Northern Pass Hearings Focus on North Country Impacts

CONCORD — The impact of Northern Pass on private property owners in the North Country took center stage as hearings on the controversial hydroelectric project entered their second day before the state’s Site Evaluation Committee, with Eversource-NH President William Quinlan on the stand.

Members of the committee also got to ask some questions of their own, focused on the financial viability of the project and its benefits to New Hampshire.

Attorney Arthur Cunningham, representing the communities of Dummer, Stark and Northumberland, as well as some private property owners, suggested that Eversource was using potential improvements to the electric transmission system in Coos County as a bargaining chip to get the project approved.

Eversource has promised $50 million in upgrades to a transmission branch known as the “Coos Loop” as part of Northern Pass construction, even though the improvements would not be needed for the hydroelectric project.

“You will spend $50 million to restructure the Coos Loop only if you get a siting permit in this case, notwithstanding the need for the Coos Loop to be upgraded for the people who live in the North Country?” asked Cunningham.

Quinlan responded that the proposed upgrades are not needed for adequate electrical service to North Country customers, but would be needed to serve new wind power facilities.

“There is no reliability need. There is no capacity need,” said Quinlan. “The question is, should the export capacity of the loop be increased so that competitive generators can get their energy to Southern New Hampshire or Vermont.”

Walter Palmer, representing abutting property owners from Bethlehem to Plymouth, including underground portions of the line, is co-owner of a farm on both sides of Route 116 in Franconia.

Palmer suggested that the 2015 decision to reroute the line eastward and bury a 60-mile portion in the North Country through and near the White Mountain National Forest was made hastily and without adequate technical studies.

“Our concern is that the decision to go to this underground route was a precipitous decision taken very quickly based on political convenience factors without the appropriate study that should have gone into a decision to build one third of the route in this very ill-conceived manner,” he said. “If proper study had been done, perhaps a different choice would have been made.”

Palmer pointed out that from 2010 to 2015, the company worked on technical issues associated with an above-ground route. “Yet the decision to build one-third of the transmission line through our neighborhoods underground was made in a little more than a year … How could you have done the amount of study required to build that plan in the space of a year?”

Quinlan said the new route unveiled in August of 2015 was the result of a “very focused year” of work. “It was a well thought out decision based on extensive stakeholder outreach over a year period,” he said.

In the afternoon session, Quinlan faced questions from the SEC members on the Northern Pass power purchase agreement with HydroQuebec, its plans to bid into a Massachusetts request for renewable energy sources, the economic viability of the project and its exclusive benefits to New Hampshire.

Also testifying on Friday was Michael Ausere, Eversource vice president for Energy Planning and Economics.

When asked by Thomas Pappas, counsel for the public, if Eversource had the resources to completely bury the line at a cost of $2.6 billion, Ausere replied that it did, although the company has repeatedly stated that such a cost would render the project uneconomical.

The hearings are scheduled to continue into July, with the committee expected to issue a ruling on the project in September.