InDepthNH.org (http://indepthnh.org/series/north-country/page/2/)
Photo courtesy of Chris Jensen
Here you will find stories about the North Country. Just writing those words, though, I sense a fight coming. When I lived in Bethlehem, I could unequivocally state that I lived in the North Country, but things got muddy when I moved to North Conway. You see some folks believe the North Country includes only communities north of the state’s four notches: Franconia Notch, Crawford Notch, Pinkham Notch, and Dixville Notch.
For InDepthNH.org’s purposes, we’ll use a little common sense and maybe stretch that a little farther south. And get ready for a call from our columnist John Harrigan, who has been called the King of The North Country, when we get it wrong.
-Nancy West
| Northern Pass spokesman Martin Murray dismissed recent comments from the U.S. EPA touting the benefits of burying an additional 40 miles of the project’s transmission line as old news, but Jack Savage of the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests said he is missing the point.
CONCORD — The state Department of Transportation will wait for new survey information from Northern Pass Transmission developer Eversource before moving forward on requests to bury sections of the 192-mile line under state roads.
| CONCORD – Hard times keep getting harder in Franklin – so tough in fact, that the prospect of hosting a Northern Pass converter terminal provides a much-needed ray of hope, former city manager Elizabeth A. Dragon told the Site Evaluation Committee on Thursday.
| The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says burying an additional 40 miles of Northern Pass transmission line in its most northern segment would be less damaging to wetlands and wildlife than as currently proposed and “appears practicable.”
The purchase of land needed to open a $50 million, high-tech commercial greenhouse in Berlin may not occur until late this fall, according to an official working with the project. The deal was expected to go through last April.
| Eversource NH president Bill Quinlan, Manchester Community College and IBEW electrical representatives welcomed Gov. Chris Sununu to a regular lineworker training session Wednesday, according to an Eversource news release. But the event was not posted on Sununu’s public schedule.
And SEC vice chair Kathryn Bailey told Robert Varney: “There is so much opposition from so many of these towns. You should have tried to do more to minimize impacts.”
Representatives from two electricians’ unions testified Monday that Northern Pass construction will be a boon to their members.
CONCORD — Site Evaluation Committee chair Martin Honigberg accused an intervenor Monday of attempting to deliberately delay adjudicative hearings on the Northern Pass Transmission project.
| Grafton County Attorney Lara Saffo made her points about the impact on homeowners and businesses of burying 52 miles of Northern Pass cable from Bethlehem to Bridgewater by showing photos of various properties and the massive equipment it would take during construction.