Update: Make Your Voice Heard on Northern Pass

As part of the State Site Evaluation Commitee process and the federal Department of Energy permitting process, there will be more hearings later this winter and early spring that will be opportunities for the public to share their views about Northern Pass.

These sessions will be similar to those held in September 2015 and January 2016,  when 80 percent of the comments were in opposition to Northern Pass as proposed. Despite the opposition,  and despite clear evidence that burial of the proposed line would be feasible and affordable, Eversource and Hydro-Quebec continue to pursue permits that would allow them to erect 132 miles of new overhead transmission line, including nearly 40 miles of new Right of Way in Coos County.

Here are some links that may be useful:

Understanding the state SEC permitting process FAQ >

A summary of the Northern Pass proposal and our opposition to it >

In other news related to Northern Pass, a competing project, the New England Clean Power Link (NECLP), already received a key state permit recently. You can read about that in the Boston Globe , or in a good story by David Brooks in the Concord Monitor.  The presumption is that by proposing an underwater/underground line, NECPL has sailed through the permitting process. What everyone wants to know, of course, is what this means for Northern Pass. Frankly, it's difficult to predict, but clearly the race is on among transmission developers to deliver power to a perceived market in southern New England. And when there's a race, there are usually winners and losers.

Reporter Robert Blechl had an interesting piece in the Caledonian Record about Eversource and other utilities taking towns to court in an effort to reduce the taxes they pay. During the September Northern Pass hearings, Eversource NH's Bill Quinlan revealed that of the 200 New Hamsphire towns in which they pay taxes, they had ongoing disputes in 70 towns. 

And lastly, and perhaps of no particular import, the Union Leader's Paul Feely reports that the FCC announced that fines were levied on Cumulus Media for running pro-Northern Pass ads in 2011 that failed to identify who was paying for the ads. The ironic thing is that those ads--nor any of the other paid media barrage from Northern Pass-- never really moved the needle on public opinion.