It took over 10,000 years for the Connecticut River to become the central artery of a vibrant 410-mile long ecosystem running from the lip of southern Quebec through four New England states to Long Island Sound. It took just four minutes for the back of that ecosystem to become broken and undone in 1972. That was the first time Northfield Mountain Pumped Storage Station began the improbable task of sucking, scrambling and ruining an ancient system and all its functions — pulling a river and every living thing in it, backward and uphill at 15,000 cubic feet per second. Until 2014, Northfield was a nuclear powered ecosystem killer, importing nuclear generated electricity to suck up the river; then sell it back to us as peak-priced, twice-produced energy. Today it does its double-generated damage via climate warming fossil fuels.
Gov. Charlie Baker is currently pushing a bill that focuses on “hydro” power. Specifically it calls for importing 1,200 megawatts of Canadian hydro for use here in southern New England. Curiously, that amount almost exactly matches the peak output of Northfield’s crippling generation. Is the hidden plan to import out-of-market hydro power hundreds of miles from a damaged Canadian river system and use it to continue pumping our Connecticut backwards and into oblivion far into the future? If that is the case, just buy the less-damaging Canadian hydro and sell it directly to customers here.
It’s time to eliminate the middle-man — the ecosystem-killing cash cow that is Northfield Mountain. The new mega-grid, now rising on huge columns across the landscape, is exactly the climate-warming, energy-swapping corporate trap that will continue to heat up the atmosphere and scramble our ecosystem. The Connecticut belongs to the citizens of New England. Northfield Mountain’s time has passed. No corporation has the legal right to kill a river.
Ted Scott
Greenfield