Just a few weeks ago, a group of municipalities calling themselves the Great Bay Municipal Coalition – Dover, Portsmouth, Exeter, Rochester and Newmarket – took the unfortunate step of filing a lawsuit against the N.H. Department of Environmental Services, challenging its analysis of nitrogen pollution in the estuary. Despite the need for prompt action to protect the Great Bay estuary from pollution, the municipalities have chosen to attack NHDES’s nitrogen analysis on procedural grounds, claiming NHDES should have engaged in formal rule-making.

The declining health of the Great Bay estuary – and the effects of nitrogen pollution – is well documented. According to the most recent State of Estuaries report, nitrogen concentrations in Great Bay have increased to unsustainable levels. And the loss of eelgrass – the cornerstone of the ecosystem that provides essential habitat for juvenile fish (and is therefore a critical piece of the food web) — has been particularly dramatic, with some areas now completely devoid of this critical habitat.

Fortunately, some communities aren’t following in the path of these municipalities. Newington, for example, has been a strong supporter of recent regulatory efforts to reduce nitrogen pollution from sewage treatment plants. And Durham made the specific decision not to litigate against NHDES, and to instead work collaboratively with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) while at the same time exploring ways to reduce stormwater pollution.

Great Bay is approaching a tipping point and the recent lawsuit by the Municipal Coalition does nothing more than delay implementation of the necessary actions that are needed to prevent a collapse of the estuary. The waters of Great Bay belong to all of us.  It’s time for every community along its shores and within its watershed to start investing in real solutions and stop angling for delay.

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For more, visit: http://www.clf.org/great-bay-waterkeeper/ You can also follow me on Facebook and Twitter.

Photo courtesy of Putneypics @ flickr. Creative Commons.

A couple of weeks ago I met a young farmer near Rutland, VT who was stunned to be out plowing his fields in the month of March. At that time the fields are usually knee-deep muddy, if not still covered in snow, ice or the slow-melting crust of the long winter. He was stunned:  if he plows and plants now, what’s going to happen next? How will his crops respond? Should he wait, for something more like a “normal” planting season to return?

These are questions that thousands of us gardeners across New England have been struggling with lately, in the wake of an unseasonably warm spell, and a winter that broke records first for early snowfall, and then low overall snowfall and high temperatures. Looking out our windows when the weather warms, we are drawn to one place: the soil – we long to get our hands in the dirt, and smell the wonderful scents of spring. For the farmer I mentioned above, the decision wasn’t just recreational or therapeutic; the crops for the CSA he recently founded with his partner were at risk. He had to plan carefully, not knowing what lies ahead.

In Vermont, where my wife and I have tended our garden for years, you start your seeds on Town Meeting Day and plant on Memorial Day. But this year, that timeline is way off.

Recently, for the first time in 22 years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture released an updated version of its Plant Hardiness Zone Map. The map charts average winter minimum temperatures, or cold intensity. What this map confirmed in VT is what we have observed anecdotally across New England and the United States: that our world is warming, as this map by the Arbor Day Foundation shows vividly. For the first time in VT, for instance, zone 5b has crept into the southern edges of our state. And the south coast of Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts includes zone 7a, which is also found in Northern Alabama. The commentary on the new map carefully avoids concluding the shifts are the results of climate change; most gardeners will draw their own conclusions.

For me, the question of whether or not to plant returned me to a question about my greenhouse. Previous owners of our house built a small, traditional greenhouse that helped with the slow and wet transition from winter to spring, with consistency and in the same place for 15 years. It succumbed to the elements recently, and we decided to try smaller, portable hoop houses over our raised beds. They’re more suitable to highly variable temperatures. Where once a rigid structure suited our weather and our needs, that’s no longer the case. We need to be more flexible. More adaptable.

This winter ranks as the 4th warmest nationally since the late 1880s, when climatologists began keeping records. People still consider Memorial Day as a safe time to plant, but the average last frost day is 10 days prior, as Vern Grubinger, University of Vermont Extension vegetable and berry specialist, said in this Brattelboro Reformer article.

What happens when you plan according to tradition, but the seasonal calendar is out of kilter? What happens when convention no longer suits our contemporary reality? These are questions of adaptation, and they apply to backyard gardens – and also flood zone mapping, transportation, and almost everything we do in the natural world. We have to start building differently, for a different world.

And so I wanted to ask you – CLF members, and members of the public alike – how are you adapting? What have you done with your garden this spring?  Are you anticipating odd weather in the months ahead? How will you respond? Please share your comments here and share your photos with us on our Facebook page.

I look forward to hearing from you. And happy planting.

The American developers of the Northern Pass project are misleading the public about the project’s most touted environmental benefit (without which they “wouldn’t be doing this”): reducing New England’s greenhouse gas emissions. Presented with clear, unambiguous evidence that the current proposal would not meaningfully reduce emissions and that their public relations campaign is trading in falsehoods, the developers have done nothing to correct the record or provided any substantive response to the evidence.

In mid-February, CLF released a report on the science regarding large-scale hydropower’s emissions of greenhouse gases, the pollutants that are driving climate change. The conclusion: large-scale hydropower projects, especially new facilities, have substantial greenhouse gas emissions that, in their first years of operation, are equivalent to emissions from modern natural gas power plants.

This conclusion means that the proposed Northern Pass project, which would import up to 1,200 megawatts of new Canadian hydropower into New England and displace power from domestic natural gas plants, would not meaningfully reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as the developers are claiming.  CLF’s report also demonstrated that the assumption at the heart of the developers’ claim that the Northern Pass project would reduce emissions by 5 million tons per year – that Canadian hydropower has no greenhouse gas emissions – is unequivocally false.

CLF sent a copy of the hydropower emissions report to Northern Pass Transmission LLC (NPT). In our transmittal letter, we made clear that the science summarized in the report (some of which was included in NPT’s own regulatory filings) clearly contradicted NPT’s marketing claims and urged NPT to:

• correct the regulatory and public record by retracting and withdrawing all NPT prior statements that hydropower results in no emissions of greenhouse gases and that the Project will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by any specific amount, and
• refrain from making any claims regarding carbon dioxide emissions reductions associated with the Project unless and until those reductions are substantiated in a new technical analysis subject to public and permitting agency review.

To date, NPT has taken neither step. The false “no emissions” canard and the unsupported claim of 5 million tons of annual emissions reductions from the project are still prominent fixtures at NPT’s MyNewHampshire.com:

"No greenhouse gases" (source: http://www.northernpass.us/pdf/ads/Jack.pdf)

NPT spokesman Martin Murray did post a non-responsive comment on CLF’s website, to which I responded in detail here. On its own website, NPT then heralded a Hydro-Québec press release responding to the report, and I explained here why the press release neither reflected a close reading of the report nor challenged the report’s fundamental conclusions but, instead, underscored Hydro-Québec’s position that the major promise of new hydropower imports was as a long-term replacement for dirty, costly coal power plants like New Hampshire’s own Merrimack and Schiller Stations – not natural gas.

Where do NPT’s non-responses leave us? Unfortunately, NPT seems poised to continue on with its false and misleading public relations campaign and has shown no interest in an open, honest debate. CLF will continue to use all the tools at our disposal to ensure that the public and decision-makers are fully aware of all the issues associated with the Northern Pass proposal. 

You can support our work by becoming a CLF member and also by telling the permitting agency now reviewing the Northern Pass proposal to consider hydropower’s greenhouse gas emissions – and all the other impacts of Northern Pass power in Canada – as part of the agency’s environmental review – click here to take action.

For more information about Northern Pass, sign-up for our monthly newsletter Northern Pass Wire, visit CLF’s Northern Pass Information Center (http://www.clf.org/northernpass), and take a look at our prior Northern Pass posts on CLF Scoop.

Seeking the Current filmmaker Nicolas Boisclair on the bank of Québec's Romaine River (photo courtesy Chercher le Courant)

This month, Seeking the Current wowed audiences across New Hampshire with the sublime beauty of Québec’s Romaine River – a wild, natural wonder that will essentially be destroyed by a new complex of hydropower projects, now under construction.  This complex is only one part of Hydro-Québec’s ongoing building boom – the keystone of the Canadian utility’s aggressive strategy to increase exports to the United States. The film also showed filmgoers that there are better, cheaper alternatives to new hydropower, including wind, solar photovoltaic, solar hot water, biogas, and investments in energy efficiency.  If these alternatives were scaled up and put in place throughout the province, Québec could still export more power to the United States – but without constructing new dams and reservoirs.

During the discussions after the film (one of which you can watch here), we heard the same question again and again – what can we do here in New England? The filmmaker Nicolas Boisclair observed that Hydro-Quebec’s strategy relies on opening new “doors” to New England and other export markets – like the Northern Pass transmission project. That’s another reason why CLF sees the permitting process for Northern Pass as so important – it is our opportunity to scrutinize whether we should open the door and on what terms, given all the impacts of the Northern Pass transmission project and the new Canadian hydropower the project makes possible.  And there is still time for all of us to tell the lead federal permitting agency for Northern Pass – the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) – to do its job by fully considering the impacts of Canadian hydropower.

Understanding Northern Pass’s power source is fundamental to understanding Northern Pass, especially with the developers of the project touting the environmental benefits of Canadian hydropower at every opportunity. PSNH President Gary Long even has said “we wouldn’t be doing” Northern Pass if it didn’t provide a “greener, cleaner energy future.” But when it comes to scrutinizing all the impacts of that same hydropower in the permitting process, the developers change their tune, arguing that the impacts of Hydro-Québec’s strategy to build more hydropower projects and export more power to the northeastern United States are “beyond the reach of” federal law.

On this point, the developers are wrong. Federal law requires that all direct and indirect effects of the Northern Pass project be analyzed and considered as part of DOE’s environmental review. In the words of the Council on Environmental Quality – the office that oversees all federal environmental reviews – “agencies must include analysis of reasonably foreseeable transboundary effects of proposed actions in their analysis of proposed actions in the United States.” The impacts of hydropower in Canada – so stunningly documented in Seeking the Current and so much more worse for the climate than the misleading story Northern Pass developers like to tell – are “reasonably foreseeable” consequences of the Northern Pass project, and the Department of Energy must consider them, alongside all the potential impacts of building a large-scale transmission line through New Hampshire. CLF made this clear in our comments to DOE a year ago, but it is critical that DOE hear from as many voices as possible.

Please join CLF in calling on the Department of Energy to consider the impacts of Northern Pass hydropower in Canada.  With only a few clicks, you can take action here.

A few weeks ago I attended a conference in Washington, DC that brought together environmental groups from all over the country. In speaking with my colleagues, I was reminded of how this country is a patchwork quilt: each of us brought a unique set of challenges, a strong independent sense of identity, and solutions to regional challenges – solutions that are sometimes adopted at the national level. This certainly is true of New England.

Over the last year, two events have emphasized the importance of interregional coordination. In the process, they have reminded me of New England’s long history of regional cooperation to advance nation leading clean energy projects, and of the way in which those have been adopted on the national stage.

The first of these issues is FERC Order 1,000 – a significant reform to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s position on “electric transmission planning and cost allocation requirements for public utility transmission providers” issued in June of 2010. That Order, and material explaining it, can be found on the FERC website. The new rules announced in that Order mandate that utilities operating wholesale electricity systems across the country engage in a process of regional planning. Here in New England, we have been doing that for as long, if not longer, than anywhere else in the country, so that part of the order will prompt new regional innovations largely elsewhere in the country. Another part of the order instructs regional operators of the electric grid to consider the public policy mandates of the states in their region in the planning they do for their part of the grid. The New England states have a variety of innovative policies intended to bring about a clean energy future. How our regional grid operator accounts for those in its planning is very likely to break ground for the rest of the country.

Similarly, the recent breakthrough settlement agreement by the Patrick Administration in the proposed merger between NStar and Northeast Utilities also reminded me of the need for regional coordination. Consider the scale of the proposed utility: As The Boston Globe reported, “the proposed $17.5 billion merger… would create the largest utility in the region, [and serve] nearly 3.5 million electric and gas customers from Westport, Conn., to Pittsburg, N.H., near the Canadian border.”

With a reach extending from southern Connecticut to Northern New Hampshire by way of Boston, the resulting utility has obligations under a variety of critical state policies intended to protect the environment and build a resilient clean energy economy. The right to operate as a state-sanctioned monopoly is conditioned on the utility meeting those obligations. The initial terms of the proposed merger did not meet those requirements; the merger as revised by the settlement, as my colleague Sue Reid said, “ensures that this powerful new utility will be in lockstep with Massachusetts’ nation-leading clean energy policies and propel the state forward instead of backwards in implementing them.”

This cases highlight the need for advocacy groups to be able to field their teams  on a scale and in a manner that that rises to the challenge of the moment. The NU/NStar merger required us to play on a regional scale; FERC Order 1,000 provides a chance to use the federally regulated planning process to advance critical state policies that are designed to build a cleaner and thriving New England. The challenges we face, and the institutions we engage (like utilities), are large and extend across our region and beyond, not respecting traditional boundaries. CLF must meet this challenge with size, scale, intentions, goals, and strategies that are appropriately sized to meet those challenges.

Given New England’s strong tradition of leadership on energy and environmental issues, I have confidence we have the tools required. However, as my conversations in DC emphasized, what is appropriate here in New England is not appropriate for every region.

Given the differences between the various regions of the country, and various areas within those regions, I wonder: To what extent can we successfully plot a common future? These questions are as relevant within New England as between regions.

Driving south from Acadia National Park in Maine or Hanover, New Hampshire, or east from Springfield, MA and Hartford, CT the scenery changes, the weather warms and the population becomes more dense. Though each place is in New England, each feels very different – and, if you ask someone on the street, chances are they’ll tell you just how unique and independent their town or city is. The same is true as you travel north from Atlanta or NYC to Boston, or east from Chicago or San Francisco. Within New England, as within our country, our differences can be easier to see than our shared future, but it is the latter that requires our attention.

More and more, we have the tools. That puts us in a good position to work together, town by town, region by region, for a thriving New England, and a thriving country.

In a recent blog and in other outreach, I encouraged people to attend the EPA public hearing or contact EPA to support its draft discharge permit for the City of Dover’s sewage treatment plant. To ensure a cleaner and healthier Great Bay estuary, we must treat our wastewater to the highest standards possible.

In response to my call for action, it was inspiring to receive a copy of a letter written by a concerned citizen, Brian Giles, who lives in Lee and has been involved in environmental issues in the Seacoast for the past twenty years. In voicing strong support for the EPA’s proposed action, Brian’s letter discusses the significant losses of eelgrass in the Piscataqua River and Great Bay and the need for prompt, meaningful action to reduce nitrogen pollution.  His letter goes on to state:

“The Piscataqua River and Great Bay belong to the people of New Hampshire, Maine, and the residents of the Seacoast area. These waters have high commercial and recreation value for swimming, boating, fishing, bird watching, open space, and a sense of place. Equally important, thousands of birds, mammals, fish and other wildlife depend on these habitats to live, feed and reproduce. No one group of citizens has the right to put these waters at further risk because of perceived financial hardship.”

Brian’s letter concludes with the following statement: “All municipalities have an inherent moral and ethical responsibility to take care of their own waste products.”

I couldn’t have said it better. Protecting and restoring the Great Bay estuary – and averting the ecological collapse that could happen if current threats are left unchecked – is no small task.  But we have a moral imperative to do so – for all of us, and for future generations.  With more people like Brian championing the need to clean up the estuary, we’ll make it happen.

If you would like to know how you can become more involved, please email me. Great Bay needs you and I hope you too are inspired to make a difference.

For additional information about the Waterkeeper, visit us on our website or Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.

Seeking the Current filmmaker Nicolas Boisclair (photo: Red River Theatres in Concord)

The New Hampshire tour of Seeking the Current is off to an amazing start. So far, the documentary about Hydro-Québec’s Romaine River hydropower project has played to blockbuster audiences in Colebrook, Wolfeboro, Wilton, and Concord (including a sell-out last night), and we’ve had a great time participating in lively post-film discussions with filmgoers and the film’s director, Nicolas Boisclair.  Please join Nicolas and CLF at the remaining screenings and discussions that are coming up this week:

• Tuesday, March 13 at 7:00 pm – New Hampshire Audubon Massabesic Center, 26 Audubon Way, Auburn, NH.  This screening is very convenient to southern New Hampshire and Massachusetts filmgoers!  Admission is free, with $5 suggested donation. Sponsored by the Appalachian Mountain Club, the Audubon Society of New Hampshire, and CLF. 
• Wednesday, March 14, 7:00 pm – Howe Library, 13 South Street, Hanover, NH. Admission is free.  Sponsored by CLF and the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests.
• Friday, March 16, 7:00 pm – Flying Monkey Movie House and Performance Center, 39 South Main Street, Plymouth, NH. $5 admission.

We also have a free showing of the film scheduled for April 5 in Keene, with a post-film discussion:

• Thursday, April 5, 7:00 pm – Putnam Theater, Keene State College, Keene, NH. Admission is free. Sponsored by CLF, the Harris Center for Conservation Education, and the Keene State College Film Society.

If you’ve seen the film, were as impressed as we were, and want to help show Seeking the Current in your community in the coming months, please let me know at ccourchesne@clf.org. We’d love to work with you to make it happen.

In conjunction with the film’s New Hampshire tour, CLF co-hosted a successful webinar last week on the environmental and energy implications of importing more large-scale hydropower into New England. During the webinar, Nicolas shared a preview of Seeking the Current, and participants learned how the issues raised by the film are critical to a full understanding of proposals to import more hydropower, including the Northern Pass project. You can download an audio-visual archive of the webinar at this link (~100 MB .wmv file; Windows compatible only).  To play the webinar, you may need to download some additional software, which you can access here.

Thanks to our many terrific co-sponsors (all of which are noted here) and the extraordinary people who helped bring Seeking the Current and its powerful message to New England audiences. Enjoy the show!

Aerial View of Site - Porous Asphalt Shows as Dark Gray

In 2003, a large retail development was proposed to be built on the banks of Pickering Brook, roughly a mile upstream of Great Bay. CLF voiced major concerns about the many pollutants that would run off of the retail center’s massive parking lots – pollutants such as metals, bacteria and nutrients – and the harm they would cause to Pickering Brook and Great Bay. In response, the project’s developer agreed to work with CLF and the UNH Stormwater Center to re-design their approach to managing stormwater.

The result? With guidance from the UNH Stormwater Center, the developer constructed a large portion of its parking lot using porous asphalt – an innovative approach that allows rainwater and snowmelt to percolate through the paved surface into a layer of sand and gravel, below. Porous pavement is an important and highly effective new tool in reducing polluted runoff; the Greenland installation is the largest porous pavement facility in the Northeast.

The developer also constructed a gravel wetland to treat stormwater from the site, before it reaches Pickering Brook. Recent monitoring by the UNH Stormwater Center confirms that these innovative systems are working – greatly reducing pollution that would otherwise occur.

Working together, CLF, the UNH Stormwater Center and the developer showed that innovative approaches can work – and can make a difference. To put Great Bay, the Piscataqua River and the estuary as a whole on a path to recovery, innovation and creative solutions will be essential. One of my primary tasks as the Great Bay-Piscataqua Waterkeeper is to work with stakeholders to identify and promote innovative solutions to the problems facing the estuary. We’re extremely fortunate to have the Stormwater Center as a resource not only for Great Bay, but for the nation. And we’re fortunate to have successful models to be replicated in the future.

To view the UNH Stormwater Center’s “case study” description of this project, click here.

For additional information about the Waterkeeper, visit us on our website or Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.

With Northern Pass and other new transmission projects on the horizon, CLF and other leading New Hampshire environmental organizations are presenting a special free webinar on what it really means for New England to import more hydroelectric power from Canada.

The webinar will be next Friday, March 9, 2012, 2:30 to 4pm EST. Click here to register. All you’ll need is a computer and an Internet connection. Please join us, and spread the word to friends, family, and colleagues. The webinar is sponsored by CLF and our friends at the Appalachian Mountain Club, Conservation New Hampshire, The Nature Conservancy in New Hampshire, and the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests (SPNHF). 

A scene along the Romaine River from Seeking the Current (copyright Chercher le Courant)

The idea is to provide an accessible summary of the environmental and energy implications of imports, including the often-overlooked impacts of the new hydropower developments in Canada that will supply the power. One of the key questions is what new imports will really mean for the climate, and I’ll explain the findings of a recent report commissioned by CLF on the greenhouse gas emissions of hydropower. As we’ve often pointed out, whether and how to import more hydropower from Canada is a critical issue for the entire region’s energy future. And it’s not just about New Hampshire and Northern Pass — just last week, the developer of the Champlain Hudson project in New York announced that it is moving forward with a revised proposal for an underwater and underground transmisssion line between Canada and New York City that will have the support of state officials, municipal governments, and environmental groups.

During the webinar, you’ll hear from me, and also from Tom Irwin, CLF Vice-President and CLF-NH Director; Ken Kimball, AMC Director of Research; and Will Abbott, SPNHF Vice President for Policy and Land Management.

The webinar will feature a special guest appearance by Québecois filmmaker Nicolas Boisclair, who will be in New Hampshire this month for a series of screenings of his documentary film, Seeking the Current, which shines an unsparing light on Hydro-Québec and its ongoing $8 billion hydropower project on the Romaine River. We’ve put all the details on the screenings (and the webinar too) at this link.

For more information about Northern Pass, sign-up for our monthly newsletter Northern Pass Wire, visit CLF’s Northern Pass Information Center (http://www.clf.org/northern-pass), and take a look at our prior Northern Pass posts on CLF Scoop.