Northern Pass and the WMNF (Part 1)

In order for Northern Pass to go through ten miles of the White Mountain National Forest in the towns of Easton, Woodstock and Lincoln, it will need to obtain a Special Use Permit from the Forest Service. It cannot take federal land by eminent domain. This post and the next one will examine recent policy decisions regarding the WMNF and the Special Use Permit process. Today is the 100th anniversary of the Weeks Act, legislation named after sponsor John Wingate Weeks of Lancaster NH that created the WMNF and other eastern national forests.

Recent Policy Decisions: The 2005 Forest Plan

In 2005, the WMNF completed an exhaustive eight-year study to chart its course for the next ten to fifteen years. Unlike National Parks, National Forests are designed for multiple use, including timber harvest, and finding the right balance of activities for the WMNF with its 7 million annual visitors was a challenging task. 6,000 public comments were collected, numerous public hearings occurred, and a veritable library of study documents was generated. Special attention was given to the impact of the WMNF on towns like Easton, Woodstock and Lincoln, which lie within the overall forest boundary.

The 2005 plan represents a compromise, of course, but there is an underlying direction in its provisions to manage the 800,000 acre WMNF as a natural and scenic refuge. Alternative 2, which was selected at the end of the process, reduced the allowable timber harvest by one quarter; it added 34,500 acres to the existing wilderness areas, increasing total wilderness acres in the forest to approximately 130,000; and it continued its ban on all-terrain vehicles.

Implementing the 2005 forest plan, The New England Wilderness Protection Act of 2006 increased the Sandwich Range Wilderness to its present size and created the Wild River Wilderness area. These areas now follow regulations designed to lessen the evidence of human impact on nature. Trails will not be brushed and otherwise maintained to the same standard as in non-wilderness areas; unpainted natural color wooden trails signs, fewer and further apart, will replace more obtrusive ones; painted trail blazes on trees will not be refreshed; when existing shelters require maintenance, they will be removed; dispersed and compacted earth tent pads will replace wooden decks; bridges will be removed; and so forth. For those of us who treasure the old Wild River shelters, even the dilapidated one in muddy Perkins Notch, it's like losing old friends to see them go. But it's an acceptable trade-off that acknowledges the WMNF's mission to offer its users the chance to experience solitude in nature, a vanishing resource for the millions of visitors who live within a day's drive of the forest in the densely populated urban centers of the Northeast.   

A compatible and highly perishable resource in the urban Northeast are natural scenic vistas, and throughout the 2005 planning documents, natural landscapes are consistently elevated as one of the WMNF's most important assets. The Executive Summary of the decision to choose Alternative 2 notes that all four possible alternatives prioritized natural scenery:

Research indicates that beyond their contribution to tourism, high quality

scenery and a natural appearing landscape enhance people’s physical and

psychological well being. Given the large population within a day’s drive of

the White Mountains and increasing populations near the Forest, the scenic

attributes of the White Mountain National Forest benefit a large portion of

the people in the northeast. All four alternatives would retain the vast

majority of the Forest in natural appearing conditions, so all should continue

providing these non-priced benefits. (Record of Decision Executive Summary)

As you drive north on I-93 and round the bend near Exit 28, the majestic vista of the Franconia mountains suddenly unfolds before your eyes. It's for good reason that 19th century travel writers dubbed this area "the gateway." For those of us who live in the North Country, when the confines of the near ground drop away and this view opens up, we know that we are home again; and those who visit from down under realize that they are finally away from home. Everyone who has seen this view instantly understands what the Forest Service meant when it wrote that high quality scenery and a natural appearing landscape enhance our physical and psychological well being. This is not merely a "non priced benefit" of the WMNF, it's a priceless benefit, one vigorously defended and prized in the 2005 forest plan. It is now under attack by the proposed Northern Pass project, which would place a row of 90-135' steel towers right across the gateway and up into the breath-taking vista if it is granted a special use permit.

Sign Gallery (21-30)

Please send pictures of signs opposing Northern Pass to burynorthernpass<at>gmail.com and we'll post them here. Each sign gallery will feature ten signs. Sign Gallery 1-10 is here, Gallery 11-20 is here.

#21. Rte. 3, Stratford. March 1, 2011.

Tips on Writing Scoping Comments

Written comments are being accepted from now until April 12, 2011. A number of public comments have already been posted on the DOE-Normandeau site. You may write as often as you like.


I've never heard of anyone who yearned to write the great American scoping comment, but since none of us was born knowing how to write this genre, here's advice from a scoping comment writing coach. Some of the material that follows comes from Elizabeth Mullin's The Art of Commenting: How to Influence Environmental Decisionmaking with Effective Comments (2000). It will also explain how the process works.

Scoping is the process of identifying concerns or issues to be studied by DOE-Normandeau (and its sub contractors) as it prepares the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS). As Mullins explains, there's actually a draft draft EIS; that will be written by the contractor (Normandeau et al.) after it sorts through and categorizes all of our comments. DOE will go over the draft draft and supervise Normandeau's writing of the  DEIS. In other words, Normandeau is our immediate audience as scoping comment writers

You may deliver your comments orally at one (or more) of the five scoping meetings from March 14-19, but be sure also to submit them in writing. You may submit written comments now, before the public meetings, then attend the public meetings and hear what opponents and proponents have to say, and submit additional comments in light of what you hear. If you forget something or a new issue comes up, write another comment and get it in by April 12.

All of the public comment that comes in before April 12 will be inventoried and converted into categories of issues that are lumped together into larger subject areas in the scoping report. The number of commenters who wrote about an issue will be indicated. For instance, the underground/underwater Champlain Hudson Power Express (CHPE) Scoping Report creates a purpose and need category and states that "nine commenters noted that the purpose and need statement should establish the evidence that the need for electricity exists in the area, or will exist if projected population and planned land use growth are realized" (p. 9). (The CHPE "raw data" is here, the recently completed scoping report here.)

For Northern Pass, DOE has stated that it will be looking at these categories:

"Impacts will be analyzed across a number of resource areas, including:

• Air quality (including climate change and greenhouse gas emissions)
• Water resources and drainage
• Geography, geology, and soils
• Land use
• Threatened and endangered species, special status species, and related sensitive resources
• Airspace utilization
• Public health and safety
• Noise
• Natural hazards
• Hazardous materials
• Accidents and intentional destructive acts
• Cultural and historical resources 
• Recreational resources
• Visual resources
• Socioeconomic impacts, community services and infrastructure
• Environmental justice considerations (disproportionately high and adverse impacts to minority and low income populations)
• Cumulative impacts (past, present, and reasonably foreseeable future actions)
• Irreversible and irretrievable commitments of resources

But DOE also says that "this list is not intended to be all inclusive or to imply any predetermination of impacts, and DOE invites interested parties to suggest other issues to be considered." Create your own categories if you feel these do not cover your concerns; specifically request DOE to look at them. If you don't ask, you might not get what you want.

Similarly, DOE states that it will consider "alternative routes." They say nothing about "alternative designs," e.g., burying the lines. If this is your concern, request that the DOE consider alternative designs and/or routes. Again, if you don't ask for it, you probably won't see it in the scoping summary report.

The private contractor, Normandeau, not the DOE, will read, inventory, and categorize the raw data of our public comments and prepare this scoping report. This will necessarily be a subjective process. How would you categorize the hypothetical comment that "Northern Pass is an immoral project that will ruin my economic future and scar the landscape"? Most likely, this comment would be categorized under "socioeconomics" and "visual resources." The "immoral" nature of the project would probably slip through the cracks.

To guard against this slippage, the scoping comment coach recommends that writers overtly direct the DOE to examine specific issues broken down into categories. Don't let the contractor decide what the category is; tell the contractor how to categorize your concerns. Once the contractor converts your comment into a statistic for the scoping report, your comment essentially drops out of the process.

Thus, for instance, the comment that "Northern Pass is an immoral project that will ruin my economic future and scar the landscape" should be rewritten to direct the DOE to study your concerns, e.g.,

 The DOE should investigate the following issues for the DEIS:

• the immorality of the project, specifically, is it just to impose the burdens of this project on people who stand to gain nothing from it? (or whatever the moral grounds are);
• the negative economic impacts of the project on landowners who will not receive adequate compensation for their property;
• the detrimental impact on landscape, which is essential to tourism here.

That's just one way to foreground the writer's concerns and give the comment a better chance of surviving intact as Normandeau rolls it into the Scoping Report summary.

Here's another hypothetical comment that doesn't tell the contractor specifically how to classify it and doesn't tell the DOE what to study: "I want to go on record as opposing this project unless the lines are buried."

That might be rewritten to: "The DOE should include an alternate action that examines the feasibility of burying the lines, including an examination of nearby corresponding projects . . .", etc.

One writing coach goes even further and recommends filing a separate comment for each topic:

"Write a separate comment for each topic you cover. The agency issues a Scoping Report which deals with comments by topic or issue.  A team will inventory them (by sender). They'll pencil "soils', or 'wildlife' or 'recreation needs' at the top of your comment, and sort them into stacks. If you combine a bunch of issues in one letter, you might hurt your chances that your comments will be inventoried accurately and get
included in the scoping report."

The more common advice is to explicitly request the DOE to look at specific issues, to identify those issues in a way that individualizes them and thus increases the chances that they'll survive intact through the inventory process, to avoid "bundling" and blurring issues, and to write as clearly as possible.

The Sierra Club (Atlantic Chapter) public comment on CHPE provides a good model of how to insure that your concerns and issues survive intact. Another Sierra Club Atlantic committee also models the format in a scoping comment that bears reading because it directs the DOE to examine issues that are germane to the Northern Pass project, e.g., is this project needed?

For advice on issues to address in your scoping comments, see the Conservation Law Foundation's page.

The beauty of the public comment period is that you can go back and rewrite as often as you want before April 12. The comments can be entered online at northernpasseis.us.

Write clearly, write often, and remember that your immediate audience will be Normandeau et al.