New Hampshire Union Leader: Northern Pass opponents learn from fight against USA Springs

LANCASTER — More than 70 North Country residents gathered Wednesday night to hear about the potential for town based ordinances that could thwart Northern Pass or other corporate-promoted projects within their communities.

At town hall, residents heard Gail Darrell of Barnstead, who worked to stop USA Springs from withdrawing water from a regional aquifer for bottling in Nottingham several years ago.

She said that there are ways that local governments can “stop the corporate assault on communities” through ordinance, and those who do not want Northern Pass might similarly find ways at town hall or town meeting to prevent it from coming through.

“If you don’t do anything, you are going to get the project anyway,” she said.

Darrell said opponents of USA Springs worked with the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund to find an ordinance that kept the project away.

Northern Pass is a proposed $1.1 billion project to transmit electricity from Hydro-Quebec to the New England power grid through 180 miles of power line from the Canadian border at Pittsburg to Deerfield.

While a new route for the line at the top of the state has not been announced, there are 31 communities with 140 miles of existing right of way potentially affected from Groveton to Deerfield.

Many residents along the route believe the project would degrade their property, damage tourism and be unnecessary.

Proponents, meanwhile, say it would bring lower-cost renewable power to the region.

The rights of way on 140 miles from Groveton to Deerfield are owned by Public Service of New Hampshire, whose parent company, Northeast Utilities, is proposing the project in conjunction with Massachusetts- based NSTAR.

CELDF is a legal defense group that has been primarily active in Pennsylvania, where natural gas fracturing, or “fracking,” of rock has led to concerns about possible water contamination.

On its website, the environmental group says it is “helping community groups and municipalities write and adopt laws that assert community rights including the right to local self-governance, the rights of nature, and the subordination of corporate privilege to the rights of the community.” Darrell said legal doctrines in the country are now working in unison to allow corporate concerns to supersede rights of the community.

But there are ways around it. Ordinances can be drafted to protect community rights.

Darrell said there are already four ordinances in New Hampshire, and 120 throughout the United States that CELDF helped draft to protect communities against water withdrawal, sludge spreading, coal mining and gas fracking.