants Patriot Hydro to better assess the structural integrity of wall sections of the North Canal and the Lower Locks.
It also wants to assess the disrepair of the North and South Canals’ gatehouses, and provide estimated costs to repair the canal walls and associated infrastructure.
Patriot Hydro does not believe such assessments are warranted.
It states its studies are complete and meet all FERC requirements.
Patriot Hydro said it has performed ongoing maintenance at both the North and South Canals and in 2023 completed repairs to the Lower Locks.
Some of the items of contention have been taken up by the Lawrence Dam and Riverfront Community Vision Project, funded by a Nature Conservancy grant, according to participants.
The advisory group is led by Rhode Island School of Design landscape architect Emily Vogler and assembled to complement FERC’s licensing framework, according to the vision project’s core team in a filing with FERC this summer.
The core members are Katie Kennedy of The Nature Conservancy, Matthew Cranney of the Merrimack River Watershed Council and Buschur.
The vision project is developing a range of alternatives related to the Lawrence Hydro Project including the Great Stone Dam and its impoundment, the Merrimack River and its riverfront, and the broader community of Lawrence, the FERC filing reads.