The following letter to FERC, which has been reformatted for posting on Park Watch, is from the Washington, DC Law Offices of Duncan, Weinberg, Genzer & Pembroke, P.C. on behalf of Crown Hydro.

Arlene Fried
Co-founder of Park Watch
______

March 26, 2014

Ms. Kimberly Bose
Secretary
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
Mail Code: DHAC, PJ-12.6
888 First Street, NE
Washington, DC 20426

Re: Submission of a FERC Form 80 on Recreational Usage for the Crown Mill Hydroelectric Project, Project No. 11175

Dear Secretary Bose:

Crown Hydropower, LLC (“Crown”) is the licensee for the Crown Mill Hydroelectric Project, FERC Project No. 11175 (“Project”). The Project, as yet, is unconstructed, and Crown has been diligently pursuing an application for an amendment of its license for the Project. To that end, on February 25, 2014, Crown submitted to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (“Commission” or “FERC”) a schedule for the development of an application for an amendment to the Project license.

At that time, Crown reported that it had convened a public meeting and had received numerous comment letters from individual members of the public as well as from resource agencies. Crown also reported that, through this process, resource agencies and the public identified a number of studies to be performed or specific concerns that warranted further consideration as Crown proceeded to develop a final license application. One such concern that several resource agencies and the general public raised was the amendment’s effect on the ability of residents and the public to continue using the area within the vicinity of the project as a recreation center. Therefore, in its February 25th submission, Crown committed to perform a Recreation Study.

Crown is in receipt of a January 23, 2014 letter from Dr. Mark Ivy of FERC’s Division of Hydropower and Compliance that reminds Crown of the obligation, pursuant to 18 C.F.R. § 8.11, to gather recreation usage data for the Project in order to complete and submit by April 1, 2015 a FERC Form 80. Crown notes that the January 23rd letter indicates that only those projects that are operational as of January 1, 2014 need to comply with the requirement to submit a FERC Form 80 by April 1, 2015.1 For that reason, Crown has concluded that it is not required to submit a FERC Form 80 by April 1,2015 or collect recreation data beginning March 15, 2014 for use in the FERC Form 80.Please let us know if any further information is required in this matter.

Further, Crown submits that the Recreation Study that it is currently designing will be instructive as to the level of recreation usage of the project area. Crown will submit the results of this study to the Commission at the appropriate time.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.

Respectfully Submitted,

Donald H. Clarke
Joshua E. Adrian

Counsel to Crown Hydropower, LLC