I've been reading the digest of this list for a while, but I haven't seen a similiar situation to ours. We own a small 7 acre lake in the Catskills along with another parcel of land. The lake has an old dam on it that is breaking along the top. The bottom is piled rocks with a spillway at one end. There was a concrete wall along the top of the rock pile but that has been eroded and pushed away so water is spilling over the top of the rocks in one area. We're got an engineering company checking into the cost of repairing the dam right now. At the same time, we'd like to put a hydrogenerator in. The dam sits on our property and our neighbor's property, and there's a power line that runs through their land to their house about 200 feet away. They could tie into the grid there and use some of the power for their own needs. Our land is too far away on the other side of the lake to make it feasible to run a line to us. We've checked with the state power company, but as far as I can tell it's hit or miss whether they'll actually pay for electricity being fed back into the grid. Two streams feed the lake and it flows year-round. Our lake is the drainage for a 10 mile square area of land. I've been told that will roughly equal 10 kw of power, but we can't get anyone in there to measure the flow. We've called soil and water conseration, USGS, people with dams in the area, etc. Any suggestions for: 1) financial resources to assist? Since we can tie into the grid using the neighbor's line, we can get some incentives for personal use. But what else is there? I've checked the NYS Department of Public Service, and NYS Energy and Research Development, but it seems there's little incentive for other types of hydro projects. 2) type of equipment is most cost-effective? The height of the dam is 12 feet and the lake is 7 acres, about 6 feet deep. There's a place on the bottom on the outside of the dam to put the equipment. 3) how we can keep the DEC from telling us to tear down the dam? It's happening all over upstate NY. A dam recently was washed away in Briscoe, not far away from us, and it looks like it won't be rebuilt. Another dam was removed in a town near Narrowsburg. In both cases, vacation homes now encircle a grass-covered valley. Any suggestions would be appreciated. SW
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