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- American Eel
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Moses-Saunders Power Dam
The St. Lawrence-Franklin D. Roosevelt Power Project is a hydroelectric facility located in northern New York State on the international portion of the St. Lawrence River approximately 160 km downstream of the outflow of Lake Ontario. The Robert Moses Power Dam (RMPD) and associated Project facilities are operated by the New York Power Authority. Ontario Power Generation operates and maintains the Robert H. Saunders Generating Station (RHSGS) and associated facilities located in Ontario, Canada. The RMPD and the RHSGS constitute one continuous structure, the Moses-Saunders Power Dam, which spans the international portion of the St. Lawrence River between Massena, New York and Cornwall, Ontario.
The Eel-Passage Facility consists of two major components – an eel ladder to allow eels to ascend the RMPD and an eel-release system to allow eels to move from the top of the ladder to a release point approximately 930 feet upstream.
MILIEU has been responsible for the operation, maintenance and monitoring of the Eel-Passage Facility at the Robert Moses Power Dam every year since its installation in 2006. During these years, one of MILIEU’s mandates was to evaluate the effectiveness of the Eel-Passage Facility at the Robert Moses Power Dam. MILIEU was responsible for the routine verification and maintenance of the PIT tag readers and all data analysis on PIT tagged fish movements between the antennas. During these studies, MILIEU operated diverse monitoring equipment such as dissolved oxygen probes, level loggers, temperature loggers, pumps, compressors, and eel counters. MILIEU was responsible for performing two ancillary studies in 2007 and 2008 at NYPA’s Eel-Passage Facility to evaluate the capacity of the passage pipe to pass eels. During these two studies, over 2,000 eels were tagged and released in the collection hopper. MILIEU also actively participated, along with Kleinschmidt Inc., in a study for NYPA performed in 2003 that gave birth to the concept of the passage pipe system that is now part of the Eel-Passage Facility at the Robert Moses Power Dam. Over the years and through the many studies conducted by MILIEU, we have collected and PIT tagged more than 50,000 juvenile eels.