The POWER Act: New Rules Make Dam Removal and Power Plant Retirement Nearly Impossible with Strict 5% Limits

The Protecting Our Water Energy Resources Act, or the POWER Act, is setting up some serious roadblocks for anyone trying to take down a federally operated dam or retire an old hydropower plant. Think of this bill as a legislative cement pour, making it much harder to change existing infrastructure, even if it’s aging or inefficient. It essentially locks in the status quo for federal dams and their energy sources, creating a high bar for any modernization or removal projects.

The Veto Points: When a Dam Can't Be Breached

Section 2 of the POWER Act puts the Secretary of the Army on a very short leash when it comes to breaching (or removing) a federal dam. If the Secretary finds that removing the dam would cause any one of four specific negative outcomes, the project is dead in the water. These aren't minor hurdles; they are specific, quantifiable veto points. For instance, if breaching the dam increases carbon emissions by more than 5 percent, it’s blocked. If it makes the waterway less navigable for commercial shipping, or if it causes the price of any shipped product—including farm goods—to jump by 5 percent or more, the dam stays put. Finally, if the replacement energy source requires 5 percent more land than the dam currently occupies, the project is halted. This means that even if a dam is ecologically harmful, the Secretary must prioritize keeping shipping lanes open and preventing marginal price increases for goods like grain or lumber. Before making any decision, the Secretary must also consult with four other Cabinet members (Energy, Transportation, Agriculture, and Commerce) and the relevant state agencies, adding multiple layers of bureaucracy to any potential change.

Locking Down Power: The 5% Rule for Electricity

Section 3 applies similar logic to federally owned hydropower sources, like the generators inside those dams. The Secretary of the Interior or the Secretary of the Army is prohibited from retiring a power source if doing so would cause customer electricity rates to jump by more than 5 percent, or if it would drop energy reliability in key Western states (Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, or California) by more than 5 percent. This rule is designed to keep the lights on and bills predictable, which sounds good on paper. However, these low 5% thresholds create a situation where retiring an aging, inefficient, or environmentally problematic dam becomes almost impossible, regardless of how much maintenance it costs to keep running. For regular folks, this means stability, but it also means potentially locking in older infrastructure that might eventually be more expensive to operate than newer alternatives.

The 30-Day Power Sprint

If the government does manage to navigate the 5% hurdles and retire a power source, the bill imposes an extreme deadline: within 30 days, 100 percent of the retired “baseload generation” must be replaced. Baseload generation is the minimum amount of power needed to keep the grid running 24/7. This 30-day requirement is incredibly tight. It forces a rushed, high-stakes scramble to secure replacement power, which could mean taxpayers end up footing the bill for expensive, fast-tracked energy contracts, potentially bypassing the usual regulatory checks designed to ensure the best value. This provision heavily favors keeping the existing dams operating simply because replacing them quickly is so difficult and costly.