On April 23rd, American Whitewater filed comments with Western Carolina Paddlers to the Federal Energy Regulatory commission that cite significant inadequacies with the relicensing of 4 dams that regulate the Cheaoh and Little Tennessee River. This significant collaborative effort documents the power company's abuse of the Alternative Licensing Process and the breakdown of nearly three years of negotiations between the power company (Tapoco Inc) and the rest of the stakeholders.

Currently negotiations are moving forward between Tapoco and some stakeholders but the recreation community and several other interests have been categorically excluded from these negotiations. American Whitewater is disappointed in Tapoco's decision to not include recreation in the settlement discussions. The decision completely disregards the massive amount of work that American Whitewater, Western Carolina Paddlers, Carolina Canoe Club, and several outfitters have put into the stakeholder process. We have attended essentially all of the multi-day monthly stakeholder meetings as well as many working group meetings, helped with the design and implementation of the recreation studies, and offered significant written and oral comments throughout the process. We undertook these significant efforts in collaboration assuming that Tapoco intended to negotiate in good faith as the process drew to a close. However, as the negotiations neared the settlement deadline of February 2003, Tapoco made it clear that they intended to provide NO releases in the world class Cheoah River for whitewater recreation. They maintained this position and submitted only to the requests of the resource agencies for some limitted boatable flows intended to fulfill ecological restoration goals.

The Cheoah River offers roughly nine miles of nearly continuous class IV whitewater that drops 100 feet per mile through a narrow road-side channel. The river flows clear and beautifully through some of the most aesthetic National Forest Lands in Western North Carolina and the Southeast as a whole. Scheduled releases on the Cheoah would obviously change paddling as we know it in the Southeast, and would offer a significant economic boost to Graham County.

We have now filed comments with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that request our interests be considered and mandated by the FERC in any new license that is issued for the Tapoco Project. We will have several more opportunities to communicate directly with the FERC and are optomistic that they will recognize the inadequacies in the Tapoco License Application that was recently filed, and grant us recreatoinal releases and access that will adequately mitigate the 4 dams' significant impacts on whitewater recreation.

Our comments are now part of the public record and can be read by clicking Here

Special thanks go out to Rod Baird and Chris Bell for all their hard work on this project and these comments.