Eric Millis, director of the Utah Division of Water Resources, issued the following statement:
The Utah Division of Water Resources (DWRe) is working with the Lake Powell Pipeline contractor, MWH Americas, Inc. (MWH), to submit supplemental filings necessary to clarify aspects of the License Application to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which was submitted to FERC this week.
DWRe believes FERC has received from MHW all of the necessary materials and information for the commission to begin an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), outlined in the National Environmental Policy Act. However, we are not satisfied with some aspects of the final reports and we believe clarifications are needed to a number of them. In addition to the clarifications we are asking for, we anticipate FERC will also submit requests for additional information, which is common for projects of this size and scope. We will hold ourselves and our consultant accountable to proactively address any errors or omissions.
Submitting a License Application of this magnitude is a significant undertaking with many people working on it. You hope everything is flawless, but the reality is that additional clarifying information and corrections will be necessary as we work collaboratively with FERC and other agencies to provide the best reference document possible for the NEPA process.
The License Application is the culmination of several years of work, spurred by the 2006 Lake Powell Pipeline Development Act. The application is not a NEPA document, but is rather a reference document to help FERC kick-off and manage a NEPA process. The Utah Division of Water Resources will be clarifying and providing additional information as requested in that process
With oversight from DWRe, MWH was hired by the state in 2007 to oversee the pre-NEPA work and to manage the exhaustive and detailed process of submitting the License Application, which consists of thousands of pages and many detailed reports.
