Energy Regulation

Enforcement of Requirements Imposed on Hydropower Projects Needs Strengthening Gao ID: RCED-88-60 March 4, 1988

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO investigated the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's (FERC) monitoring and enforcement of federal requirements imposed on hydropower projects, focusing on the adequacy of its: (1) monitoring of various license or exemption conditions to ensure prompt compliance; (2) investigations of instances of potential noncompliance; and (3) violation resolution actions.

GAO found that, although the FERC Office of Hydropower Licensing generally conducted physical inspections of projects in accordance with its established procedures and monitored correction of any identified problems, FERC: (1) lacked internal controls to ensure that engineers took timely or consistent follow-up action when project operators untimely submitted required items; (2) could not rely on its Hydropower License Compliance Tracking System (HLCTS), which contained inaccurate data, to monitor compliance with license and exemption requirements; (3) could not fairly and equitably impose civil penalties on project operators if it could not take timely and consistent follow-up action on all overdue items; (4) caused delays in noncompliance investigation cases through inadequate oversight and poor communication and coordination between national and regional offices; and (5) regional offices lacked complete information regarding projects' compliance histories.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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