Northern Pass targets N.H. voters through ad campaign

Al­though the North­ern Pass trans­mis­sion pro­ject has suc­cess­fully in­vaded our Hulu chan­nels with its New Hamp­shire-tar­geted pro­mo­tions, a grow­ing num­ber of state res­i­dents are chal­leng­ing the pro­ject’s “in­va­sion” of the state — and ques­tion­ing whether the com­pany’s folksy tes­ti­mo­ni­als are a true grass­roots move­ment or merely “as­tro­turf.”

Ac­cord­ing to its web­site, the North­ern Pass pro­ject would run an above ground power line from the Hy­dro-Québec hy­dro­elec­tric power plants in Canada south­ward through the state to Deer­field, NH, where it would then feed into the New Eng­land power grid. Pur­port­edly, the new trans­mis­sion line would re­sult in lower en­ergy costs for the re­gion, greater fuel di­ver­sity, an in­flux of ap­prox­i­mately 1,200 3-year con­struc­tion jobs, as well as new prop­erty tax rev­enues.

How­ever, there has been a great deal of local op­po­si­tion to the plan, which re­quires the con­struc­tion of a high-volt­age elec­tric cor­ri­dor run­ning through the White Moun­tains, uti­liz­ing some land ob­tained through em­i­nent do­main. They view the plan as the im­po­si­tion of “For­eign Big Hydro” on a state that ought to es­tab­lish its own in­ter­nal en­ergy re­sources and they crit­i­cize it on health, en­vi­ron­men­tal and eco­nomic grounds. These groups, com­posed mainly of North Coun­try loy­al­ists, have mo­bi­lized via com­mu­nity events as well via so­cial media, and their out­cry stands in stark con­trast to the “real New Hamp­shire folk” pro­fess­ing the ben­e­fits of the North­ern Pass in the pol­ished, pro­fes­sional ad­ver­tise­ments shown every time we want to catch up on our fa­vorite shows on­line.

Is the North­ern Pass a good idea? Do the en­ergy ben­e­fits out­weigh the sac­ri­fices, or is it an­other ex­am­ple of cor­po­rate greed over­rid­ing local in­ter­ests? Com­ment below and let us know what you think.