If you have ever walked along the trails at Buffam Falls Conservation Area in Pelham, you know what makes places like this so precious. The sound of rushing water. The shade of the forest. The sense that, for a while, you have stepped away from the busy world around you.
Now imagine a straight-cut clearing that would pass alongside Buffam Falls.
Eversource is planning to enact this scenario unless we act to prevent it.
Eversource Energy’s proposed WT-11 Transmission Right-of-Way Reliability Program would substantially expand an existing 29.3-mile transmission corridor through 11 towns from the Northfield Substation in Northfield to the Ludlow Substation in Ludlow. Eversource’s Draft Environmental WT-11 Impact Report (DEIR) would result in permanently altering approximately 278 acres of land, including 86 acres of priority habitat for rare species, 47 acres of wetlands and riverfront, 21 vernal pools, and portions of important public drinking-water watersheds. Nurse and Dean Brooks, which are important tributaries to the Atkins Reservoir, flow through areas proposed for substantial tree clearing.
The question is not whether Eversource should manage hazardous trees. The question is whether the extraordinary scale and permanent environmental impacts of this particular proposal have been adequately demonstrated to be necessary. According to Eversource’s DEIR, the WT-11 project would essentially double the maintained corridor widths of approximately 125-335 feet to 252–576 feet, which would substantially reduce their costs of major vegetation management for 40 years.
Drawing upon my experience as a member of the Shutesbury Planning Board and my 37 years of teaching biology and the environmental sciences, I believe that the extraordinary scale and permanent environmental impacts of this proposal are not necessary. I also believe that their proposal is financially advantageous to their company at the expense of our environment.
Line 354, comprising approximately 28 miles of the 29.3-mile project corridor, has experienced no tree-caused outages. Two tree-related outages have been identified within the remaining approximately 1.3-mile portion involving Line 312. Given Eversource’s federally mandated line redundancy and contingency capabilities, we do not know if there were any customer impacts associated with these two events. We also do not know why the two trees responsible could not have been addressed through selective removal, pruning or other measures within a recurring vegetation-management program.
There are viable and fiscally responsible alternative strategies to massive clear-cutting of forests. Other utilities operating under similar challenging northeastern climatic conditions use combinations of selective tree removal, pruning, Integrated Vegetation Management, recurring maintenance cycles, and site-specific approaches. Eversource should clearly demonstrate why comparable, less environmentally damaging approaches would be insufficient along all or portions of this corridor, particularly in environmentally sensitive areas such as Buffam Falls or land surrounding the tributaries of the Atkins Reservoir.
This project requires us to look at the long-term financial and environmental costs. Substantially widening the corridor will reduce Eversource’s recurring federally mandated vegetation-management costs over the next 40 years. It is important to understand that minimizing the utility’s long-term maintenance expenditures is not the same as reducing long-term costs for ratepayers.
Forests, wetlands, intact watersheds, and other natural systems provide valuable services over many decades, including water filtration and groundwater recharge, erosion and flood control, carbon storage, climate resilience, protection of drinking-water supplies, wildlife habitat, and recreational and community benefits. These costs may be difficult to quantify in dollars, but that does not make them any less real — or any less important when weighing the long-term costs and benefits of this project. Our precious environment is more important than their bottom line.
Permanent environmental changes of this magnitude should only occur after unbiased evidence is presented that demonstrates that these changes are necessary and that they represent the least environmentally damaging practicable means of achieving Eversource’s reliability objectives. This unbiased evidence has not been presented.
Eversource plans to remove approximately 1,949 acres of trees in western Massachusetts through 2032. Buffam Falls is only one place along a 29.3-mile corridor, but it provides a vivid example of what is at stake. A transmission corridor may only appear as a line on a map, but on the ground, it passes through real forests, streams, wetlands, wildlife habitat, watersheds — and places that people love.
We should not have to choose unnecessarily between a reliable electric grid and responsible stewardship of its forests, wetlands, wildlife habitat, and drinking-water resources. We should expect both.
Jeff Weston lives in Shutesbury and serves on the town’s Planning Board.