photo credit: flickr/brianjmatis

This week, the New England Power Generators Association (the trade group for most of the region’s power plant companies, also known as NEPGA) released a new study analyzing the potential effect of the Northern Pass project on New England’s energy market – the first independent study addressing this issue. More than two years after the deeply flawed energy study that Northern Pass’s developer commissioned and has cited unrelentingly since, NEPGA’s study is an important, credible contribution to the public discussion surrounding the Northern Pass project.

The new study’s conclusion: the supposed energy benefits of the project – that it will lower the region’s energy costs and diversify the region’s power supply – won’t materialize. The study also shows that the economic merits of the current proposal are much weaker today than they were when the proposal was formulated two years ago, due to reductions in the cost of natural gas.

You can read NEPGA’s press release about the study (PDF) here and the full study (PDF) here. You’ll find press coverage of the study in the Union Leader here, in the Concord Monitor here, on WMUR-TV here, and on New Hampshire Public Radio here.

A few key takeaways:

• The study’s finding that natural gas prices have declined is not news to Hydro-Québec or to Northern Pass’s developer, which is trumpeting new domestic natural gas supplies as a “game-changer.” What this means, in practical terms, is that the project will not put much downward pressure on the already-low regional market price of power. That’s a problem for Northern Pass: reducing regional energy costs is at the heart of the Northern Pass sales pitch. (As we’ve pointed out before, this “benefit” in fact perversely would put upward pressure on – rather than lower – the rates that most New Hampshire consumers pay.)
• With the economics of the project so tenuous, there is a clear risk that the proponents will seek to qualify Northern Pass power for the benefits afforded to new renewable energy sources under state clean energy laws, a legal change that would unfairly undermine the market for renewable energy development in New England. (The risk that hydropower imports will need subsidies to cover new transmission costs has also recently been cited by critics of the Champlain Hudson Power Express project in New York.) If it’s true, as proponents insist, that Northern Pass doesn’t need subsidies, New England should accept nothing less than a binding legal commitment from Hydro-Québec and Northern Pass’s developer not to seek or accept them.
• NEPGA’s study suggests that Northern Pass would shift Québec hydropower exports from New York and Ontario to New England. This effect may completely offset the supposed carbon emissions reductions from Northern Pass (which are inherently dubious for other reasons) because it is extremely likely that New York or Ontario would ramp up natural gas power plants to make up any deficit. In this regard, the study shows yet again that a rigorous big-picture regional analysis – of the kind that could be provided in the comprehensive regional assessment of our energy needs and the role, if any, for more Canadian imports that CLF and others have sought and Northern Pass’s developer has opposed – is essential to making a well-informed decision on a proposal like Northern Pass.
• The developer’s hair-trigger response – to question the credibility of the sponsors of the study and not the study’s actual findings, a classic Bulverism – speaks volumes. At every turn, the developer has refused to acknowledge or address the problems with its current proposal, even in the face of unequivocal facts that debunk the supposed benefits. Sadly, we can expect the potential rollout of the “new route” for a piece of the project later this summer to follow a similar script.

Above all, NEPGA’s new study underscores that that no one should rely on the stale, incomplete, and misleading information that Northern Pass’s developer is using to sell the project to the public and to government agencies. We need a much deeper, clear-eyed understanding of what Northern Pass would mean for the region’s energy consumers, New Hampshire communities, and the environment on both sides of the border.

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.

This summer, New Hampshire is bracing for news of the Northern Pass project’s future and its “new route.”

It’s now been nearly a year since the federal permitting process for the Northern Pass project was put on indefinite hold. North of Groveton, New Hampshire, the developer – Northern Pass Transmission LLC (NPT) – is still working behind tightly closed doors to string together a new section of the project route, where there are no existing transmission corridors, by paying landowners substantial sums for property – in many cases, well above market value.

Earlier this month, the chief operating officer of NPT’s parent company, Northeast Utilities, told investors:

Where we are right now is in procuring the last 40 miles of the right-of-way, and I can tell you we are making very, very strong progress in lining up the right of way. I think we’re on track for the middle of the year, approximately August timeframe to have the right-of-way secured and then to be prepared to file with the [U.S. Department of Energy] the route….

NPT’s apparent plan (assuming it really can overcome the considerable obstacles to a new route):

• Declare that it “heard the objections” to the original route (a posture it previewed last April when it agreed to look for new routes)
• Announce a new NPT-controlled route having the “support of property owners” (as it no longer has resort to eminent domain)
• Marginalize those with legitimate objections as “special interests” and
• Seek a speedy, narrow review of the proposal from federal and state regulators (after itself having put the permit process on hold for a year).

Not so fast. Before the news arrives (if it does), it’s worth remembering that whatever new lines the developer manages to draw on the map do nothing to change the project’s DNA or to demonstrate that the project will benefit New Hampshire. A brief review is in order:

Where are the benefits for New Hampshire?

Through  costly marketing efforts, NPT has been trying to sell New Hampshire on the tremendous economic and environmental benefits of Northern Pass. But the supposed benefits just don’t hold up to scrutiny:

• Reduced emissions from “clean power”?

In terms of greenhouse gas emissions, CLF’s report on the most recent science demonstrated that new hydropower projects to supply power for Northern Pass are much worse for the climate than NPT’s false advertising claims have led the region to believe and are not meaningfully better than natural gas power plants (the power NPT predicts that Northern Pass would replace) in the early years after reservoirs are developed. As a result, contrary to mistaken but widely disseminated assumptions, importing hydropower from Canada is not a short-term solution that will reduce New England’s or New Hampshire’s carbon emissions. Indeed, the current proposal would have the perverse effect of protecting – rather than hastening the transition away from – PSNH’s low-performing, high-emitting power plants, which are New Hampshire’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. (Despite marketing the project based on its “clean” source of the power, NPT also refuses to acknowledge the relevance or importance of the troubling damage to ecosystems and communities that large-scale hydropower causes in Canada.)

• Lower electric rates?

Those who would live with the new transmission lines, customers of NPT affiliate PSNH, are the least likely to benefit. Despite nearly two years of promises that PSNH would announce a plan to purchase Hydro-Québec hydropower for New Hampshire residents, there is still no agreement to do so. Any modest effects on the region’s wholesale electricity rates (which NPT’s consultant predicted based on outdated economic assumptions about energy costs) don’t translate into lower rates for PSNH customers (who instead are stuck paying the bill for PSNH’s inefficient and dirty power plants). In fact, if Northern Pass succeeds in lowering wholesale rates, it will likely worsen PSNH’s death spiral of increasing rates and fewer customers, leaving those residents and small businesses still getting power from PSNH with higher bills.

• Growing New Hampshire’s clean energy economy and jobs?

There is a substantial risk that Northern Pass would swamp the market for renewable energy projects in New England, especially if state laws are amended to qualify Hydro-Québec power as “renewable.” Furthermore, the project’s high voltage direct current technology means that its massive investment in transmission capacity will wholly bypass the potentially fertile ground for renewable energy development in northern New England. Whatever the short-term construction jobs required (and NPT’s estimates are disputed), the current Northern Pass proposal may diminish the prospects for New Hampshire’s clean energy economy, including needed permanent jobs in the renewable and energy efficiency sectors.

No regional plan addressing new imports

Québec continues to implement its ambitious plan to develop more wild Boreal rivers into a new generation of massive hydropower projects, which will increase its export capabilities. This January, Hydro-Québec commissioned the final turbine at its latest hydropower facility (Eastmain 1-A) and will commission other turbines (at Sarcelle) as part of the same overall project later this year. Construction at the $8 billion Romaine River hydropower project (the subject of the film Seeking the Current) has begun and is ongoing, with the first unit expected to come online in 2014. Northeast Utilities has affirmed that Northern Pass will tap the power from these new projects. Meanwhile, Northern Pass competitors are moving forward with new transmission projects in eastern New England and in New York, among others:

Northern Pass and competitor transmission projects (source: ISO-NE)

More than a year ago, CLF and others urged the Department of Energy to weigh the region’s energy needs and develop a strategic regional plan that would determine a well-informed role for new Canadian hydropower imports in the northeastern United States’ energy future – before moving forward with the permitting process for Northern Pass. NPT’s only response was that responsible planning – encompassing the other pending transmission projects and a full consideration of the reasonable alternatives – would unacceptably delay its project – a truly ironic claim given NPT’s own, unforced, ongoing delay. More incredibly, the Department of Energy has so far sided with NPT, without explaining why.

So as Québec builds more dams and NPT buys up land, our region has no plan of its own. With no framework to understand the nature and extent of the appropriate role for Canadian hydropower, it is difficult if not impossible to make a sound, well-informed decision on whether Northern Pass – or projects like it – should proceed.

Community and grassroots reaction throughout New Hampshire

Since Northern Pass was announced in 2010, the project has inspired a broad-based and spirited movement of people throughout New Hampshire to oppose the current proposal. Last spring, there were massive turnouts at the Department of Energy’s public hearings on the project, with literally thousands attending and providing written and verbal comments both questioning the merits of the current proposal and urging a thorough environmental review. And earlier this year, a coalition of citizens and organizations of many political stripes succeeded in persuading New Hampshire’s legislature to enact a bill preventing projects like Northern Pass from using eminent domain. In another effort, more than 1,500 donors contributed total of $850,000 to enable the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests to preserve the treasured New Hampshire landscape surrounding the historic Balsams resort, including a parcel that NPT had sought to purchase as part of Northern Pass’s transmission corridor. To date, town meeting voters in 32 local communities have passed resolutions and ordinances against the current proposal. Critically, most of these communities are located along the NPT’s “preferred route” that follows PSNH ‘s existing transmission corridor, south of any “new route” that NPT may announce.

NPT’s refusal to consider routing and technological alternatives

At every turn, NPT has rejected calls for in-depth consideration of potential alternatives to its current proposal, including use of an existing high-voltage transmission corridor that extends from Canada, through Vermont and western New Hampshire, to Massachusetts; burying transmission lines in transportation corridors, as is proposed in the New York and eastern New England projects mentioned above; or adding capacity to that same New York project, consistent with that project’s original proposal (it has since been scaled back). Indeed, Northern Pass’s response to the public’s opposition to the project was to “withdraw support” for alternative routes and double down on its “preferred route.” While this stance may be in the economic interest of NPT and PSNH, it’s grossly at odds with a fair, well-informed permitting process that would vindicate the public’s interest in a solution with minimal environmental and community impacts.

If and when NPT comes back from its year of buying up North Country land and relaunches its effort to secure approval of the Northern Pass project, with the only change to the proposal consisting of a new line on the map north of Groveton, there should be no mistake: the fundamental flaws in the current proposal remain. Likewise, whatever NPT’s “preferred route,” CLF remains as committed as ever to securing a comprehensive and rigorous permitting process that identifies superior alternatives and a final outcome that moves us toward – and not away from – a clean energy future for New Hampshire and the region.

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.

courtesy Society for Protection of New Hampshire Forests

Last week brought a fitting capstone to the botched year-long rollout of the Northern Pass project.  In a disturbing turn of events, the project developers sought to scuttle a historic plan to preserve a storied wilderness in New Hampshire’s North Country. Their attempt failed, but what the episode says about their future tactics is anything but encouraging for New Hampshire and the region.

Northern Pass Transmission, LLC (NPT) – a partnership between Northeast Utilities and NSTAR – has spent 2011:

• misrepresenting the Northern Pass project’s environmental benefits,
• misleading the public about potential savings to New Hampshire electric ratepayers,
• withdrawing and refusing to analyze alternatives (including options that would avoid overhead lines through the White Mountain National Forest),
• blocking a full assessment of the nature and extent of the region’s need for more electricity imports from Canada, and
• trying to buy off landowners along the northernmost 40 miles of the project.

It has been clear for some time that the current proposal is really about two things – securing profits for Hydro-Québec and propping up NU subsidiary PSNH’s weakening bottom line. CLF is not alone in wondering: what’s in it for New Hampshire?

Last week was a vivid preview. And if you care about New Hampshire’s iconic wilderness landscapes or the organizations that protect them, it’s not a pretty picture.

Earlier this fall, we learned that NPT was bidding to purchase a strip of land through one of the North Country’s crown jewels – the magnificent Balsams estate in Dixville Notch – from its owner, the Neil Tillotson Trust.

Enter the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests (SPNHF), a key collaborator with CLF on Northern Pass advocacy and one of the state’s leading land conservation organizations. Culminating a decade of effort to preserve the Balsams landscape, SPNHF secured from the Trust a conservation easement over 5,800 acres of spectacular wilderness surrounding the resort, provided that SPNHF raises $850,000 for the easement by mid-January. (You can follow the effort here. Word is that, as of today, SPNHF is nearly a third of the way there.) The easement would preclude any transmission corridor.

The land is an ecological and scenic marvel, and the deal marks a historic land preservation achievement for SPNHF, the Trust, and New Hampshire as a whole.

The Balsams Resort in winter (photo credit: j-fi/flickr)

NPT’s bizarre and audacious response: launch a legal attack on the conservation plan.

Last week, NPT asked the state Attorney General’s Office to disapprove the easement on the ground that NPT’s earlier bid was higher. Then on Friday of last week, NPT made a very public offer to buy both the transmission corridor and the conservation easement, which would secure a right to site the Northern Pass project on the Balsams property. The last move was particularly odd because most bidding wars don’t involve publicly bullying a seller – a respected charitable trust no less – into accepting an offer.

As noted in the Concord Monitor and on NHPR, news came late Friday afternoon that the state Attorney General’s Office had approved the sale of the conservation easement to SPNHF, despite NPT’s objections and richer offers. The approval letter noted that it was well within the Trust’s charitable purposes and discretion to sell the easement to SPNHF for less than NPT’s offer. In other words, the Trust should be free to decide that preserving the Balsams property for the benefit of the North Country is more important than the Trust’s financial return.

Why was NPT’s attack on the conservation plan so troubling?

• NPT sought to undermine land preservation efforts throughout New Hampshire. Land preservation almost always requires generosity – the landowner’s decision to accept less than market value or to make an outright donation of an easement. If it had been successful, NPT’s legal attack would have left no room for such generosity, granting any private developer the power to block a landowning non-profit’s preservation of its land whenever the developer offered more money than the conservation organization or community that would hold the conservation easement.
• NPT is on war footing.  NPT is pursuing the equivalent of scorched earth litigation, resorting to strong-arm tactics and legal appeals to the state, including a threat of litigation to block the SPNHF easement that, as of today, remains on the table. At this early stage of the project’s permitting, this is exactly the opposite of what we need – a well-informed regional and statewide dialogue about our energy future, the project’s potential role if any, and the alternatives to traditional overhead lines along NPT’s proposed route.
• NPT has broken its promise to find a route “that has support of property owners.”  The Trust made a decision not to sell to NPT; within days, NPT was crying foul to a state official.  NPT’s appeal to the state reveals, for all to see, that NPT will respect the will of landowners only when that will is to sell NPT the land it wants. As others pointed out before the Attorney General Office’s decision, NPT’s carefully-worded disinterest in using eminent domain (except as a “very last resort,” in the words of PSNH President Gary Long) is no longer credible, if it ever was.
• NPT is willing to spend huge sums, but only to get the project it wants. Without hesitation or public discussion, NPT offered what amounts to a $1 million donation (of Hydro-Québec’s money) to the Trust, including a $200,000 grant to Colebrook Hospital and the money for the Balsams conservation easement. Clearly, NPT is willing to spend millions above and beyond market costs to get the route it wants, even as it rejects as too costly alternatives that could be better for New Hampshire.

Above all, the Balsams episode shows that NPT is not pursuing the Northern Pass proposal as a public-minded enterprise for the “good of all of New Hampshire.” With so much at stake for the region and New Hampshire, CLF’s work of 2012 is to secure a searching and rigorous public review process that will scrutinize every element of the Northern Pass project and ensure that the public interest – and not the dollars in NPT’s coffers – determines the project’s fate.

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.

Protesters against Keystone XL - November 6, 2011 (photo credit: flickr/tarsandsaction)

Last week, a major disaster for our climate and our nation’s clean energy future was averted – at least for now – when the Obama administration announced that it won’t consider approving the Keystone XL pipeline’s border crossing permit before it reconsiders the Keystone XL pipeline’s environmental impacts and the potential alternatives to the proposal on the table.  For all the reasons that my colleague Melissa Hoffer articulated in her post last week, the Keystone XL victory was a resounding, if limited, triumph with important lessons for environmental and climate advocates across the country as we confront, one battle at a time, the seemingly overwhelming challenge of solving the climate crisis.

The Keystone XL decision also hits home in another way. It sends an unmistakable signal that the federal government’s review process for New England’s own international energy proposal – the Northern Pass transmission project – needs the same type of new direction.

The parallels between the State Department’s Keystone XL environmental review and the mishandled first year of the U.S. Department of Energy’s review of Northern Pass are striking. In both cases, we saw:

• Troubling, improperly close relationships between the developer and the supposedly independent contractors conducting the environmental review, with unfair and inappropriate developer influence on the review’s trajectory, undermining the public legitimacy of the review process;
• An extraordinary grassroots uprising against the proposal from diverse groups of residents, landowners, communities, businesses, and conservation and environmental groups;
• Massively expensive lobbying and public relations campaigns by proponents designed to confuse and mislead lawmakers and the public
• Repeated failures by permitting agencies to ensure fair, open, and truly comprehensive review of the full range of impacts, including climate impacts, and the reasonable alternatives for meeting our energy needs in other, less environmentally damaging ways.

With all the legal, procedural, and substantive deficiencies our national advocate colleagues have been pointing out for years, the Keystone XL review (before last week) is a dramatic example of what we can’t allow to happen with Northern Pass. Right now, things don’t look good – it appears that the Department of Energy is engaging in an “applicant-driven,” narrow review of a few potential project routes, not the broad, searching analysis CLF and many others have demanded again and again (and again).  Last week’s decision to conduct a wide-ranging new review of Keystone XL shows that there is still the opportunity (and now a clear precedent) for the Department of Energy to bring the same spirit of renewed scrutiny and public responsiveness to its review of Northern Pass.

New Hampshire and New England deserve an impartial, comprehensive, and rigorous review of the Northern Pass project – and all reasonable alternatives – by the permitting agencies entrusted with protecting the public interest. Indeed, what we need now is a serious regional plan that addresses whether and how best to import more Canadian hydropower into New England and the northeastern U.S. With huge projects like Keystone XL and Northern Pass on the table, our nation’s energy future is at stake, and it has never been more important – for our communities, economy, natural environment, and climate – to get it right.

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.

Merrimack Station in Bow, NH

In more than 50 pages of filings last Thursday, CLF responded to a pair of motions by Public Service Company of New Hampshire (PSNH) asking for dismissal of our Clean Air Act citizen suit now pending in federal district court in New Hampshire. That same day, CLF’s lawsuit got a major boost when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) filed a brief of its own, as a friend of the court, to identify the legal errors in PSNH’s key argument.

One PSNH motion challenged CLF’s right to sue PSNH to protect the environmental and public health from Merrimack Station’s illegal pollution. The other motion claimed that PSNH didn’t do anything wrong when it renovated Merrimack Station because EPA regulations allow it to make changes without permits.

In our briefs, CLF vigorously objects to both motions. You can download our briefs in PDF format here and here; our full set of filings, including attachments, is here (7MB .zip file).

PSNH’s illegal projects will increase Merrimack Station’s emissions, which will harm the health and well-being of CLF members. Under federal law, this harm means that CLF has the right to sue PSNH to hold it accountable for violations of the Clean Air Act. Because PSNH failed to get permits for its projects, PSNH violated the law. Those permits would require PSNH to install more stringent and protective pollution controls that all new plants must include, reducing Merrimack Station’s emissions of a wide range of pollutants, beyond the reductions that Merrimack Station’s expensive new scrubber (which is limited to reducing sulfur dioxide and mercury emissions) can achieve.

Incredibly, PSNH’s argument that it is exempt from permitting requirements is entirely based on EPA regulations that do not apply in New Hampshire. It’s not a close call; PSNH’s brief arguing for our lawsuit to be dismissed gets the rules 100% wrong, an astonishing error for a sophisticated company like PSNH, New Hampshire’s biggest utility.

EPA’s filing puts the final nail in the coffin for PSNH’s flawed legal argument. In a 25-page brief, EPA shows how, even if the rules PSNH is citing were the right ones, PSNH got those rules wrong too. As the author of the regulations PSNH cites, EPA explains that those regulations also would require PSNH to obtain permits before undertaking projects that will increase emissions.

It could not be clearer that PSNH’s recent renovation strategy at Merrimack Station — “build first, see what happens later” — violates the Clean Air Act. CLF will continue its fight to hold PSNH accountable for its violations as this case proceeds in the months to come.

Are you concerned about the Northern Pass transmission project? Do you want to learn more about what it could mean for New Hampshire and New England’s energy future, for our climate, for energy rates, and for the communities and natural environment of New England and Québec? Do you want to keep up with the latest developments as the project progresses through the permitting process?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you’ll want to sign up for CLF’s new email newsletter – Northern Pass Wire.  In a concise format, Northern Pass Wire will provide the latest news and analysis regarding the Northern Pass project direct from CLF advocates, with links to additional resources from CLF’s Northern Pass Information Center, our latest Northern Pass posts here on CLF Scoop, and CLF’s recent legal filings. Northern Pass Wire will also keep you informed about ways you can get involved and make your voice heard as the permitting process for the Northern Pass project continues. We expect to publish Northern Pass Wire about once a month, and perhaps more frequently when events warrant. The first edition can be previewed here, and you can sign up to get Northern Pass Wire here.

Please sign up and encourage your family, friends, and colleagues to do the same!

Click on the image to preview the first edition of CLF's Northern Pass Wire

photo credit: Hope Abrams/flickr

Here in New Hampshire, the leaves have turned.  What hasn’t changed is that the environmental review of the Northern Pass proposal remains stalled while the project developers – Northeast Utilities (and its subsidiary Public Service Company of New Hampshire) and NSTAR – seek a new route for the northernmost 40 miles of the project.  It’s a disgrace that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has so far refused to use the developers’ significant delay to assess the nature and extent of New England’s need for Canadian hydropower and to develop an appropriate plan to bring that power into the region, as CLF and others have been requesting since April.

While DOE is in a holding pattern, CLF is continuing to fight for a fair and comprehensive environmental review of the Northern Pass project.  Earlier this month, CLF filed new comments with DOE, supplementing the detailed comments we filed in April.  Our new comments address:

• Why CLF has renewed concerns about DOE’s control over its new environmental review contractors.  Based on our review of the Memorandum of Understanding between Northern Pass, DOE, and its new contractors, posted here (PDF), we explain that Northern Pass could still have an unfair and inappropriate influence on the content of the environmental impact statement and the schedule for completing it.
• What the Northeast Energy Link proposal means for the Northern Pass environmental review.  The recently announced Northeast Energy Link proposal, along with the Champlain Hudson Power Express project, makes it clearer than ever that we need a regional assessment of our energy needs.  These other two transmission projects also show that burying transmission lines in transportation rights-of-way is an abundantly reasonable alternative to overhead lines.
• How Northern Pass hasn’t clearly disclosed the source of power for the project.  We bring to DOE’s attention important information, obtained by CLF through its cross-examination of an executive of Northeast Utilities before Massachusetts regulators, that the source of Northern Pass’s power is likely to be new hydroelectric projects that Hydro-Québec is now in the process of designing and building.  CLF is especially troubled by the new information because the impacts of the project are much more significant if it causes the construction of new dams and the associated negative environmental impacts, including well-documented spikes in early greenhouse gas emissions from flooded land.  Northern Pass and its parent companies have consistently failed to acknowledge that these emissions undermine their claims about the reductions in emissions the project will supposedly provide.

A copy of our new comments is available here.  We also filed a Freedom of Information Act request with DOE, seeking to obtain a copy of the “Consulting Services Agreement” between Northern Pass and the environmental review contractor team.  The Memorandum of Understanding suggests that this separate contract includes important information on the budget and schedule for the environmental review, and the public deserves to know these details.

With the permitting process due to continue when Northern Pass announces a new northernmost route, CLF will be launching new ways to keep you informed about the latest Northern Pass news and the best ways for you to get involved and make your voice heard. Please stay tuned!

For more information about Northern Pass, 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.

Merrimack Station power plant in Bow, NH. (Photo credit: John Moses)

Today CLF filed a federal Clean Air Act citizen suit in New Hampshire federal district court against Public Service Company of New Hampshire (PSNH), the owner of Merrimack Station power plant for the plant’s repeated failures to obtain required air permits. CLF’s citizen suit also cites numerous violations of Merrimack Station’s current permits and the resulting illegal emissions from the plant.

Merrimack Station  is among the most polluting coal-fired power plants in New England and is the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in New Hampshire, releasing over 2 million pounds of toxic chemicals every year. In addition, the plant is causing PSNH’s energy rates (already the highest in New Hampshire) to steadily climb as ratepayers are forced to foot the bill for the above-market cost of keeping PSNH’s old coal plants in operation.

CLF’s complaint contends that the plant, which is more than a half-century old and is in the midst of a major, multi-faceted life extension project, never obtained required permits authorizing renovations to major components of Merrimack Station, including much of an electric-generating turbine, even though the changes increased pollution from the plant.  As predicted by PSNH’s own projections, the changes led to more emissions of pollutants, including smog-causing nitrogen oxide and particulate matter, or soot, which causes respiratory problems when inhaled and is linked to increased hospitalizations, lung damage in infants and children, and premature death.

“In the course of this project, PSNH has repeatedly violated the Clean Air Act, putting the health of the public, especially children and senior citizens, at risk,” said Christophe Courchesne, CLF staff attorney. “PSNH is not above the law and CLF is committed to holding them accountable. With PSNH trumpeting the supposed ‘clean air’ benefits of the Northern Pass project with full-page ads in newspapers across New Hampshire, it is imperative to shine a light on PSNH’s coal plants, which easily cancel out the purported benefits of Northern Pass.” Read more >

After weeks of debate regarding Darryl Brown’s eligibility to serve as the commissioner of Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection, on April 27 Attorney General William Schneider issued a letter stating that Brown was likely unqualified to serve in the position under Maine law. Following that announcement, Brown resigned.

CLF and others voiced their concerns about a potential conflict of interest that would affect Brown’s ability to continue serving in the post in the months following his appointment in February. Maine law states that anyone who has received at least 10 percent of their income over the past two years from work for clients under the Clean Water Act is ineligible to serve as DEP commissioner. Brown is the founder and sole shareholder of Main-Land Development Consultants, an engineering and land-use planning firm, and had originally stated at his confirmation hearing in January that between 25 and 35 percent of his firm’s work fell into that category, but later insisted that he did not exceed the 10 percent threshold. Schneider’s letter stated that if Brown couldn’t produce documents demonstrating that his income did not exceed the 10 percent threshold, he would be ineligible for the position. The Attorney General also made clear that any such documents submitted by Brown would be subject to Maine’s Freedom of Access Act.  Claiming that the potential release of documents could potentially hurt his business, Brown’s attorney had sought assurances that the documents would not be released.  Brown’s resignation followed shortly after the Attorney General’s letter was released.

Brown’s resignation must have been anticipated by the LePage Administration, which immediately announced that Brown would become the director of the State Planning Office, which LePage has previously indicated he intends to do away with by 2012.  Jim Brooks, currently the director of the DEP’s Bureau of Air Quality, will serve as acting DEP commissioner.