news-record.com

RANDLEMAN — Federal officials are investigating one of seven small hydroelectric plants that have sued the Piedmont Triad Regional Water Authority for millions of dollars in allegedly lost revenue.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission launched an inquiry last week into whether the Worthville Hydroelectric Power Plant has violated its federal license by failing to operate for nearly 15 years and by not taking proper dam-safety precautions.

“The project has been referred to our compliance division and is under review by that staff,” said Celeste Miller, agency spokeswoman for hydroelectric issues in Washington.

The Worthville operation is closest to Randleman Reservoir, which owners of the seven plants claim will cost them up to $5.4 million in earnings over the next 50 years by diverting drinking water they otherwise could use to make electricity.

But two of the plants, Worthville and the Ramseur Hydroelectric Power Plant, have not worked in years.

Both inoperable plants are controlled in full or part by Bruce Cox, a Ramseur resident who ran Worthville unprofitably for several years before shutting it down in May 1995.

Both inoperable plants are in danger of losing their licenses because of ongoing federal inquiries, which could lower the plant owners’ 50-year claims of revenue loss by $1.5 million.

Efforts on Wednesday to reach Cox and an attorney who represented him in other matters involving the federal agency were unsuccessful.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission supervises the safe operation of hydroelectric projects nationwide.

In referring Worthville for investigation, an agency official in Atlanta said Cox promised several times to get it running imminently. Cox “submitted a plan and schedule stating that the project would be placed back online by the time of the filling of the new upstream Randleman Reservoir,” safety supervisor Randal G. Pool wrote in a Dec. 3 memo to his superiors.

The reservoir has been full two years. But a September 2008 inspection by a federal agent “confirmed the Worthville project still requires a considerable amount of work to restore electrical generation capacity,” Pool wrote.

Since then, inspectors have asked Cox for a detailed plan to get it back in order: “To date, a written plan and schedule has not been received.”

The safety engineer also cited Cox’s “history of past violations” of federal rules. He amassed $80,000 in fines from regulators during the 1990s in a dispute over his failure to do a suitable dam-safety study at another hydro plant that he owns. The dispute ended with Cox paying $10,000 and completing the study in a settlement that prompted an administrative law judge to suggest the government screen people more carefully before giving them licenses.

At Worthville, Cox also exposed others to unacceptable risk by failing “to maintain public safety devices such as fencing and warning signs (that) may have endangered recreational users” of the Deep River, Pool said.

In all, Cox has a role in three of the seven plants involved in the lawsuit; the third is his Cox Lake Hydro Plant, which he has run successfully just downstream from Worthville for about 20 years.

But both of Cox’s other plants are in jeopardy of losing their licenses. In addition to Worthville, federal inspectors investigated the Ramseur facility three years ago and recommended decommissioning it. That recommendation awaits final action in Washington.

Inspectors urged permanently removing the Ramseur plant from the nation’s hydroelectric roster because it has not operated since 1963, its “power house” is badly damaged, and its dam has a large hole and no longer fully restrains the river.

The Deep’s working plants are relatively small operations that use privately owned dams to siphon water from the river and run generators that produce electricity. They make “green” energy because they are fueled by flowing water, not by pollution-prone coal or other carbon-based sources.

Erratic operation is their main drawback. They depend on the Deep’s high flow and can go dormant for days or weeks in times of little or no rainfall.

The lawsuit stems from the legal principle that the plants have a basic right to use the water that flows past their property. The owners allege it’s illegal for the authority to usurp drinking water without paying them, partly because a substantial amount of that water will not be returned to the Deep but released instead into the Haw River system.

The authority counters that it has a vested right to use the reservoir to meet a legitimate public need and that the plant owners were invited to submit claims 20 years ago during the reservoir’s planning stage. Instead, they boycotted the process and now are too late with claims of alleged damages, the authority contends.

Contact Taft Wireback at 373-7100 or taft.wireback@news-record.com