If word got out that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is relicensing five major energy pipelines for western New England in nine months, and these licenses will be in effect for 30 to 40 years, climate activists would mobilize immediately.
Yet few have noticed that five projects on a pipe that runs through four New England States are up for federal relicensing by April 30, 2018. The Connecticut River is that pipe, and Massachusetts is at the center of its power-generating operations.
A Gazette article about this spring’s shad migration followed the fish only as far as the Holyoke dam (“Merrily up the stream,” July 12). From then on their journey on the Connecticut River is anything but merry. Upriver the spring migration becomes a chamber of horrors. Relatively few shad that are lifted over the Holyoke dam ever make it to their spawning grounds. The run through Turners Falls and the Northfield Mountain Power Station is particularly grim.
This isn’t a story about fish, unless you recognize that fish in a river are like canaries in a coal mine. If the fish are dying, the river is in danger.
In 2015 environmental journalist Karl Meyer described thousands of fish lying stranded, struggling, and dead in the muck, silt, and drying puddles of the bypassed channel where the broken Connecticut River used to run below the Turners Falls Dam. The hijacked river and its marine life flow into a 20-mile-long impoundment to be sucked up a mountain tunnel at night where water and fish churn through four massive pumps operating at up to 15,000 cubic feet per second, a rate as great as the river’s maximum flow rate. At the end of the journey they are dumped in a reservoir atop Northfield Mountain. In daylight this upper reservoir empties down the same route with pumps running in reverse, acting as turbines to generate electricity and complete the fish-shredding massacre.
FirstLight Power Resources, the U.S.-based arm of a giant Canadian investment firm called PSP, manages both the Turners Falls Dam and Northfield Mountain Power Station. FirstLight’s website doesn’t mention anything about the collateral damage from their Connecticut River “clean hydro power” operations, but you don’t need a degree in marine biology to understand that draining a river dry downstream and reloading it with water and dead fish upstream, all at 15,000 cubic feet per second, wreaks havoc on wildlife. It’s the equivalent of flushing a river like a toilet.
PSP has initiated closed-door negotiations with representatives of government agencies and nonprofit stakeholders, river defenders who represent the public interest. On the table are critical questions about the volume of water taken from the river, timing of pumping and generating operations, and ways to mitigate harm to fish, other endangered marine life and the shoreline.
The future of the river is at stake. FirstLight wants approval to increase its pumping to the Northfield reservoir by 30 percent. The company lost money on its U.S. hydroelectric operations in fiscal year 2017. Energy accounts for 3.1 percent of owner PSP’s diverse $15.9 billion private market portfolio. PSP reported that energy was the only sector of its private holdings that posted a net loss in fiscal year 2017.
What does this mean for those of us who live in or pass through the Connecticut River Valley (fish and humans included)? What legacy will be left once FirstLight has drained any remaining profit from the greatest of New England’s rivers?
Until now Western Mass activists have focused on stopping fossil-fuel pipelines. We have learned that by working together we can make a difference. While negotiations are still underway, let’s pay attention to the Connecticut River and demand that this powerful and beautiful feature of our landscape not be further desecrated for private profit.
The key stakeholders are listed online in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s January 2013 announcement of upcoming federal relicensing (www.fws.gov). Tell the Connecticut River Conservancy (formerly Connecticut River Watershed Council), The Nature Conservancy, U.S. and Mass. Fish and Wildlife departments, and our elected representatives at all levels that you want them to protect the river and hold the line in negotiations on these critical factors:
No increase in the volume of water drawn from the Connecticut River;
Increase flow in the bypassed natural river channel reach below Turners Falls Dam;
Use best current technology to allow safe passage of fish upstream and downstream at Turners Falls Dam. Replace ineffective fish ladders with lifts that are now standard design for large dams;
Keep fish and eels out of the Northfield Mountain pump/turbine tunnels;
Limit operations during the height of shad migration.
Let’s reclaim the Connecticut River as our common wealth and keep it running clean and strong!
Elaine Ulman is a freelance writer and climate activist who lives in Goshen for most of the year.