The House Natural Resources Committee approved legislation Thursday that aims to ease permitting for new privately operated hydropower projects on federal lands.
The panel voted 21-14 — along party lines — for Colorado Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert’s H.R. 7487, the “Rural Jobs and Hydropower Expansion Act.”
“It will be a way to fast-track the development of more hydropower,” Chair Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) said during a markup. He noted that if signed into the law, the bill could ease the path for 20 projects currently in development.
Currently, nonfederal entities, like irrigation districts and electric utilities, can apply to use existing Bureau of Reclamation infrastructure like dams and conduits for their own hydropower projects. Those projects are known as a “lease of power privilege,” or LOPP.
