Talking Turkey to the Regulators

Not Simple NIMBYism



In his prepared testimony to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) filed on December 15, 2010, James A. Muntz, president of Northeast Utilities, was asked why the plan for Northern Pass includes both an HVDC line [to the Franklin converter station] and, below that, a conventional AC radial line [to Deerfield]. In other words, if HVDC transmission is so much more efficient than AC, and if most of the power is going to metro Boston and south, why not take the DC line further south in New Hampshire?

Muntz answered that the original preference was to extend the HVDC line much further south in NH, to a converter station at Scobie Pond in Londonderry, but PSNH backed off. Why? Muntz explains it:

In addition to economic and technical considerations, the design of the NPT

Line was heavily influenced by siting considerations. The initial preference

was to build the southern terminus converter station at PSNH’s Scobie

Pond substation in Londonderry, New Hampshire. Scobie Pond has

substantial developable real estate on which to build the converter and is a

robust location to interconnect into the 345-kV transmission grid. Losses

would have been lower, as well, which could have improved the economics

of the project overall. However, a thorough examination of the ROW

between PSNH’s Deerfield substation and Scobie Pond led us to conclude

that the project could not be sited at Scobie Pond. Expansion of that ROW

to accommodate the new HVDC line would result in impacts on Land Trust

areas, conservation easements, commercial buildings, and up to 50-60

private homes.

It was concluded that expansion of the ROW would result in extremely
negative public and political reaction against the plan and the overall HVDC project. It was further determined that in order to locate

the HVDC converter terminal at Scobie Pond, the ROW would need to be reconfigured with taller structures in order to incorporate the HVDC line and/or the HVDC line would need to be built underground. Either option would have been very expensive and taller structures would have had the

additional downside of not being acceptable to the home owners along

the ROW. [bold emphases ours]

 

So, in its testimony to FERC, PSNH claims that it canceled the HVDC line extension past Concord and down into southern NH because they knew that homeowners would find it unaccaptable, that there would be extremely negative public reaction, and that there would be destructive impacts on conservation easements, land trust areas, commercial buildings, and up to 50-60 private homes. 

 

By that logic, PSNH should have never even contemplated running the HVDC line 140 miles through Coos and Grafton Counties. Homeowners here find it unacceptable too, and there are more than 50-60 private homes that will be disastrously affected; so too will conservation easements and land trust areas, not to mention NH State Parks, the White Mountain National Forest, tourist facilities that feed the state's revenue coffers with meals and rooms taxes, and much more. 

 

But there is one more reason that Manchester-based PSNH didn't try to ram this down the throat of its neighbors in Rockingham County, and it's not simple NIMBYism: it would result in "extremely negative political reaction." 

 

We leave PSNH and spokesperson Muntz with several questions that FERC did not ask. What did they think was the nature of this "extremely negative political reaction"? Why did they not anticipate similar "extremely negative political reaction" in Coos and Grafton Counties? Is it because citizens in southern New Hampshire have access to political power in ways that citizens in northernmost New Hampshire do not? Should this not invoke concerns about environmental justice, the official policy of the United States meant to ensure that those without access to political power do not suffer environmental degradation? Doesn't everyone remember "Erin Brockovich" (2000), the film that explores how communities that lack resources and power can suffer environmental discrimination? And how that film ends?

Bury the Northern Pass is a group of concerned citizens in Grafton County; we work in coordination with our neighbors in Coos County. To join the email list, write to burynorthernpass@gmail.com.

Guest Column by Alexander Lee: A Second PSNH Bailout and a Montreal Takeover?

                                       PSNH Plan Is Not In The Public Good

A Letter to the Concord Monitor, December 23, 2010

                                    (reprinted by permission of the author)

 

(Founder and Executive Director of Project Laundry List, Alexander Lee received his B.A. from Middlebury College and his law degree from Vermont Law School. Alex was Assistant to the Commissioners at the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission, where he worked on energy efficiency programs; he has also served as staff co-chair of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners' Committee on Energy Resources & the Environment and was an active, regular participant in the New England Demand Response Initiative. Formed in 1996, Project Laundry List promotes simple, effective ways to save energy and money. Alex lives in Concord NH. He has generously granted permission to reprint his thoughts on PSNH's Northern Pass.)

 

What will Gov. John Lynch do to make his mark on New Hampshire now that he approaches his fourth term? If his friend, Gary Long, CEO of Public Service of New Hampshire, prevails, Lynch will not leave so much a mark as a scar. What a legacy!

New Hampshire is a net exporter of electricity, much of it generated from the dirty resources that PSNH still owns. Northern Pass Transmission is not a public utility, so one must wonder how, without a purchase power agreement, NSTAR/NU plans to invoke eminent domain to destroy the real estate and aesthetic values of the North Country so that it can pipe electricity to Massachusetts and Connecticut. It is not in the public good.

Hydro-Quebec (a foreign corporation) is desperately trying to wheel its power to markets across the Northeast in a buyer's market where natural gas prices have hit rock bottom. This whole project makes no sense right now, and if you want to spend $1.1 billion on an energy project (or what could be referred to as PSNH's second bailout), how about investing in conservation and efficiency?

With the highest rates in the region and an aging population, one has to wonder who Lynch thinks will be here to pay the property taxes and use the electricity. PSNH has already lost oodles of commercial and industrial customers. This cockamamie scheme will not stop the bleeding.

                                           __________________________



Bury the Northern Pass is a group of concerned citizens in Grafton County who work in coordination with our neighbors to the north in Coos County. To join the email list, write to burynorthernpass@gmail.com.

There They Go Again: Green Renewables!

It started at least as early as October when City Manager Elizabeth Dragon announced that the Northern Pass project would not only bring a $250M converter station to Franklin but "green energy to the region." As recently as December 20th, PSNH's Gary Long repeated the same claim in a Concord Monitor interview: "We're not looking for major new sources to meet the power needs; we're looking for major new sources to meet the 'green power' needs."

Well, PSNH hasn't found them yet.

Make no mistake about it. The "major new source" that PSNH would tap for the Northern Pass project is big hydro from Hydro-Quebec, and it's not green. As the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines it, "green power is electricity produced from solar, wind, geothermal, biogas, biomass, and low-impact small hydroelectric sources." Big hydro is excluded because of the devastating effects of its dams and reservoirs on fish and "land use" (translation for H-Q, First Nations tribes being flooded out of their homelands); and big hydro also produces methane gas at high levels that may contribute more to global warming than carbon dioxide does.

The second claim that PSNH constantly makes about its big brown-not-green hydro source is that it's "renewable," able to be replenished in relatively short time, but then they simultaneously undercut the claim by noting that H-Q hydro does not qualify as renewable in New Hampshire. As we have said before, we leave it to PSNH to resolve the conflict. In any event, even as a renewable, the EPA notes, big hydro dams and reservoirs have negative impacts.

So we're down to the third claim that PSNH repeatedly makes about its brown-not-green, renewable-but-not-renewable-and-in-any-case-environmentally-harmful proposed new energy source: it's "low carbon." Doesn't New Hampshire have native sources of low carbon energy that would not require the devastating effects on land and people that 140 miles of high voltage lines strung on massive towers through the center of New Hampshire's pristine back country will?

Not the least of those effects will impact all the people of New Hampshire: tourist revenues, meals and rooms tax, will drop. Who wants to come up north and look at miles and miles of high tension wires and gigantic steel towers? There's a quip north of the Notch that the Old Man didn't fall off the Mountain, he jumped. Was he clairvoyant? Did he see Northern Pass coming?

Bury the Northern Pass is a group of concerned citizens in Grafton County; we work in coordination with our neighbors to the north in Coos County. To join the email list, write to burynorthernpass@gmail.com.