Hydropower Section 408 Review Guidance

Summary#

This bill tells the Secretary of the Army to issue written guidance within one year about how the Army Corps will review certain applications for work on non-Federal hydropower projects. The guidance must include a standardized checklist of required materials, clear rules for what makes an application "complete," procedures for phased design reviews, and steps to escalate a review when deadlines are missed. The bill defines a "completeness review" as a check of whether required documents were submitted and are in the right format. The bill also lists things a completeness review cannot do, such as perform detailed technical engineering checks, judge design adequacy, request design changes or extra analyses, consider anything outside the checklist, or require new environmental standards not already set by a Federal or relevant State agency before the application was filed.

What it means for you#

• If you operate or plan work on a non-Federal hydropower project that needs permission under section 408, you can expect a standardized checklist and clear rules about what makes an application complete.
• The Corps must limit the "completeness review" to checking that required documents are present, in the right format, and meet the checklist items.
• Technical or engineering judgments are not allowed during the completeness check. Those judgments would come later in the review process.
• The guidance must spell out each phase of a phased design review, timelines for each phase, and definitions for terms like "fatal flaw" and "technical review."
• The guidance must include procedures to escalate applications to higher Corps officials if review deadlines are missed.

Expenses#

No publicly available information on costs or funding is included in the bill text. The bill requires guidance to be issued but does not specify funding or estimate expenses.

Proponents' View#

No publicly available information.

Opponents' View#

No publicly available information.