that was named the Electric Consumers Protection Act . This obligated FERC to give equal consideration to power and non-power aspects when it was issuing or renewing a private hydroelectric dam operation license. The amendment also required the Commission to impose license conditions decided upon by federal and state agencies for the protection and enhancement of fish and wildlife (Sherk,1996). The agencies recommendations were written up in an Environmental Impact Statement. These conditions usually consisted of installing extensive and costly fish passages and other mitigating structures/actions. We can now clearly see that in the history of the FPA, there have been no concrete terms written into law validating the definite authority of the Commission to order the destruction of a dam in a certain situation; all of the terms seem to use the word broad. The Edwards case is unique because it is the first of its kind, no precedents have been set concerning the specific parameters of FERCs jurisdiction. As stated earlier, the Edwards Manufacturing Companys license to operate was at the end of its term in 1993, and an application for relicensing was filed earlier by the owners in 1991(Allen,1999). The application included a proposal to expand the dams power-generating capabilities, and to counteract the detrimental aspects of said expansion a proposal was also included to provide fish passages and recreational facilities. At the time that the application was filed there had already been considerable interest for the previous few years by a number of environmental conservation groups in the case of the Edwards Dam. The dam was obviously not an integral source of power for the state of Maine, and the environmental aspects heavily outweighed the power generating capabilities. The owners of the dam were fully aware of this which is probably why the two proposals were added to the license application, almost as a last-ditch attempt ...
