Northern Pass and Property Values Near the Existing Right-of-Way

James A. Chalmers's new findings about property value losses near power lines would pertain both to new rights-of-way (ROWs) and to the existing ROW on the proposed Northern Pass route.


As reported this week by Responsible Energy Action LLC (REAL), 2012 research by Northern Pass's appraisal expert, James A. Chalmers, on property values near power lines shows up to a 50% decline in residential areas of a basically rural state, Montana, with sales periods extended from two to five times. These effects are substantially more severe than the "negligible" impact that Northern Pass claims its transmission line would have on New Hampshire.

Chalmers’s new study also looks at large industrial agricultural properties and large remote recreational properties (typically 1,000-5,000 acres or larger).  With rare exception, these do not exist in New Hampshire.  For these properties, because value is driven by a specific, non-residential use, the study finds little or no price impact from the transmission lines, This stands to reason – if you are operating a 5,000 acre farm or hunting preserve for money, and have no ability or plans to subdivide for residential sales, the lines do not affect your future income stream. Indeed, in New Hampshire, even the larger parcels of land, unless restricted by conservation easement, etc., have values driven by the potential for future residential use. 

Since New Hampshire land values are driven by residential and potential residential uses, in this respect Chalmers's 2012 study points the way to what one might expect were Northern Pass ever to be built. Extrapolate to tax abatements and the resulting loss of town tax revenues, and the impact is hardly negligible.

Let's take it a step further. Chalmers does not specifically state this, but assume that his study looks at what happens to residential property values when a power line is built on a new ROW. What happens to residential property values when a power line is built on an existing ROW?

In the case of Northern Pass, the same thing would happen. Here's why.

The conventional answer from power companies (or their consultants) wishing to build lines is that the impact of building a new circuit on an existing ROW would merely be "incremental," i.e., minimal. The assumptions behind this assertion are rarely identified. But here is one explanation that reveals its underlying assumption:

It is important to distinguish between transmission line projects that rebuild or add circuits to an existing corridor and those that create a new right-of- way. Impacts associated with the former are incremental, affecting land uses that have coexisted beside an existing transmission line for years and often decades. On the other hand, transmission line projects constructed within a new right-of-way can have significantly greater socioeconomic consequences. Projects that rebuild a transmission line to a higher voltage or add circuits may require taller structures and additional conductors, increasing the line’s visual footprint and projecting more vertical and horizontal lines upon the landscape, but years of coexistence has usually added extensive vegetation buffers along right-of-way edges, mitigating the impacts on adjacent land uses. (Section 4. 2. 10)

Northern Pass is a project that would add a 345kV "circuit" (line) to an "existing corridor " (ROW) along the 140 mile route from Groveton to Deerfield. It would require substantially "taller structures" (90'-135' and taller towers) than those that currently exist (45'-60'), up to 300% higher. And it would produce more visual blight by projecting "more vertical and horizontal lines upon the landscape." But, contrary to the conventional explanation, the impact of Northern Pass on adjacent residences would not be "mitigated" (hidden) by "extensive vegetation buffers along right-of-way edges."

It's highly questionable if this hypothetical paradigm accurately describes the impact on the existing ROW of even New Hampshire's first HVDC line from Hydro Quebec in the 1980s, but it certainly does not apply to what Northern Pass proposes now. Between Groveton and Deerfield, Northern Pass would remove extensive vegetation buffer within the ROW, in some cases a 75' strip of trees that have been growing for over 65 years. Residences and tourist facilities on the edge of the ROW now buffered by a tree screen within the ROW as deep as 75' would suddenly be exposed to a ROW with two sets of structures, the existing poles and the substantially taller new towers. Even with internal tree screens left intact, Northern Pass's towers would exceed the tallest buffer vegetation and thereby create serious new adverse visual impacts. Northern Pass's clearcutting of the ROW to its fullest width and its significantly taller towers would create new negative impacts on land use, not simply incremental ones.

In terms of its extremely negative visual impacts, Northern Pass would effectively create a new power line from Groveton to Deerfield.

Chalmers's 2012 findings have ominous implications for residential land values and corollary town tax revenue losses along Northern Pass's entire proposed 180-mile transmission line -- both on new ROWs and on the historic, existing ROW. New Hampshire simply cannot afford to allow Northern Pass to be built. .

An Open Letter on Northern Pass to Representative Charles F. Bass

Attorney Alan Robert Baker, Columbia, responds to Representative Bass and requests that Northern Pass's Presidential Permit application be rejected as stale and incomplete.


April 28, 2012

Representative Charles F. Bass
114 North Main Street
Concord NH 03301-4946

Re: Northern Pass Transmission LLC

Dear Representative Bass:

Thank you for your April 16, 2012 letter and the position you are taking on the ill-advised Northern Pass project. As proposed, and now as newly planned, Northern Pass would destroy some of the most scenic landscapes in our state, especially in Coos and Grafton Counties—not to mention the White Mountain National Forest. Our tourism industry in Coos is highly dependent on our beautiful natural environment. Our forested mountains, farms, lakes and rivers are our most important assets—indeed they symbolize our way of life. They are a part of our heart and soul.

The threatened presence of four or five hundred steel towers carrying huge cables coursing their way through newly cleared 150 to 200 foot corridors in Pittsburg, Clarksville, Stewartstown and Dixville is a criminal concept; and I fear every day for the potential loss threatened by Northern Pass. I also fear for the disruption this would cause and is causing to the lives of people who would have to live within sight of this visible scar and its towers memorializing the worst of the urban sprawl environment that we have so carefully avoided.

It is not just northern Coos County that would suffer. In southern Coos County and Grafton County and on south to Deerfield, Northern Pass claims it would use existing rights of way where the project will ultimately boast up to a thousand steel towers in excess of 120 feet high over existing rights of way—rights of way that were acquired 60 to 80 years ago for essential transmission and distribution of power to the people of New Hampshire. The existing structures in those rights of way are 40 to 50 foot high wooden poles. The contrast will be enormous. And who paid for those transmission line rights of way? The rate payers and taxpayers of New Hampshire paid for those rights of way. Now foreign corporations are proposing to trash our landscapes and use the people’s rights of way for the private transmission of power that is not needed and which those corporations alone will control. The primary reason for the Northern Pass proposal is for the exclusive use and profit of a foreign government-owned corporation (Hydro Quebec) and for the profit ($68 million per year) of an out-of-state holding company now headquartered in the Hartford and Boston areas(Northeast Utilities). These corporations are quite simply trying to convert an asset paid for by the people of the State of New Hampshire into their own private corporate piggy bank.

The scoping hearings held last year by the DOE made it very clear where the people stood on this proposal. Indeed, over 30 towns impacted by the Northern Pass proposal have now gone on record as opposing the Northern Pass project—with virtually unanimous votes in opposition. In my opinion, you and our other congressional representatives in Washington should now be asking the following questions:

1. How can the DOE allow the Northern Pass Application for Presidential Permit to sit in limbo on its docket with no concern for the public rights to be free of such threats and intimidation?

2. Why has the DOE not addressed the timely Motions filed to dismiss the proceedings on this Application?

3. How can the DOE refuse to post the continuing public comments on its EIS website at the same time that it permits Northern Pass to post whatever it wants?

4. How can most of the people in Coos County protect their property values and make intelligent decisions regarding their property when Northern Pass continues its refusal to disclose the ultimate route that it will take through northern Coos County?

I believe that the DOE should dismiss the current Presidential Permit Application as stale and incomplete. DOE should require Northern Pass to start over if it still intends to pursue its ill advised venture. This would help restore public confidence in the process and the ability of our governmental agencies to apply its rules even-handedly. This would also send a message to utility adventurers that they cannot use federal agencies as a playground for running flags up the flagpole to see who salutes and then stall the process while they find a new flag to fly. It would also give those who decide in the future to protect their interests the right to intervene in any new Presidential Permit Application filings. As things now stand, the time limit for timely intervention in the pending Presidential Permit proceedings of Northern Pass expired 16 months ago.

Again, I want to thank you for your thoughtful and principled position on the Northern Pass project as expressed in your April 16, 2012 letter. Please let me know if you would like any further information or if I can be of assistance in the future.

Very truly yours,

Alan Robert Baker

cc: Brian Mills, DOE (via fax 202-586-8008)

Responsible Energy Action LLC

Hydro-Quebec's "long extension cord"

The rhetorical trope of the Northern Pass high voltage direct current transmission line as a long extension cord is common in Opposition comments on the project. Where did it originate?


Opposition members frequently refer to Northern Pass's proposed HVDC transmission line as an "extension cord." This figure of speech is apt insofar as an extension cord connects a power source to an end-user application or appliance. And an extension cord is a dedicated, exclusive conduit, as the Northern Pass line would be for Hydro-Quebec. But the Opposition also uses the extension cord metaphor or simile because it is entirely inaccurate in a major respect and thereby points to a fundamental problem with Northern Pass: the way in which project proponents try to dismiss or minimize its impact.

That is, an extension cord is innocuous, relatively invisible. It is so much a part of the background that UL recommends bright safety colors (ironically, orange) to make it stand out. In contrast, a 140-mile transmission line that runs through more than 1800 individual parcels of private land, over the White Mountains, and down the narrow corridor valleys of New Hampshire on 135' steel towers spaced every 600'-800' would be anything but invisible and innocuous. By implication, an extension cord is only important in terms of what it connects to what, energy source to user, not for the inconsequential gap between the two. In contrast, the 140 mile route through New Hampshire is anything but a negligible gap to be closed; it brims with life, commerce, residences, hopes, dreams, heritage.

Although the extension cord analogy ironically points to what project apologists now ignore, the Opposition did not invent it. To James Robb, senior vice president for planning and development at Northeast Utilities, goes the apparent credit for coining it in a New York Times column on June 15, 2009:

A 'long extension cord' to cool New England

Hydro-Québec, the Montreal-based utility, has power to spare in summers, when New England needs it to meet peak demand driven by air conditioning. The DC line would start in its system and deliver power to New England over a closed cable that would bypass the alternating current (AC) grid en route. It assures Hydro-Québec that its power will go through whether or not the AC grid is congested, and it knows the transmission costs will be fixed in advance by contract, Robb explained.

"For Hydro-Québec, it's like having a long extension cord," Robb said. Northeast Utilities and NSTAR, the Boston-based power company that is its partner in the project, would build and pay for the line. Hydro-Québec would pay the companies for its use, based on the construction costs and a return. The Canadian company will sell the power competitively to utilities via long-term contracts, Robb said. "The market risk is borne by Hydro-Québec," he added. The project would provide a certain outlet for its power as it proceeds with a major expansion of hydropower facilities in its region.

Northern Pass apologists no longer use the extension cord analogy because it ironically draws attention to what they would minimize: the impact of the towers on New Hampshire's economy and environment -- and all that to run air conditioners in Boston in the summer. But back in 2009 and well into 2010, project officials were still telling it like it would be if the project were ever built.

For more early "straight talk" on Northern Pass by PSNH, see Patrick McDermott's prophetic 2010 comments on how hard it would be to sell the project to New Hampshire.