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  3. The Northern Pass

The Northern Pass

  • Forest Society Takes Northern Pass Property Rights Lawsuit to Supreme Court
  • Northern Pass at the SEC
  • Court Grants NPT Motion for Summary Judgement
  • Map of Northern Pass Proposed Route
  • Forest Society Names NH DOT in Legal Action Against Northern Pass
  • Frequently Asked Questions about Northern Pass

News

  • Eversource Pulls Final Plug on Northern Pass

    Will Abbott
    July 26, 2019

    On July 25, less than a week after the New Hampshire Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision affirming the also unanimous decision of the NH ...

  • Eversource Gives Up Northern Pass

    July 26, 2019

    CONCORD — Eversource has decided Northern Pass “has no path forward” after the New Hampshire Supreme Court unanimously decided to uphold the Site Evaluation Committee’s decision denying the $1.6 billion project.

    The company filed a document with the Securities and Exchange Commission ...

    Read more
  • Eversource Pulls Plug on Northern Pass after NH Supreme Court Rebuke

    July 26, 2019

    Eversource has officially pulled the plug on the Northern Pass transmission line.

    The utility filed a notice with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission late Thursday, a spokesman says, “reflecting our conclusion that Northern Pass has unfortunately been brought to an end.” ...

    Read more

The Northern Pass

McAllaster Farm photo

The New Hampshire Supreme Court issued a unanimous opinion on July 19, 2019 affirming the unaninmous decision made by the New Hampshire Site Evaluation Committee on March 30, 2018 to deny Northern Pass a Certificate of Site and Facility.  Click here to learn more. 

 

Issue Brief: 

The New Hampshire Supreme Court issued a unanimous opinion on July 19, 2019 affirming the unanimous decision made by the New Hampshire Site Evaluation Committee on March 30, 2018 to deny the Northern Pass project a Certificate of Site and Facility.

Click here to read a blog post about the Supreme Court decision.

Northern Pass was a corporate partnership between Eversource and Hydro-Quebec to construct a 192-mile, high-voltage transmission line from Canada through New Hampshire to bring electricity to load centers in greater Boston. The project was introduced to the public in October 2010 as a private "merchant project" and shortly thereafter became one of the most controversial proposals the state has ever seen. More than 30 towns directly impacted by Northern Pass voted at town meetings to oppose the project. Thousands of individuals have expressed their opposition to federal and state regulators with permitting authorities for the project. More than eight-thousand people signed a petition in 2015 urging former Governor Maggie Hassan to insist on the complete burial of Northern Pass. After seventy days of evidentiary hearings in 2017-18, the New Hampshire Site Evaluation Committee concluded that Northern Pass had failed to meet its burden of proof to demonstrate that it should be awarded a siting permit. 

Early threats by the developers to use eminent domain led to the passing of HB 648 in 2012, which prohibited merchant transmission line projects from using eminent domain. In response, Northern Pass spent more than $40 million buying land in order to gain access to a potential route. However, the Forest Society worked successfully with local landowners to block the route for an overhead line through northern New Hampshire.

From the beginning of this multi-year battle, the Forest Society advocated that if the Northern Pass transmission line was to be built in New Hampshire, it should be buried in its entirety along an existing transportation corridor like Interstate 93. Similar projects proposed to bring Hydro Quebec electricity to markets in southern New England through Vermont and Maine are proposed to completely bury the transmission lines. 

New Hampshire’s experience with Northern Pass taught us a number of lessons:

  • As a state, we must defend conservation lands from such encroachments. We have both an ethical and legal obligation to defend these lands, held in public trust, from inappropriate commercial development and degradation.
  • We must protect New Hampshire’s scenic landscapes. If Northern Pass had been permitted as proposed, New Hampshire would have enabled a private corporation to reap enormous profits at the expense of one of our most significant assets as a state, natural beauty. The route proposed by Northern Pass for its overhead towers (most well above the natural tree line) would have degraded multiple landscapes, adversely impacted our significant tourism economy and compromised New Hampshire’s quality of life for future generations.
  • If New Hampshire is ever to host a big extension cord like Northern Pass in the future, it should be on our terms and the benefits to New Hampshire citizens should be self-evident. Northern Pass was designed to benefit electricity consumers in Massachusetts, not New Hampshire. The Granite State was simply a place for the project developers to build a big extension cord. If the developers had proposed to completely bury Northern Pass, they may be building the project today.
  • While Northern Pass appears to be dead, we must remain vigilant. A project very similar to Northern Pass was proposed in New Hampshire in the 1980’s. It was not built as proposed in New Hampshire, only after citizens rose in protest.  History has a way of repeating itself.

 

 

 

Thank You for helping to defeat Northern Pass!

With the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision affirming the SEC decision, it is time --- as Governor Sununu said --- to “move on.”  Make a gift to the Trees Not Towers campaign to help celebrate this HUGE victory for New Hampshire!

Trees Not Towers

Related Resources

Trees Not Towers: How Northern Pass Stacks Up

This graphic shows the relative sized of the tree canopy, existing towers, and proposed Northern Pass towers, based on Northern Pass's own published materials.

...

Why The Forest Society Opposes Northern Pass

Why We Oppose the Northern Pass and Why You Should Too

By Jane Difley

For 110 years the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests has advocated the wise use and protection of our natural resources. Early in our history the Forest Society led a national campaign that ...

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Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests54 Portsmouth St.Concord, NH 03301
Phone: 603.224.9945Fax: 603.228.0423info@forestsociety.org
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