AMHERST — Continued concerns over an Eversource plan to remove trees along a transmission line in 11 communities across the region will be the subject of a community meeting at the North Amherst Library, 8 Montague Road, Thursday from 4 to 6 p.m.
The latest meeting is a popup event designed to allow input from an environmental justice community on the so-called WT-11 Transmission Right-of-Way Reliability Program Project.
In April, Eversource received significant feedback at a session at Amherst Town Hall convened by Sen. Jo Comerford, D-Northampton, and Rep. Mindy Domb, D-Amherst.
The 29.3-mile, 345,000-volt line runs from Northfield to Ludlow. In the affected areas, Eversource has a powerline corridor that is between 125 and 335 feet wide, with plans to clear 278 acres and widen it to between 252 and 576 feet wide. The plan would remove all species of trees and shrubs with mature heights of greater than 30 feet. Depending on the line’s configuration, the 125-to-150-foot clearance will increase by around 100 feet, reaching 250 feet.
Sharon Weizenbaum of Amherst is among those advocating for Eversource to show restraint. She was one of more than 20 who attended an Eversource meeting at the Wendell Free Library on May 22. Weizenbaum said the “radically wide corridor” will mean significant clear cutting.
She said there is no evidence of power outages from tree falls along the corridor, given the 60-foot height, and the cutting poses risks of deforestation and replacement of trees with grasses, forbs and shrubs.
Throughout their history, there has been only one documented tree fall on a 345,000-volt line, according to information supplied by Weizenbaum, and critics dispute that impacts on this type of line can be blamed for the 2011 Halloween snowstorm that caused widespread outages in the region, or the 2003 blackout in Ohio.
