Commissioner James Danly Statement
February 17, 2022
Project No. 10853-022
I concur with today’s order issuing Otter Tail Power Company a new license to continue to operate and maintain the Otter Tail River Hydroelectric Project.[1] I write separately to express my concern about Article 207, which reserves authority for the Commission to impose financial assurance mechanisms without any limiting principle.[2] As I have previously stated,[3] this reservation may have the unfortunate effect of reinforcing uncertainty and limiting licensees’ access to the very financing we should seek to encourage. I very much appreciate Chairman Glick’s announcement that Commission staff would be convening a technical workshop to discuss financial assurance mechanisms.[4] It is imperative that the Commission take a hard look at our financial assurance requirements and deliberately determine what, if any, changes or improvements should be adopted.
For these reasons, I respectfully concur.
[1] Otter Tail Power Co., 178 FERC ¶ 61,106, at P 1 (2022).
[2] See id. at Ordering Para. (D) (listing additional license articles, including Article 207 which provides “[t]he Commission reserves the right to require future measures to ensure that the licensee maintains sufficient financial reserves to carry out the terms of the license and Commission orders pertaining thereto”) (emphasis added).
[3] See, e.g., Pub. Util. Dist. No. 1 of Pend Oreille Cty., 177 FERC ¶ 61,183 (2021) (Danly, Comm’r, concurring at PP 1-3).
[4] See Transcript of the 1085th Meeting, FERC, at 51 (Dec. 16, 2021), https://www.ferc.gov/news-events/events/december-16-2021-virtual-open-meeting-12162021; see also Commission Staff, Notice of Technical Conference, Docket No. RM21-9-000 (Jan. 25, 2022) (announcing April 26, 2022 technical conference).