To the Members of the New Hampshire Senate Energy and
Natural Resources Committee:
I am writing in support of HB569 as amended by the House
(Amendment 2013-2377h). I was recently
appointed to serve out Ray Burton’s remaining term as a Grafton County
Commissioner. Grafton County has an area
of about 1750 square miles and covers almost one-fifth of the state. Over half of the White Mountain National Forest is in
Grafton County, as is Franconia Notch State Park and Cardigan State Park. The Appalachian Trail runs through at least
10 towns in the county. About 90% of
the landscape is timberland. The service
industries, primarily tourism, are the largest employers.
I mention all of these facts because you need to know why
preservation of our state’s natural beauty is so important to me. The beauty of our state provides rest and
relaxation to the tourists from all around the world, but it also provides food
on the table for many of us who live in Grafton County. The majority of my constituents do not want to
see our county become a throughway for tall power lines between Canada and
southern New England. HB569 simply asks the Site Evaluation
Committee to take the importance of our natural resources and tourism-based
economy into account as it evaluates power transmission projects, and give
preference to the burial of elective transmission lines so that our state’s
economy will not be impacted.
HB569 does not ask for a lot. It does not impact projects that are required
for reliability. It does not affect
shorter towers- those less than 50 feet tall- whose height does not exceed that
of the region’s trees. It does not
require burial of elective transmission lines- it allows for the use of higher
transmission lines if the developer can show that burial is not a smart choice
from the perspective of engineering feasibility or substantial cost
differences.
So what does HB569 accomplish? It provides a layer of protection for the
tourism industry and the state by making the burial of lines the preferred
option where it is feasible. It opens up
the possibility of increased state revenue through the lease of state-owned
rights-of-way for elective power lines.
It encourages the use of buried transmission lines so that we don’t have
a repeat of the extended power outages that accompanied the 1998 ice storm in
Montreal, or the December 2008 ice storm in New Hampshire, or the February 2014
ice storm in Georgia, or the storm that cut power to 1.5 million people in
Pennsylvania in February, or…….you get the idea. Ice
storms happen. They happen in New
Hampshire. Why not bury elective
transmission lines where it is feasible?
It’s just common sense.
In summary, HB569 is needed not because it forces the burial
of transmission lines- it doesn’t- but because it will result in line burial
being a preferred option. Burying
elective transmission lines preserves our natural resources, safeguards Grafton
County’s tourism-related economy and jobs, protects the transmission lines from
ice and wind damage, offers the possibility of increased state revenue through
the lease of state-owned rights of way, and gets power to southern New
England. For these reasons, I encourage
you to recommend “Ought to Pass” to the full Senate on HB 569 as amended.
Respectfully,
Linda D. Lauer, Ph.D.
County Commissioner, Grafton District 2
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