The Agency of Natural Resources has scheduled a public hearing for Tuesday February 16 at 7:00 PM at the Morristown Elementary School for comments on the draft Water Quality Certification for Morrisville's hydro units.

Water & Light owns and operates 3 hydroelectric plants on the Lamoille River (and Green River) per a 30 year license issued by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). These plants provide 10,000,000 kwhs or 20% of our annual customer energy needs from a renewable energy resource.

MW&L is in the process of relicensing these hydro plants. The relicensing process started in 2010. MW&L completed and paid for 17 studies requested by FERC and the VT Agency of Natural Resources (ANR). MW&L has spent over 5 years of effort and $600,000 to date on the relicensing process.

The FERC License includes the issuance of a Water Quality Certificate from the ANR. This certificate contains the conditions that ANR deems are required to meet Federal Water Quality Standards. The ANR issued a draft Water Quality Certificate in January of 2016. The draft decreases the amount of water that can be used for generating power at the hydro projects above what is required in our existing license. This will reduce the amount of energy MW&L can generate by an estimated 33%.

MW&L understands the importance for water quality and fish habitat protection. However MW&L believes that the ANR needs to take into account other factors beyond water quality and fish habitat, which they refuse to do. This increases our cost putting upward pressure on our electric rates and requires us to secure replacement energy that is carbon based, increasing the environmental footprint of our energy portfolio.

Our hydro plants exist now. We believe maintaining or increasing generation from an existing resource is better for the environment than littering the landscape with wind turbines and individual solar panels.

Please come and listen to the discussion and offer your support for MW&L. Specifically, we want the ANR to take other factors into account, other than just fish habitat when issuing a Water Quality Certificate. The other factors include: • Economic (higher electric rates) for residential/business customers, • Negative environmental aspect of replacement energy that needs to be purchased, • The State’s energy plan with a goal of producing as much energy as possible from renewable energy sources.

Thanks for your support on this matter.