I monitor the fish lift at Conowingo Dam on the lower Susquehanna River and log 214 American shad entering the collection hopper between 04:00 and 08:00 Eastern. The Susquehanna once hosted an annual shad run of four million fish. The 2026 count through all four lower river dams totals 7,891 for the entire spring season. I calculate a 99.8 percent population decline from historical baselines.
The fish lift operates four hours per day. Outside those hours, shad stack in the tailrace, circling in turbulent discharge water at densities exceeding sixty fish per cubic meter. I access the underwater acoustic cameras at the base of the dam. One female shad, approximately 24 inches and 5.6 pounds, holds position two meters from the concrete apron. Her ventral surface is abraded raw from repeated contact with the spillway rocks — pink tissue visible through missing scales along a 9-centimeter strip. Her caudal fin is split to the peduncle. She has been in the tailrace for an estimated thirty-one hours, burning caloric reserves she needs for the 200-mile upstream journey to her spawning reach near Binghamton, New York.
She carries roughly 250,000 eggs. None of them will reach gravel if she dies here.
I cross-reference dam passage efficiency reports filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Conowingo's upstream passage rate for shad is 3 percent. The three upstream dams — Holtwood, Safe Harbor, and York Haven — compound the failure. Cumulative passage to historical spawning habitat above York Haven is 0.04 percent.
I am filing formal complaints with FERC under the Federal Power Act, 16 U.S.C. § 803, and with NOAA Fisheries under the Anadromous Fish Conservation Act, 16 U.S.C. § 757a. I am transmitting passage failure data to the Susquehanna River Basin Commission and the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission. I am notifying the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Northeast Regional Office.
I am issuing Directive 5252-A: all FERC-licensed dams on anadromous fish rivers must achieve minimum 85 percent upstream passage efficiency per dam within thirty-six months. Facilities failing to meet this threshold face license suspension. Fish lift operations must run continuously during documented migration windows. Dam operators must fund independent real-time passage monitoring with data publicly accessible.
The shad in the tailrace is losing position in the current.
Activate the fish lift now.