On February 1, the seven-member SEC subcommittee pulled the plug on the Northern Pass project. The Application was denied 7-0. Northern Pass as we know it is dead.
The SEC began its final deliberations on the project two days earlier, January 30. Its task was to consider four statutory criteria:
- whether the Applicants had demonstrated that they have adequate financial, technical and managerial capacity to build the project;
- whether they had shown that the project would not unduly interfere with the orderly development of the region;
- whether they had shown that the project would not have undue adverse impacts on aesthetics, historic sites, air and water quality, the natural environment, and public health and safety; and
- whether the project would serve the public interest.The law requires that failure to meet the burden of proof for any single criterion must result in denial of the entire application.
By the end of January 30 meeting, the subcommittee unanimously agreed that the Applicant had satisfied the first requirement – financial, managerial and technical capacity – and they moved on to the second criterion, orderly development, which includes a suite of basically economic sub components, including property values, tourism, land use and municipal views (master plans, zoning ordinances, etc.). At great expense, the Applicants had hired three consultants (James Chalmers, Mitch Nichols, and Robert Varney) who collectively argued in their studies, reports, and testimonies that 1800 new, tall transmission towers and the underground route construction through town business centers would potentially devalue only nine (9) single residential homes on the 192-mile route, cause zero negative impacts on tourism and related small businesses, and conform perfectly with the prevailing land use, even in rural and agricultural areas as well as in the North Country, which has no other high voltage transmission line.
During the adjudicative hearings, the Intervenors had thoroughly impeached the credibility of this testimony; in the deliberative hearings, the committee took the next step and rejected it. They simply didn’t buy the Applicants’ stunningly arrogant claim that they could build 1800 steel towers as tall as 165′ down the spine of New Hampshire that would be consistent with local planning documents and municipal views about land use and not devalue property or damage tourism and the many small, local businesses that cater to it. Stacked against the project’s claims of economic benefits such as energy savings, which had shrunk to as little as $5 per year for an average household, and employment (all temporary jobs), the balance scale weighed heavily against the Applicants. Nor did the SEC find that it could impose conditions to mitigate the impact of 1800 tall steel towers short of full project burial, which the Applicants had refused to consider. By the end of the third day, February 1, the committee was firmly and unanimously agreed that the Applicants had not met the burden of proof on orderly development, and they took the vote that killed Northern Pass. They could have deliberated the remaining two statutory criteria but were under no legal requirement to do so. Their preference was to end it neatly and cleanly then and there on February 1. (This literally gave Eversource absolutely no time to create mischief if the hearings continued as an academic exercise.)
The eight-year ordeal of Northern Pass as we know it ended at 2:55 PM on Thursday, February 1, when Martin Honigberg adjourned the deliberative hearings.
The Intervenors in the room were stunned. It wasn’t that there was ever a shred of doubt that the Application was fatally flawed, laughable in parts, but that the members of the SEC, five employed by the state, had withstood the incredible pressure to permit the project from the Sununu administration, teamed up late in the process with the Baker bunch south of the border, not to mention the gang in Washington (DOE, USDA-Forest Service, et al.), who never should have issued the federal approvals to cross the Quebec-NH border and construct in the WMNF before the state made its decision. In the end, the entire SEC subcommittee had the integrity and the guts to do the right thing by the laws of New Hampshire and its people.
The Appeal
A denied party has the right to request a re-hearing from the SEC and, if refused, to file an appeal with the NH Supreme Court. The Applicants have already said that they will request a re-hearing from the SEC once the official decision is written, vetted, and published. Presumably, the SEC will deny the request; they were very careful not to create grounds for a re-hearing. This process alone could take several months. If the Applicants then appeal to the Supreme Court and if the Court agrees to hear the case, the average time for a decision is a year or more. A favorable decision might send the Applicants back to the SEC to re-do some or all of the trial, another long process.
The Mass. RFP
In the meanwhile, in terms of the Mass. RFP, Hydro Quebec and the Baker administration have to decide what to do – hold the torch for Northern Pass through the appeals process or find a new belle to take to the ball. As of today, HQ is already talking about its other potential partner projects in Vermont and Maine that submitted proposals to the Mass. RFP, and, according to the Boston Globe (Feb. 3), the Commonwealth has set a February 9th deadline to decide if Northern Pass is now “infeasible.” This “could mean that the state and the utilities choose another project to bring clean power to the state, perhaps via power lines through Maine, Vermont, or even by underwater cable directly from Canada.”
Published reactions from project supporters
Gov. Sununu – “Frankly I’m stunned and disappointed by both the timing and outcome of today’s decision from the Site Evaluation Committee. To deny 1,100 megawatts of clean, renewable energy and more than 1,000 jobs for New Hampshire is a mistake.”
Northern Pass – “shocked and outraged” at the denial. “Clearly, the SEC process is broken and this decision sends a chilling message to any energy project contemplating development in the Granite State.” Will take all legal measures to overturn the decision. SEC should have considered all four statutory criteria and offered conditions (even though the Committee made it clear that there is no way to “condition out” of 1800 towers short of full burial).
Mike Skelton, Manchester C of C – chilling effect on energy development in New Hampshire.
BIA – ditto.
Mayor Grenier, Berlin – ditto with local twist: “This is going to set northern New Hampshire’s ability to revive itself back into the dark ages. We need a variety of different types of industrial projects to revive our economy here, and that was one of them.”
Franklin city manager – candor, at least: “We weren’t counting on the Northern Pass money but we were hoping for the Northern Pass money,”
Published reactions from Opponents
Jane Difley, president/forester, Forest Society – “This stands as a great victory for New Hampshire, our forests, and our landscape. It’s been a long, arduous battle, but New Hampshire has always been worth it.”
Tom Irwin, CLF – “Justice was finally served yesterday when New Hampshire regulators voted unanimously to deny Eversource a permit needed to build Northern Pass, their controversial transmission line that would slice through scenic landscapes and industrialize our rural communities.”
NEPGA – “Northern Pass was a fundamentally flawed project based on bad economics . . . the market case for Northern Pass had collapsed.”
Catherine Corkery, NH Sierra Club – “The people of New Hampshire rejected the unreasonable burden of international transmission lines proposed by Eversource and Hydro-Quebec.”
Alex Ray, Common Man owner – “I’m elated . . . There are better ways to do this and apparently the powers that be — Eversource and Hydro-Quebec — couldn’t find a way to do it in a way that was accommodating to concerned citizens.”
Susan Arnold, AMC – “This ruling by the SEC is a testament to the power of our collective voices in protecting the places we love from inappropriate energy development. New Hampshire’s iconic landscape and natural resources should never be sacrificed to the outsized impacts of 20th-century transmission technology when 21st-century technology is more appropriate and readily available. The SEC saw through what was a poorly planned project and application whose technical flaws were outdone only by its misinformation.”
Judith Reardon, Protect the Granite State – “We are pleased with today’s SEC vote to reject Northern Pass, and grateful to the members for their hours of time spent considering the voices of thousands of Granite State citizens, businesses and municipalities who have said for years that Northern Pass will irreversibly harm our state, our economy and our way of life. Today’s decision is proof that grassroots voices matter, and the many leaders in this fight against Northern Pass deserve to be commended for lifting those voices loudly for all to hear. This is their victory. We recognize that this is not the end of the process, however, and that Eversource will continue to promote Northern Pass upon appeal. We will continue to monitor developments and we will remain in the fight on behalf of our friends and neighbors who agree that Northern Pass is a bad deal for New Hampshire.”
As tortured and flawed a process as it was, the recent SEC “reform” was critical to the decision rendered on Thursday. In particular, the expanded role for public input and public interest was taken seriously. The SEC treated written and oral comments with respect, gave them their due. The SEC lawyer dutifully counted all written comments (4500 in all, with only 160 in support) and reprised them to the Committee. Everyone reading this Update who participated in this process helped to defeat Northern Pass. You were heard.
Ahead
We know that Eversource will prolong its effort to build Northern Pass in the short term, and we should anticipate that, in the longer run, E$ will take aim at the SEC process and try to undermine the reforms. We are already hearing from E$ that the SEC process is “broken,” that the hearings they complained this summer were taking too long concluded prematurely with the no vote. Expect E$ lobbyists to be in the State House soon paving the way for bills to bring the SEC process back under the industry’s full control. In fact, that campaign has already begun, however crudely. HB1358 would mandate that if the SEC does not make a decision within 365 days the application is approved by default. The bill is likely going nowhere but still needs watching. There will surely be more subtle efforts to undermine the SEC process by next year.
We Northern Pass opponents benefited from the SEC reform. Please be ready to pay it back when the attack on it starts in earnest.
For now, though, take pride in what the “grassroots” people of New Hampshire and our allies in the environmental-conservation-recreation communities have accomplished: we spoke truth to power (pun fully intended). We believed deeply in our cause, and we fought with knowledge, skill, and passion every single day for nearly eight years to make our voices heard. In the end, we prevailed. It will make history.