I welcome the Recorder’s recent news on the latest impending sale of Northfield Mountain and the Turners Fall Dam and canal. As a member of the Fish and Aquatics Study Team in the current FERC relicensing for these projects, I think a look at their on-the-ground realities as well as their stated benefits might also be of benefit to readers.
The recent photo of water churning from Turners Falls Dam is misrepresentative of the Connecticut River here — controlled by that dam and massively impacted by the withdrawal and release of giant slugs of water 5 miles upstream at Northfield Mountain. A truer depiction would be of one of no flow and the largely empty 2.7 miles of riverbed downstream of the dam. That’s the grim reality during most seasons. There’s no there, there.
During the preponderance of hours in a day when little or no electricity is being transferred or generated at these sites, the river still gets starved. The company chooses to shunt all water and fish through the canal, when it could nourish aquatic habitats by releasing it at the dam. The ecosystem here is broken; bereft of lifeblood. The reach downstream is starved even at times when federally-endangered shortnose sturgeon require basic nourishing flow to spawn successfully and nurture young; April through July. Is there ample water available for them to meet basic Endangered Species Act legal requirements here? Certainly.
Northfield Mountain is an operation that deeply impoverishes the river. It should be always be identified by its industry classification: pumped storage hydro. Northfield cannot generate a single watt of its own power. It is not a power producer. It’s a net-loss power operation that requires imported, climate-warming electricity to suck a river uphill, then send it back down through its turbines when market prices peak.
KARL MEYER
Greenfield