Juneau Hydropower asks FERC for two more years to start Sweetheart Lake dam

Construction on the Sweetheart Lake Hydroelectric Project is due to begin Sept. 8, 2026. Juneau Hydropower Inc. has asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to push that start date to Sept. 8, 2028, and to move the completion deadline from Sept. 8, 2029, to Sept. 8, 2031. The Commission has not yet acted on the request. The company filed it May 18 and supplemented it three times over the summer.

The Commission is taking comments, protests and motions to intervene, which make a filer a party with standing to appeal, until 5 p.m. Eastern on Oct. 1. Brief comments can be filed through the Commission's eComment system without registration, and longer filings through eFiling. Any filing should carry the docket number P-13563-003 on the first page.

The 19.8-megawatt storage-dam project is estimated to generate about 116,000 megawatt-hours annually, with Juneau listed by NOAA Fisheries as the primary user of the power. It sits on Sweetheart Creek in the Tongass National Forest, about 30 miles south of Juneau, and would occupy roughly 2,058 acres of Tongass land plus 131.18 acres of state tideland and submerged land. The design calls for a 111-foot-high, 280-foot-wide roller-compacted concrete dam and an impoundment, or reservoir, covering roughly 1,701 acres.

The Commission issued the license in September 2016 after a final environmental impact statement prepared with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The Tongass National Forest signed a special use permit decision on Oct. 18, 2017. The license itself does not expire until Aug. 31, 2066.

The extension is the first authorized under Public Law 119-90, enacted May 11, 2026, which lets the Commission grant up to six additional years to commence construction, in as many as three consecutive two-year periods, on top of the eight years already allowed.

The Tongass Forest Plan analysis identifies hydropower in general as a source of wetland loss, vegetation removal, soil disturbance and altered stream flows in the forest.