The facts
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has initiated "Termination of License by Implied Surrender" for the Herkimer Hydroelectric Project, a 1,680-kilowatt dam on West Canada Creek in Herkimer County, New York, held by ECOsponsible, LLC. The "project has not been operated since 2006."
ECOsponsible acquired the project by a 2015 Commission order that required it to file a plan and schedule to restore operation within 60 days. From June 2020 through October 2021, the Commission's dam safety and hydropower compliance offices issued 12 letters requiring a repair and restoration plan. The company responded with at least five plans, all deficient for lack of detail. When inspectors visited on August 26, 2021, they found the project "in unsatisfactory condition and largely abandoned." The licensee did not attend the inspection and "ceased communication with the Commission."
The company's founder, management committee chair, and treasurer, Dennis Ryan Sr., "passed away suddenly." according to his son, Dennis Ryan Jr., who then filed papers purportedly on the company's behalf. The Commission rejected those filings, determining that Ryan Jr. "was not authorized to do business on behalf of the licensee" A subsequent would-be buyer, Stone Ridge Hydro, filed a relicensing application and then withdrew it in July 2026. With the project abandoned and no applications pending, the Commission will proceed with termination.
Our take
A company named ECOsponsible bought a hydroelectric dam and then let it rot for two decades while the federal government sent it a dozen letters begging it to fix the fucking thing. The name is doing a lot of heavy lifting for a company whose entire business model appears to have been own a dam, ignore the dam, ghost the dam regulators like a total dickhead.
"Implied Surrender" is the bureaucratic term for what happens when you ghost someone so completely that the government has to invent a legal doctrine for breaking up with you because you will not return its calls. Twelve letters. Five garbage plans. They did not even show up to their own dam's inspection. The dam sat there crumbling while the company that calls itself ECOsponsible did absolutely nothing, responsibly or otherwise, like a pack of lazy bastards.
Then the founder died and his son started filing paperwork pretending to be the company, and the Commission had to formally announce that this man was not authorized to do business on behalf of anyone. That is a sentence that should never have to be written about a hydroelectric dam. And the would-be rescuer, Stone Ridge, took one look at this mess and withdrew its application. Even the vultures passed on the rotting pile of shit.
ECOsponsible. Twenty years. Zero watts. Implied surrender. There is not a more honest corporate obituary in the Federal Register today, you absolute cunts.
