Forest Society Comments at Whitefield Northern Pass Public Input Session

Good evening. My name is Jane Difley, and as President/Forester of the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, I represent one of the top five landowners in the state. Among our holdings are conserved forestlands in Coos County.

The outline of the current proposed route carves a giant question mark through Coos County. In doing so it crosses two of our Forest Reservations, the Washburn Family Forest in Clarksville and the Kauffmann Forest in Stark.

That question mark across the Coos landscape raises a number of questions—among, them, who really stands to benefit from that proposed route—New Hampshire, or Northern Pass? I would argue the latter.

We believe that much of the current proposed route in Coos County is a relic of the project's prior reliance on old cable technology and an overhead approach that is unnecessary and unsightly. It is not the shortest distance between two points. We encourage Northern Pass, if it wants to build its private project, to use more direct routes underneath existing roads in Coos County.

We encourage Northern Pass to take full advantage of the new cable technology. If it’s technically feasible to bury along roads around the White Mountains, then it is technically feasible to bury along roads from the Canadian border to Grafton County—assuming that Northern Pass can acquire the necessary landowner and other permissions. This would spare some of the most spectacular scenery in the northernmost part of our state from unnecessary scars. Coos County towns deserve to have their scenery protected no less than the White Mountain National Forest.

Among the other compelling arguments for re-routing the proposed line are property rights issues that are important to every New Hampshire landowner. We feel strongly that the proposed question-mark route cannot be built without eminent domain, a government power that the applicant has acknowledged it cannot access. We engaged in the Northern Pass issue five years ago to defend conserved lands and our property rights, and we feel extremely comfortable in our ability to do so.

The biggest question of all is why New Hampshire should in any way subsidize a Canadian company by allowing it to dictate how and where this private transmission line would be built across our landscape and our private lands.

To re-state the Forest Society’s position, Northern Pass can use the new cable technology that their latest proposal embraces to bury the line in its entirety rather than limiting burial to one-third of its length. The draft EIS for the project outlines the feasibility of this approach and notes the benefits of doing so.

As a landowner and stakeholder, we will be intervening in the SEC process. We look forward to seeing the final proposal as submitted to the SEC in October. Thank you.