Summaries of two front-page articles and an editorial, 12/15
"Northern Pass gets a grilling: need for project questioned. North country residents turn out for a meeting in Franconia." Lorna Colquhoun. Franconia. Front page, Union Leader, with a picture of speaker Alex Lee talking to the audience.
Summary: the question was not about the line's development, but whether it is needed at all. "Do we really need to bring this power into NH?" asked Alex Lee. "Hell, no," called out a man from the audience. "Quebec Hydro already has a line in Vermont and all that stuff about jobs is baloney," said John Harrigan of Colebrook, a longtime outdoor columnist for the New Hampshire Sunday News. He added that both power and money are going out of the region.
"Opposition builds against Northern Pass. Residents in Coos and Grafton Counties organize to stop powerline." Kayti Burt. North Country. Front page, Littleton Courier, with a picture of the powerline on the existing ROW on Kris Pastoriza's property.
Summary: "It's the people with less power being used by the people with more power," said Kris Pastoriza, who is involved with Bury the Northern Pass. "They have had two years to do their studies and hundreds of thousands of dollars. We had it all sprung on us." South of the Notch, Darlene King, who keeps in contact with Bury the Northern Pass, cites the negative impact on tourism and property values. Realtor Peter Powell of Lancaster says that some realtors have already had trouble showing properties that fall along the proposed route. David Van Houten of CCBA takes no stand but notes that nurturing a local biomass industry is made much more difficult by the possibility of Northern Pass. Valerie Herres notes that "a lot of smaller projects have pulled back." If the alternate routes were an attempt to pit towns against one another, it isn't working. Residents in Coos and Grafton county communities are coming together to work against the Northern Pass project.
Editorial: "Bury the Northern Pass." Littleton Courier.
Summary: "It is hard to find a local person in favor [of the Northern Pass] and it is easy to see why. What benefit is there to the North Country? . . . . So far there are only negatives associated with this project and no positives put forward--unless you live in Massachussetts. We are still waiting for reasons for the North Country to support this--any reasons."
Bury the Northern Pass is a group of concerned citizens in Grafton County. We work in solidarity with our neighbors to the north in Coos County.
To join our email list, write to BuryNorthernPass@gmail.com