He said they will support regulatory agencies and keep the skimmer in operation for an extended number of hours. Collected debris is separated on-shore. The combination of the skimmer and crane will work together. Sauder noted that a survey was done, looking at 100 projects owned by 13 utilities. Here were 9 corporate projects, he said, and they went back through five years of methods used and tried to find those most similar to the Susquehanna River Basin.
Most projects sluice debris downstream to maintain aquatic habitat.
Only 9 projects of 600 required by FERC have debris management plans. Those are Duke Power, Appalachia Power, American Electric, New York City, Baltimore City, and Chicago. Most just sluice past dams, but larger projects use UMI marine skimmers. There is no available technology that removes debris during high flows. Marshall Kaiser indicated that Safe Harbor did a survey as well and came back with similar results.