Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

For the first time, a federal energy board is weighing how a proposed natural gas pipeline would affect emissions.

One year after the worst structural failures at a major U.S. dam in a generation, federal regulators who oversee California’s half-century-old, towering Oroville Dam say they are looking hard at how they overlooked its built-in weaknesses for decades. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is telling owners of the 1,700 other hydroelectric dams it regulates nationally that it expects them to...

An independent energy agency on Monday rejected a Trump administration plan to bolster coal-fired and nuclear power plants, dealing a blow to President Donald Trump’s efforts to boost the struggling coal industry. The decision by the Republican-controlled Federal Energy Regulatory Commission was unexpected and comes amid repeated promises by Trump to revive coal as the nation’s top power source. The...

Eight former federal energy regulators — including five former commission chairs — oppose a Trump administration plan to bolster nuclear and coal-fired power plants, arguing it would raise prices and disrupt electricity markets....
The former officials, who served under presidents from both parties, call the plan “a significant step backward.”...
The plan by Energy Secretary Rick Perry would reward nuclear and coal-fired...

An independent team of dam experts says bad design and construction led to a disastrous spillway collapse at the nation’s tallest dam. Dam safety experts investigating February’s spillway failures at California’s Oroville Dam say the state probably could have detected the problems if dam managers had reviewed the original flaws in the half-century-old dam, using modern engineering standards. Authorities ordered...

Over six straight days, the operators of the Oroville Dam had been saying there was no immediate danger after water surging down the main spillway gouged a hole the size of a football field in the concrete chute. But now suddenly they realized that the dam’s emergency backup spillway — essentially an unpaved hillside — was falling apart, too, and...

Environmental activists and local government officials warned more than a decade ago about the risk of catastrophic flooding below a major Northern California dam — the very scenario that threatened to unfold over the weekend, forcing the evacuation of nearly 200,000 people downstream.

Water was no longer falling over the emergency spillway at Lake Oroville as of Monday, allowing officials to investigate the damage.