These hiking trails in York County could soon be underwater thanks to a $2.5 billion hydroelectric dam

CHANCEFORD TOWNSHIP, Pa. — They hiked along a rocky, narrow trail, high above the Susquehanna River, trying to imagine a vanished landscape.

On this Tuesday in April, wide patches of Virginia bluebells were abuzz with bumblebees on an old logging road that leads to the trail. A tiger beetle, green as any jewel, scuttled through the dead leaves. On the rocky outcrop above Cuffs Run, ancient oaks grew thick between boulders.

“Most of this could be gone, or underwater,” Fritz Schroeder, president of the nonprofit Lancaster Conservancy, said as he walked through the flowers.

Cuffs Run, a small tributary of the Susquehanna, cuts a steep ravine into the bluffs above the river in York County and, for decades, energy producers and engineers have eyed its unique topography for a hydroelectric pumped storage facility. The $2.5 billion project would encompass about 1,000 acres and require the acquisition of private homes and farmland, conserved land, and possibly even long-established hiking trails. More than half of the acreage would be flooded for a reservoir.

“Everywhere we’ve been walking so far would be impacted by this project,” Schroeder said about a quarter mile from where he parked his truck.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, pumped storage hydropower was first used in Italy and Switzerland in the 1890s and came to the U.S. in the 1930s. Most of America’s pump storage plants are out west but they’re also in New York and Vermont, which draws almost half of its energy from hydroelectric power. The country’s largest facility is in Bath County, Virginia.

The process involves an upper reservoir of water that can flow quickly into a lower reservoir, moving turbines and generating power as it flows downhill. Water can also be pumped back up to the higher reservoir to be stored for times when extra power is needed.

Several groups have tried and failed to make the Cuffs Run project a reality over the years. In 2023, York Energy Storage LLC (YES) became the latest to make a go at it, applying for a preliminary permit with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to move ahead with a feasibility study. William McMahon, of York Energy, said engineers have long known Cuffs Run makes sense.

“This is considered the best location for this in the Eastern United States,” he said.

McMahon said the rise of renewable energy sources like solar and wind turbines has created a need for energy storage and a renewed interest in pumped storage. The proposed facility would serve the PJM Electric Grid, which powers 60 million customers in 13 states, including Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, and Maryland.

The Lancaster Conservancy said 60% of the power generated by PJM still comes from natural gas and coal.

High atop the trail above Cuffs Run, wind turbines were visible across the Susquehanna on Tuesday. They were not turning.

FERC accepted the application on April 1 but opposition to the plan has been nearly universal, bipartisan, and very vocal.

“We will do everything we can to stop this project,” U.S. Rep. Lloyd Smucker, a Republican, said by the river in February.

A slew of nonprofits, including the Lancaster Conservancy, the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau, the Keystone Trails Association, the Lower Susquehanna Riverkeeper, and others say they’re prepared to fight the project if it moves forward.

“This is the most rugged spot we left along the river,” said Ted Evgeniadis, the Lower Susquehanna Riverkeeper.

The project would displace up to 40 residents and take preserved farms and forested lands, a reason why bright orange “Stop Eminent Domain” signs were staked in the lawns all around the York County side of the river.

One protest sign was emblazoned across the side of a 53-foot trailer parked beside a barn.

“It makes me really angry you’re not giving a crap about someone’s home and lifework. We just don’t matter … We’re nobodies. We’re not a consideration,” property owner Jen Horton told Grid Magazine in February.

McMahon, who’s been involved in prior attempts to build the pumped storage facility, said YES would prefer to purchase the properties for the project, not acquire them for eminent domain. Still, if it came to eminent domain, he believes it would be for the good of the greater public.

“Believe me, the people are not going to be hurt,” he said.

A recent Center for Rural Pennsylvania study predicted major population losses for most of the state in coming decades, but York and Lancaster Counties are supposed to grow by a combined 12.4%. McMahon said his project fills a need for power in that growing area and the larger grid and he expressed frustration at the flood of opposition it’s faced. Cuffs Run, he said, would help local manufacturers and create hundreds of union jobs for years during the construction phase.

“People are treating it like we’re killing somebody. I’m an Eagle Scout. I’m for the outdoors, for the environment, but I’m also a power engineer,” he said. “We are doing the right thing, for the most people, for the long term.”

In 1991, when the same hydroelectric project was proposed by another group at Cuffs Run, locals said homes and fertile farmlands would be taken and they banded together, forming the Citizens Against Cuffs Run Project.

“We’re not going to take this sitting down,” a local Girl Scouts leader told a Lancaster newspaper at the time.

David Imhoff was a founder of the Citizen Against Cuffs Run Project then and he was vocal, again, in 1997 when McMahon rekindled the project. He’s fighting again with the latest iteration of his group, the Cuffs Run Alliance.

“He and I go way back,” Imhoff said of McMahon.

Imhoff, 67, lives on 6.5 acres near Cuffs Run and said his home would be “at the bottom of a lake” if the project went forward. In all the years he’s been fighting the pumped storage station, Imhoff said he’s never seen so much opposition to the project.

“It’s just a bad idea and it has been a bad idea for 30 years,” he said. “I’m not going to get happy about it until it’s over.”

McMahon said FERC makes the final decision, not the locals.

Back on the Mason-Dixon trail climbed high above Cuffs Run, Schroeder and Keith Williams, vice president of engagement and education at the conservancy, said there’s been a sea change in Lancaster and York Counties since the previous projects were floated.

The land, they said, is cherished more than ever, a destination of its own, not something to develop.

“So much has been invested to protect this corridor. There’s more outdoor recreation than ever, more rail trails, and people come here and move here for that,” Schroeder said. “This place right here, enhances livability for local residents, just the way it is.”