New Hampshire Accepting In-Person and Written Comments on Transmission Line Proposal
For more than seven years, AMC has been working to protect New Hampshire’s remarkable scenic landscapes, forests, and trails from the proposed Northern Pass transmission line. The project as proposed would traverse 192-miles, creating a lasting, negative impact on the overall character of special places across New Hampshire, from wild and remote northern Coos County to historic Deerfield close to the Massachusetts border.
AMC is opposed to Northern Pass as proposed. We are an intervener in the federal and state permitting processes and are currently engaged in presenting our concerns about the project before New Hampshire’s Site Evaluation Committee (SEC), whose permit decision about the project will determine whether or not the project will be built. Learn more about our position and involvement to-date.
Now is your chance to be heard!
As part of its adjudicatory permitting process, the SEC is holding public comment sessions, inviting the public to speak directly to the SEC decision-makers, as well as accepting written comments. We need the public to attend and speak passionately about the negative impacts of this project, sending a clear message that Northern Pass as proposed is not right for New Hampshire. Consider bringing along a photograph of a place you know and love – it could even be your own backyard – that would be irredeemably altered should Northern Pass be constructed as proposed. The SEC already has more than 30,000 pages of evidence to review, but as the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words.
Register in advance by May 31st to speak at one of three scheduled public comment sessions. Additional sessions may be added at more convenient times for the public. If that happens we will update this page with those opportunities.
- June 15, 2017 – 9am to noon, Concord, NH
- June 22, 2017 – 9am to noon, Concord, NH
- July 20, 2017 – 9am to noon, Concord, NH
Click here for details on how to register to speak at one of these three hearings.
You can also submit your comments online, anytime. Be sure to choose Northern Pass from the SEC Docket drop-down menu and add your position on the project before submitting your comments.
AMC encourages you to focus your comments on:
- The scenic and cultural values of New Hampshire’s landscape that this 192-mile project would permanently scar, including by clear-cutting 40 new miles of right-of-way in Coos County, and building more than 1100 new steel lattice or monopole towers up to 160 feet high on existing right of way through 132 miles of New Hampshire.
- Your experience enjoying the outdoors in New Hampshire as well as more broadly the impacts on tourism and on visitors coming to New Hampshire to experience its relatively undeveloped and remote character.
- The failure of the applicant to consider alternatives that would avoid or minimize impacts to New Hampshire, such as burying all 192 miles within already disturbed transportation corridors.
- Your relationship to AMC, the outdoors, and need to support the 31 out of the 32 communities along the project’s proposed path that have voted to oppose the project.
More resources:
- AMC’s Northern Pass web page
- AMC’s Testimony Submitted to the New Hampshire Site Evaluation Committee (Dr. Ken Kimball & Larry Garland, Dr. David Publicover, Chris Thayer)
- Northern Pass: What’s at Stake (blog and video)
- AMC Comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for Northern Pass related to its Presidential Permit
- A 50-minute video by Jerry Monkman about Northern Pass, The Power of Place
Contact us at amcconservation@outdoors.org to let us know if you plan to attend and speak at a public hearing, or if you have any questions that we can answer to help inform your participation.
Susan Arnold
AMC’s Vice President for Conservation, Susan Arnold, joined the AMC in 2003. As Vice President for Conservation, Susan oversees AMC’s policy, research, and trails departments, and is responsible for coordinating AMC’s overall conservation mission and strategy. She has lived in New Hampshire for thirty years, and grew up spending time outdoors in the Northeast and Midwest. She serves as Chair of the NH State Parks System Advisory Council, Chair of the Board of Directors of Conservation New Hampshire, and is a member of her town’s Zoning Board of Adjustment. She loves hiking, swimming, skiing, biking, and kayaking, and shares a home with her husband, a dog and two cats, and a daughter who visits occasionally from the West Coast.