Northern Pass SEC Input Session Comments by Martha Richards

Good evening, everyone, and thank you to my Grafton County fellow citizens and their amazing strength and endurance as we continue this fight against Northern Pass. I am Martha Richards from Holderness living “on the line” to be supposedly buried though at this point I am feeling that the old Reagan saying “trust but verify” is appropriate with this group.

For the record, we three Grafton County Commissioners are in strong opposition to the Northern Pass project unless it is totally buried its full length. As a Commissioner for 17 towns in this county I have continued to attend meetings too numerous to remember over these past 5 years listening to constituents and some very smart people who know technology and can easily see through all the PR ploys that HydroQuebec and Ever$ource have thrown at us. The continuing hollow promises of new tax payments, clean power, jobs, and now some paltry savings on our NH electric bills have not placated us tough Yankees as we value our past, our future, and our land more than the greedy corporate hacks will ever understand. Learning about the Canadian natives’ plight in losing their indigenous hunting and fishing lands has been eye-opening. Learning about today’s cable technologies that can be buried economically and easily vs. scarring our view sheds with tall towers that will lower property values, increase health issues, incur bad weather outages and damage has been enlightening especially as we watch projects in ME and NY get permitted more easily with their buried projects.

I urge Northern Pass to take a deep breath, suck it up, deal with

it…whatever and accept the DOE’s FULLY UNDERGROUND Alternative Route option 4A. The ludicrous statement about certain geographic regions being more vocal in opposition to the project which then equaled buried defies imagination. Pitting those who may have buried lines against those with towers, as Nancy Martland just wrote, is a low blow and divides us into winners and losers. Even Sen. Ayotte said,

“We are worth it” for complete burial. The $200 million Forward NH Fund “hush” money could complete the burial – money that wouldn’t be needed just because the whole project is buried and thus not detrimental to our economy nor our environment!

By the way, “for the record” as our late dear Ray Burton would say, as I mentioned the line is no longer in my backyard in Holderness. Just by that mere fact it has further driven me to fight for total burial for my friends up and down this 187-mile damnable project – still unwanted and not needed and no amount of twisted rhetoric nor job creation grants will change our minds!

Thank you.