SALAMANCA, N.Y. – The Seneca Nation of Indians has taken the first step toward becoming the owner-operator of a massive hydroelectric facility built on land expropriated from the nation more than 50 years ago.

Seneca President Robert Odawi Porter has announced that the nation filed application documents with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Nov. 30 for the license to operate the Seneca Pumped Storage Project at Kinzua Dam.

Seneca will be competing for the permit against the current owner, FirstEnergy Corp. of Akron, Ohio. The current 50-year license to operate the pumped storage project expires in 2015.

“We’re prepared. We’ve been working on this for several years and we’re going to keep working on it. The council has made the resources available for us to keep fighting for this. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to undo the injustice of the taking of our land 50 years ago. So I’m very, very honored to be president at the time we get to do this,” said Porter, who won the presidency in a landslide 1,671-500 vote Nov. 2.

Authorized by Congress with the Flood Control Acts of 1936 and 1938, the Army Corps of Engineers built the Kinzua Dam near Warren, Pa., between 1960 and its opening in 1965. The purpose of the $108 million dam was flood control and pollution flushing, but in 1970 the federal government also gave away the right to generate hydropower to private, for-profit utility companies – now estimated at $13 million in profits annually.

The government forced 147 Seneca families out of their homes on 10,000 acres of their treaty-protected Allegany territory in a fertile valley, and relocated them several miles away. The homes were burned and the land was flooded to build the Allegheny Reservoir. The flooded land drowned significant cultural, sacred and ceremonial sites, including a longhouse and burial grounds.

The hydropower project was already permitted by the federal government before the Seneca Nation was informed of plans for its construction. The nation has never been invited to share in the project’s significant financial benefits.

The Seneca Nation appealed to President Kennedy in 1961 to halt construction of the reservoir, but despite campaign pledges to uphold U.S. treaty obligations, Kennedy denied the request citing the need for flood control in the interest of public safety for those living downstream from Seneca.

In taking the land, the U.S. government violated the 1794 Treaty of Canandaigua, signed by George Washington and the Iroquois Six Nations. The treaty clearly defines the boundaries and waters of the Seneca lands and promises that “the United States will never claim the same, nor disturb the Seneca nation, nor any of the Six Nations, or of their Indian friends residing thereon and united with them, in the free use and enjoyment thereof.”

“The construction of the Kinzua Dam and reservoir stands as the most aggressive and violent action taken by the United States against the Seneca Nation in the modern era to violate the terms of the Canandaigua Treaty. The taking of our land, the relocation of 800 of our people, the disinterment of our ancestors caused a real soul wound to our people that continues to this day. To me there are historic and justice elements of this that could be remedied by the granting of the license to the nation,” Porter said.

The FERC process is long and involved. Over the next three years, the nation will develop information to support its formal application, which will be filed Nov. 30, 2013. The following two years will be taken up with FERC’s review.

“We’ve got a long road ahead of us and it’s a very public, very transparent process with everyone involved,” Seneca attorney Thomas Jensen said.

Seneca is not the first indigenous nation to seek a FERC license. The Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs Reservation in Oregon and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of Montana both sought licenses for power facilities built on their land.

“In both instances the projects were constructed without any regard for the interests of the tribes whose resources were hurt by those projects, fisheries in particular, and in those cases the tribes had no benefits,” Jensen said.

In both cases, the tribes worked out an arrangement in which the incumbent license holders shifted the ownership interest over the tribes after a number of years.

Although Seneca is not the first nation to seek a FERC license, it will be setting a precedent in bringing the first water rights claim in the eastern part of the country, Jensen said.

“The Seneca Nation is asserting a treaty right to water in the Allegheny River, to the river in its natural form. The treaty guaranteed them fair use and enjoyment of this valley, the river, its banks and the water in it. Seneca is bringing a water rights claim that tribes out west are used to seeing, but it hasn’t been a part of policy here in the east.”

Porter suggested a number of compelling reasons why the Seneca Nation should be the license holder, including its plan for economic stability in the region.

“FirstEnergy has got to think about making a profit for its shareholder. We don’t have the same burden. Our goal is to provide a better quality of life for Seneca people and also to stimulate and promote the region. We have many non-Native neighbors and communities. We’ve been a long, long time in this area and we think as the license holder we can do a much better job of providing development opportunities for the people in our area.”

The nation is also “vigorously conservationist,” Porter said. “We just have a very different approach to the idea that this is just a profit generating hydro facility.”

Over the next two years, Seneca will find and partner with a hydroelectric company with the expertise to operate the facility, “but I’m absolutely confident we can identify a partner to work with for the short term to establish our capacity and ultimately operate it by ourselves.”

As for the cost of the project, Seneca does not expect to pay for more than developing the application, Jensen said.

“Our view is, frankly, that FirstEnergy has been using Seneca land and water for 45 years without paying a penny for it and the calculation of the net assets and burdens here would result in FirstEnergy writing the nation a very large check.”