Thirteen years ago, Northfield resident Joseph Graveline emailed the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to open a line of communication about the relicensing of hydroelectric projects along the Connecticut River.
The email expressed interest in a collaborative approach to the relicensing of the Turners Falls Dam and Northfield Mountain Pumped Storage Project. It also highlighted the significant Indigenous history tied to the spirituality and physicality of the river, with hopes of fostering recognition and respect for its cultural significance to Indigenous tribes.
“It is our sincere hope that the time has arrived for organizations like ours to experience a more balanced and equity-driven working relationship with the FERC, the utilities, the public, the Massachusetts Historical Commission and other governmental agencies,” the email reads, closing with, “From the board of the Nolumbeka Project and myself, we would like to thank you for the opportunity to be part of this process, and we look forward to a rewarding and productive exchange and working relationship on this relicensing process.”
Now, 13 years after that Feb. 28, 2013 email was sent, Graveline, the senior advisor for the Nolumbeka Project, a nonprofit dedicated to cultural and historical preservation of Indigenous history, along with other project leaders with the Nolumbeka Tribal Coalition, the Abenaki Elnu Tribe and the Chaubunagungamaug Band of Nipmuck Indians, feel that FERC and the licensee, FirstLight Hydro Generating Co., have left their concerns behind. Although FERC is recommending continued consultation with participating tribes in the event that a new license is issued, tribal representatives worry that could be an empty promise amid unanswered questions as to what future collaborations could look like.
“Thousands of hours have been donated by the coalition in one form or another over the last 13 years to bring together the information that’s needed to help FirstLight meet its federal obligations and the FERC to be in a good place and in an honest place with Indigenous people,” Graveline said. “And it doesn’t exist.”
Traditional Cultural Properties report
Relicensing of the Turners Falls Dam and the Northfield Mountain Pumped Storage Project has been ongoing since October 2012. FirstLight has been operating the facilities on a provisional license since 2018 and is seeking a 50-year license for both facilities. Northfield Mountain was initially licensed in 1968, followed by the Turners Falls Dam in 1980.
Numerous stakeholders have been involved with the relicensing process, including the Nolumbeka Tribal Coalition. The coalition, other environmental advocacy organizations, local government agencies, state officials and private citizens have filed public comments in the process, with a large portion critiquing relicensing measures.
At the end of January, FERC released its 232-page Final Environmental Impact Statement that recommended the relicensing of the two hydropower facilities.
In response to the Final Environmental Impact Statement, Graveline penned a comment on behalf of the tribal coalition reiterating one of the primary issues of the relicensing, which is the Traditional Cultural Properties report. He provided copies of tribal testimony associated with the Battlefield Study of the Great Falls Massacre of 1676, with the intent “to give the FERC and the utilities a glimpse of the body of knowledge the Nolumbeka Project Tribal Coalition and our other tribal partners can impart to this important process.”
Graveline argues that any Traditional Cultural Properties study, “absent Indigenous knowledge, is a misleading and faulty document,” and does not fulfill the obligations of Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act, which requires federal agencies to consider the effects of their projects on historic properties.
The Traditional Cultural Properties report, submitted in September 2015 and prepared by researchers hired by FirstLight, states that it was developed “through consultation with the people who identify and associate such historic properties of religious and cultural significance.” This consultation includes interviews with an ethnographer and tribal members willing to share their information, along with site visits.
However, the report mentions that FirstLight, after a “multitude of efforts involving certified mailings and phone calls,” failed to get “constructive engagement of the Narragansett Indian Tribe and the Nolumbeka Project” to find and assess any Traditional Cultural Properties within the Area of Potential Effect. The background research and the archaeological survey also did not identify any known Traditional Cultural Properties within the potentially affected area, the report states. According to FERC documents, an October 2013 telephone conference between FirstLight, the Vermont and New Hampshire state historic preservation officers, the Nolumbeka Project and the Connecticut River Watershed Council determined the Area of Potential Effect.
“FirstLight sought participation in the Traditional Cultural Properties survey from numerous federally recognized tribes, Indigenous representatives and Indigenous groups, including the Nolumbeka Tribal Coalition,” FirstLight Communications Manager Claire Belanger wrote in an email. “All ultimately did not agree to participate.”
In an April 15, 2014 letter, the Nolumbeka Project expressed interest in being involved in the Traditional Cultural Properties survey and meeting with the ethnographer, and sought to address funding to support its participation and to gain access to the research data. Though FirstLight sent a letter back on April 24, 2014, “indicating its willingness to discuss compensating tribal members for their time and expenses” for participating, the report states, the Final Environmental Impact Statement’s tribal consultation record indicates a subsequent gap in communication, with a May 2015 letter from the Nolumbeka Project to FERC breaking the streak.
Richard Holschuh, historic preservation officer with the Elnu Abenaki Tribe, echoed Graveline’s sentiments on the Traditional Cultural Properties report and its implications for the relicensing process.
“We don’t have another chance at this,” Holschuh said. “This knowledge will be gone, the elders will be dead, and we have another 50 years of damage, and nobody will care.”
In July 2024, lawyers representing FirstLight penned a letter to FERC stating that tribes and the Nolumbeka Project were consulted, but “declined to participate” in the study. The letter also argues that a new Traditional Cultural Properties report a decade later would “unreasonably delay and disrupt the project relicensing.”
Disagreements arise over relevant project area
Coupled with the Traditional Cultural Properties report, another source of disagreement stems from what should be included in the Area of Potential Effect.
In June 2014, FirstLight accepted an offer from the Nolumbeka Project to have the ethnographer for the Traditional Cultural Properties report tour the Wissatinnewag property. The Nolumbeka Project holds a conservation restriction on about two-thirds of the 61-acre stretch of land along Route 2 that extends down to the Connecticut River, which Graveline said is the “oldest, continually inhabited Native American village site on the whole of the Connecticut River,” with carbon dating back 10,000 years. FirstLight said this property does not fall within the relicensing project’s Area of Potential Effect, but, “Nonetheless, we are interested in finding out any information that may shed light on the existence of cultural properties within the APE.”
“The whole site … is triggered by Section 106,” Graveline argued. “You can’t segment a historical piece of property and say that some of it has to abide by federal regulations and you can do whatever you want with the other part of it.”
Indigenous artifacts have been found in the shale beds of the bypass reach, called Wissatinnewag Run, which spans from just below the Turners Falls Dam and continues down the river heading east. During times of low water flow, looters have been known to take artifacts from the riverbed, Graveline said.
“It’s a village site, it’s a fishing site, it’s a burial site, it’s everything that meets the criteria,” Graveline said about the land and its eligibility as a Traditional Cultural Property, “and the Riverside Archeological District is recognized by the federal government as being a very sensitive Indigenous cultural piece of property.”
A May 2015 letter from Graveline expressed concern for a number of points in the Traditional Cultural Properties report. For one, Graveline argues there was insufficient research of the Turners Falls Ceremonial Hill and the Stone Landscape District that was established at the municipal airport and extends into the Area of Potential Effect. He also noted the 2004 Reconciliation Ceremony between Montague and the Narragansett Indian Tribe that occurred within the Area of Potential Effect. The tribal coalition also submitted a May 2024 letter indicating that the Ceremonial Stone Landscape District abuts the Turners Falls project boundary, and that the site of the Great Falls Massacre is located under the impoundment waters of the Turners Falls Dam.
Although the Traditional Cultural Properties report concludes that no cultural properties were discovered within the Area of Potential Effect, the tribal coalition has held that the report is misrepresentative of the culturally significant areas and items within the river.
“That is so 180 degrees from everything the archeologists from all over the world have ever said about this stretch,” Graveline said.
Aside from the report, the coalition has voiced a number of other concerns for more than a decade. Some of the key points that Graveline highlighted include a request for a 2,000 cubic feet per second (cfs) flow year-round within the bypass reach to keep the shale beds covered to protect culturally significant items from looting, and to support fish habitat. However, this request was not met within the Final Environmental Impact Statement, as the recommended flows are seasonally dependent and different in each section of the river below the dam. The highest minimum flow recommendation is for 4,290 cfs between April 1 and May 31. The analysis of the proposed minimum flow increases below the Turners Falls Dam states that 2,000 cfs, year-round, would “affect fish and macroinvertebrates, water quality, sensitive plants, recreation and cultural resources.”
Other requests were for FirstLight to buy land from Gill that would be a site for ceremonies to remember the Great Falls Massacre, as the original site is underwater, and greater protections for the culturally significant shortnose sturgeon above and below the dam.
Looking to the future
Contained within the Final Environmental Impact Statement is a section for FERC staff to make recommendations on what should be included in the licenses. One recommendation is to include information from the July 2024 Historic Property Management Plans, which includes a requirement for FirstLight to engage in “additional post-licensing consultation with participating tribes regarding potential [Traditional Cultural Properties] within the [Area of Potential Effect].”
Although this is a license requirement, Holschuh said he feels the recommendation within the Final Environmental Impact Statement isn’t “anything to hang your hat on.”
“We would like to think that this would happen, but given what has happened for the last 10 years, there’s not a lot of reason to think that that merits a lot of solid realization,” Holschuh said.
When asked about what post-licensing consultation with participating tribes might look like, Belanger wrote in an email that, “because a new license with final conditions and requirements has not yet been issued to FirstLight, [FirstLight] cannot speak to how any required consultation would be structured or communicated.”
Holschuh questions how such post-licensing consultations can be done.
“FERC has kind of gone mum on this and just said, ‘Well, keep talking,’ but the license will have been issued, and nothing’s in writing except recommendations,” he said. “There’s no funding in place. How are we supposed to do all of this?”
When asked whether there will be communication between the federal commission and the coalition about post-licensing consulting, Celeste Miller, FERC’s acting director of media relations, responded that FERC “considers tribal concerns in its decisions when they are raised, and we fulfill federal Indian trust responsibilities under all applicable statutes.”
With questions up in the air about what this post-licensing consultation could be and what the future of the relicensing process looks like, coalition members are not stepping back.
“None of us, especially those of us who are active in this, are relieved of our responsibility to do what we feel is right and just to maintain our relationships and encourage others to follow suit and to learn to do better,” Holschuh said. “We’re not going to stop on that count.”