Chronology – Year 2002
PSE/FERC hold public scoping meetings
PSE hosted more Baker Project tours in 2002. Two VIP site visits targeted public officials, and a public tour was conducted as part of two public scoping meetings held in May. PSE and FERC held the scoping meetings to solicit verbal comments and viewpoints about potential project impacts. In conjunction with the meetings, PSE and FERC jointly prepared a draft Scoping Document 1, which identified environmental issues associated with the Baker River Project including water quality and impacts to fish and wildlife. At the meetings, about 25 individuals and organizations offered spoken or written comment on the Scoping Document and the Initial Consultation Document, to which FERC later responded with a Scoping Document 2. The second scoping document, issued in May 2003, served as the basis for the project's Preliminary Draft Environmental Assessment.
PSE requests ALP
Also in May of 2002, PSE officially requested approval from FERC to use the Alternative Licensing Procedures, and included with the request the completed Communications protocol, and Process document, and letters of support from the participants. FERC granted permission for the ALP in July, and simultaneously asked PSE to begin issuing bi-annual Baker relicense progress reports (issued in January and July of 2003, and January of 2004).
Parties identify and coordinate all regulatory requirements
At the project's half-way point, team members were ready to discuss the various regulatory processes affecting relicensing, both state and federal. Working together, PSE, FERC and the affected agencies developed a schedule and milestones for each requirement, with the goal of working these regulatory processes in parallel with FERC's relicensing process. Among the many regulatory requirements were the Department of Ecology's Clean Water Act Section 401 Certification, the Endangered Species Act Consultation required by the US Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA Fisheries, and compliance with the National Historic Preservation Act.
Until this point in the relicensing process, a loosely formed, slowly evolving schedule had seemed sufficient. However, the coordination of all regulatory requirements necessitated the need for a full-blown, detailed schedule addressing all needs through the end of the process. The new schedules accompanied each bi-monthly report.
Consultant hired to prepare PDEA
With the approval of the Solution Team, PSE contracted with The Louis Berger Group in September of 2002 to prepare a preliminary preliminary draft environmental assessment (PDEA) for the project relicense. The purpose of an assessment is to analyze the effects of project operations and proposals on various aspects of the environment, including fisheries, recreation, terrestrial resources and cultural resources.
The beginnings of protection, mitigation and enhancement measures
The next major hurdle, for both the Solution Team and working groups, was the development of a settlement agreement, to be eventually signed by all parties. In the fall of 2002, the working groups entered the early stages of a settlement process by preparing 150 draft action items designed to address the issues they had identified for their resources during the previous two years. Called protection, mitigation and enhancement measures – or PMEs – they included the issues and interests the measure addressed, justification for the measure, and how the measure could be implemented.