Gary Seldon: Water is life, speak up for the Connecticut River

Fog rolls through across the valley over the Connecticut River in the early morning in Sunderland, looking south. GAZETTE FILE PHOTO

Published: 09-26-2024 5:19 PM

Opinion Greenfield MA

Come to the Shea Theater in Great Falls (aka Turners Falls) on Oct. 10 at 6 p.m. Speak up for the Connecticut River. She needs you to speak her truth! Call for the DEP (Department of Environmental Protection) to deny the Northfield Mountain Pumped Storage 401 WQC (Water Quality Certificate).

Is the Northfield Mountain Pumped Storage a technological marvel or a big mistake? … I think it’s both.

First, NMPS grinds up aquatic life in the water pumping it to their upper reservoir … that was a mountaintop. I say it’s grind is an unacceptable horror show. NMPS sucks the river backward then releases the water to generate electricity, which again reverses the river’s flow, pushing upstream. I say let the Connecticut River flow downstream.

Who should you believe, me? FirstLight?

Please consider the truths offered by a Greenfield scientist, by a Northfield native elder, and by a Gill teenager, the clarity of youth.

Alex Haro, Ph.D. fish biologist: “NMPS was probably a bad idea to begin with. I would therefore encourage FERC to consider modification of NMPS as a closed system with the addition of a lower reservoir, with no or little connection to the Connecticut River. If this alternative proves infeasible, then other means of energy storage for the region ought to be considered.”

Joe Graveline, tribal coalition senior adviser: “Once more we recommend, absent a closed loop system, the permanent closure of the Northfield Mountain Project.”

Shayla Freeland in 2021: “I’m 14 years old and I live in Gill. … The turbines of the pump station suck in life and throw out death.”

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