By Jamie Sayen

Citizens of the United States own nearly all of Mount Washington, home to the largest tract of alpine tundra east of the Mississippi River. New Hampshire citizens own the 60-acre state park at its summit. The Cog Railway and the Auto Road own thin strips from the mountain’s base to its summit.

Summer visitors to the summit encounter congestion, long lines at the rest rooms, debris, and derelict buildings. The summit’s overtaxed waste water treatment plant has been out of compliance with its permit.[1] New Hampshire generates revenue selling fast food and cheesy souvenirs at the summit. The more visitors, the greater its revenues.

The Mount Washington Commission (MWC) advises the state managers. The MWC has been operating under a ten-year master plan adopted in 1970. In the fall 2021, it contracted with the Harvard Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program to help it begin work on the overdue master plan. The Harvard-group’s report described a Commission suffering from short-term thinking, a zero-sum mindset, dominance by some members while others are intimidated, and lack of meaningful input from the public. It urged the MWC to engage a facilitator to build trust for the master plan process.[2]

Unbeknownst to the MWC and the Supervisor of the White Mountain National Forest, the state of New Hampshire and the Cog Railway were deep into secret negotiations that had begun a year earlier. At the Commission’s March 4, 2022 meeting, Sarah Stewart, Governor Chris Sununu’s appointee to head the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources (DNCR), enthusiastically introduced the Cog’s plans to build an 18-railway car “hotel” to be situated beside a 500-foot-long platform a short walk from the summit, and just outside the state park. In return for state support, the Cog would surrender rights to develop its property within the state park.

In less than three weeks, nearly 20,000 citizens had signed a petition opposing the Cog hotel. To sign, go to https://www.change.org/p/protect-and-preserve-the-fragile-alpine-zone-on-mount-washington-from-harmful-development.

Suddenly, the sleepy MWC discovered a sense of urgency to write a new master plan. At the conclusion of its March 25 meeting, Senator Jeb Bradley, chair of the MWC, announced there was no need for a facilitator. The Commission, without discussion, reverted to its zero-sum ways. Throughout this period, two of the three seats representing the public remained vacant.

The act governing the MWC directs the Commission to: “[Protect] the summit as to its unique flora and other natural resources.”[3] For more than half a century, the state has not performed basic monitoring of the human impacts on the summit’s unique flora.

Since February, members of the Commission, scientists, and the public have urged the MWC to conduct a thorough, independent, third-party, ecological and climate assessment. The Commission ignored these recommendations until its June 10 meeting, when Senator Bradley claimed the MWC must adopt a master plan before the NH Legislature would fund the assessment. This insider politics has persuaded few citizens, especially since Bradley admitted the Commission’s recommendations are not binding on the legislature.

Bradley said the plan could be amended later if the assessment finds it is failing to protect the ecological integrity of the summit. Amending an ill-informed master plan after it has governed summit operations for several years will be nearly impossible and risks causing irreversible harm.

The Commission, lacking a quorum for its June 10 meeting, decided to release the draft plan for public comment in August. Rushing a master plan, uninformed by the findings of an ecological assessment, clears the way for the Cog to begin constructing its railway hotel as early as 2023.

From March to May, the state and Cog, again in total secrecy, crafted a Memorandum of Understanding committing the state to support the Cog’s railway hotel proposal. The MOU also allows the Cog to run its railway concession cars up to the summit after the state’s concession stands, located in the Sherman Adams Building, close for the season. The MOU was signed in secrecy on May 22, a day the Commission met. The MOU was not mentioned at the May 22 or the June 10 MWC meetings.

The public and many Commission members learned of it only later that month when the Governor and the Executive Council approved it. At the Commission’s August 23 meeting, Howie Wemyss, who represents the Auto Road, objected to the exclusion of the Commission during the negotiations over the MOU. He was especially upset by the provision that allows the Cog’s concession car(s) to conduct business on the summit.

The Commission scheduled public hearings on the draft Master Plan at Conway on August 22 and Concord the following morning. During its introductory comments, the MWC claimed it had no jurisdiction over the unpopular Cog railway hotel plan, even though the MOU allows the Cog’s concession car to conduct business on the summit! The Cog plans to upgrade the path along the railway line to the summit, including along its right-of-way on state-owned land.

In March, the supervisor of the WMNF, Derek Ibarguen, informed me the Forest Service had no jurisdiction over the Cog proposal. At the August hearings, a spokesperson for the MWC urged citizens to send letters on the Lizzie proposal to the Coos County Planning Board, which does have jurisdiction, and the WMNF, which does not.

The WMNF, as steward of our public lands, must oppose any development the size and impact of the railway hotel until completion of a comprehensive environmental and climate assessment of the summit and alpine region of Mt. Washington. Urge the WMNF to support a moratorium on new development and to oppose adoption of the draft master plan until the assessment has been completed and a new draft, circumscribed by its findings is written. Write to Derek Ibarguen, Supervisor, White Mountain National Forest, 71 White Mountain Drive, Campton, NH 03220.

The Commission informed the Conway hearing the draft was “close to final,” hinting it did not intend to make significant changes after the public comment period. Several testified against the Cog’s railway hotel plans. Someone testified: “No further summit development!” The crowd applauded. Another speaker asked: “Who speaks for the mountain?”

The following morning, Governor Sununu addressed the gathering. The meeting’s minutes read: “[Sununu] thanked the MWC for bringing forward new ideas for investment in support of the state’s travel and tourism, and future opportunities on the summit.”[4] More investment, more congestion, more degradation of the summit.

The draft master plan states: “The Commission must balance conflicting goals.” This is dangerous thinking. We cannot change nature’s limits, and when human desires conflict with natural limits, we must modify human behavior. On Mount Washington’s summit, this means fewer visitors, less access by fossil fuel-powered transportation, and no more development of an overdeveloped region.

The public submitted 90 written comment letters to the MWC with 101 signatures. Another 130 individuals signed a form letter calling for an environmental assessment. Of the 231 citizens who weighed in on the master plan, 215, or 93 percent, called for a credible environmental and climate assessment and/or opposed the Cog’s railway hotel proposal. Four letters (1.7%) approved the draft as written. (Access letters at: https://nhconservation.org/lib/exe/fetch.php?media=mw:mp_public_written_comments.pdf).

Many citizens wrote with great feeling about the experience of climbing wild, dangerous, beautiful Mount Washington as a child or parent. Of the 101 citizens who wrote their own letter, 85% opposed the Cog’s railway hotel proposal; 42% called for the ecological and climate assessment before writing and adopting the master plan, and 37% supported a moratorium on all development until the assessment had been completed and incorporated into the master plan.

Zack Porter, executive director of Standing Trees, celebrated Mt. Washington’s alpine zone “where humans have always been visitors rather than residents.” Many alpine plants are at the southern limit of their range and are especially vulnerable to climate change. Mount Washington boasts the greatest diversity of Arctic-alpine plant diversity in the eastern United States. Porter rejected the Commission’s intention to conduct an assessment only on the state’s 60 acres. He urged the Commission to “guard against impacts that could lead to the deterioration of the summit’s unique flora and natural resources regardless of where those impacts originate.”

Alpine plant ecologist, Robert Capers, wrote that since the 1970 Master Plan, our understanding of alpine plant ecology has changed dramatically, especially “our understanding of alpine plant vulnerability to disturbance as well as other environmental threats… such as nitrogen deposition, warming temperatures, changes in both amount and timing of precipitation, and invasive species.” Alpine plants are both hardy and sensitive, but they are vulnerable to development and are very slow to recover from disturbances such as a fiber optic trench the Cog and state dug along the rail line in 2007. Capers warned that as warming climate drives species upslope, alpine plants don’t have “somewhere else to go,” whereas tourists do have other options.

Capers called for “a thorough environmental assessment of the conditions as they exist now, not as they existed decades ago.” He asked: “How can you understand what will be lost without a comprehensive analysis of flora and fauna.” It is “seriously negligent” he concluded, to proceed with the Cog’s railway proposal or the master plan before completing a comprehensive ecological and climate assessment.

Larry Garland emphasized the importance of assessing the summit region’s carrying capacity. The commission, he wrote, “must consider the thresholds where either the visitor experience becomes negative or the impacts on the environment become detrimental.” He added the state must limit visitors to a level below the summit area’s carrying capacity.

Garland rejected Cog’s president Wayne Presby’s claim the railway hotel will reduce congestion on the summit. Dispersing summit congestion to a second, sensitive, as yet, undeveloped location spreads ecological stress and creates sprawl.

The editorial writer of the New Hampshire Union Leader agreed with public sentiment: “The [environmental] study should actually come before the plan is adopted. It should have come before Sununu and the [Executive] Council signed off on the Cog deal.”[5] As Garland warned: “It is more costly to remediate than to prevent damage.”

The MWC was scheduled to meet on October 7. Its first order of business was: “Vote on the Master Plan for the summit.” There was no evidence the Commission had made any of the changes called for by the public.

On October 6, Chairman Bradley abruptly cancelled the meeting and rescheduled it for Friday, October 28 at 10 AM at Pope Memorial Library, 2719 White Mountain Highway, S. Main St., North Conway.

With the state and the WMNF claiming no jurisdiction to protect our highest northeastern mountain’s summit, the job falls to the Coos County Planning Board and the Coos County Zoning Board of Adjustment. The Planning Board has jurisdiction over the project, and the ZBA must grant a variance to the Cog to expand the project’s footprint into the 25-foot setback zone that buffers abutting national forest land.

Already, these volunteer, unpaid boards are under intensive pressure from the state to approve the Cog Railway’s hotel plans. The boards cannot make informed decisions until they know the condition and likely threats to the summit. They also need to know the summit’s carrying capacity for visitation, and the likely impact of the railway hotel.

This vital information can only be supplied by a comprehensive, third party environmental and climate assessment. At a minimum, the Coos County Planning Board and ZBA should refuse to consider any application from the Cog for a major development in the summit region until the assessment has been completed and a new master plan, guided by the findings of the assessment, is written and adopted. Address comments on the Cog’s railway hotel to: Coos County Planning Board, 34 County Farm Road, PO  Box 310, W. Stewartstown, NH 03597; Coos County Zoning Board of Adjustment, 34 County Farm Road, PO  Box 310, W. Stewartstown, NH 03597.

Wayne Presby, who has owned the Cog outright since 2017, is impatient with his critics: “Mount Washington is not an undeveloped place. Certain mountains have become commercialized. This is one of them. You’ve got every other peak.”[6] The site of the proposed railway hotel is currently undeveloped.

Presby’s nephew, Ryan, presented a slide show to the Commission on June 10, 2022. He touted recent, taxpayer-funded developments at Pikes Peak summit, home of the only other Cog railway in United States. Pikes Peak boasts 900,000 visitors annually. The Cog’s message: we can greatly increase visitation to Mt. Washington Summit, and the taxpayers can foot the bill. Phil Bryce, retiring Director of NH Parks and Recreation and one of the architects of the Cog railway hotel, called Ryan’s presentation “inspiring.” In September, Governor Sununu appointed Bryce to represent “the public” on the Mount Washington Commission.

On September 21, Presby informed the Coos County Planning Board he intends to begin construction on the $14 million railway hotel in 2023. I asked if he planned to start before the environmental and climate assessment has been performed. When he did not directly respond, I continued: “So, you’re going to go ahead regardless of the fact that we are in utter ignorance right now of the condition of this fragile alpine summit that is being crowded off the summit by climate change?”

Presby said: “I’m not in a position to address that. I’m not a climatologist, and I don’t have access to that data.”

That’s the point! The state and the Cog don’t have access to that data because the Mount Washington Commission refuses to conduct an assessment before writing a master plan or permitting new development on or near the summit in the midst of global crises in habitat degradation and climate change.

In March, Presby acknowledged that public opposition had played a major role stopping his earlier proposal to construct a hotel on the summit.[7]  It is up to citizens to stop this reckless gamble with the public commons. Protect and preserve the sacred mountain the Abenaki called Maji Neowaska, where a demon, or bad spirit, was supposed to dwell.[8]

Jamie Sayen is author of the forthcoming Children of the Northern Forest (Yale University Press, 2023) about the ecology and land-use history of the largely undeveloped, but intensively overcut, Acadian forests of northern New England. He also wrote You Had a Job for Life (2018), an oral history of the Groveton paper mill. He lives in Stratford, NH.

[1] David Mercier and Thaddeus Webb, Underwood Engineers, to Jay Poulin, HEB Engineers, “Technical Memorandum: Sewer Interceptor Pipeline Feasibility Study,” January 26, 2018. https://www.nhstateparks.org/getmedia/6da29141-b715-44d6-9991-4df60ec3b46b/Mt-Washington-Sewer-Interceptor-Feasibility-Study-01-26-2018.pdf.

[2] To view the report go to; https://www.nhstateparks.org/getmedia/f04ae7df-62e8-4662-84e7-c2161fa0db6c/HNMCP-MWC-Final-Report_1.pdf.

[3] NH RSA 227B:6:I(d).

[4] Minutes, Mount Washington Commission, August 23, 2022.

[5] Manchester Union Leader, “Mount Washington: What is New Hampshire’s Role?” August 28, 2022.

[6] Amanda Gokee, “The Fight Over the Future of Mount Washington,” New Hampshire Bulletin, September 17, 2022.

[7] John Koziol, “Cog Railway Owner Says Proposed Hotel Would Include Settlement with the State,” Manchester Union-Leader, March 7, 2022.

[8] John C. Huden, Indian Place Names of New England (New York: Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, 1962).