This weekend I
shopped in Athol and Orange, Mass., buying items that could have just as
easily been purchased in Keene or surrounding towns.
Why would I pay
more to shop in Massachusetts? Last summer Massachusetts Attorney
General Maura Healey commissioned a study on whether there was a
legitimate need for Kinder Morgan’s NED pipeline. That report was
released recently. It concluded that the project was unnecessary and
that there were other, less environmentally devastating ways to provide
energy needs at peak demand times.
Wow, imagine that. A government
official actually looking out for the best interests of the people.
Paying 6.25 percent extra on my purchases seemed like a small way to say
“thank you” to the Commonwealth. If the pipeline isn’t allowed to be
built there, it won’t be built here in New Hampshire.
With our governor willing to give
away a 70-mile strip of land belonging to my family, friends, and
fellow Granite Staters, our hope that this project will be stopped has
to come from our neighbors to the south.
Gov. Maggie Hassan’s idea of
protecting the people’s interests is to fire the one person on the
Public Utilities Commission who had questions concerning the project.
Maybe she thinks it is those “corporations are people too” people that
she represents. Word must have gotten around Concord that if you want to
keep your appointed job, you better fall in step behind the governor on
this issue.
A Canadian lynx has been seen in
the vicinity of the proposed route in four different towns since the
first of the year. Someone who had seen the lynx on several occasions
said that a New Hampshire Fish & Game officer informally confirmed
that there was a lynx living in the area. Prior to the close of FERC’s
public comment period in a letter to the Fish & Game Commissioner, I
asked that they submit this information to FERC, being that Canadian
lynx are considered a threatened species protected by the Federal
Endangered Species Act.
Less than a week later, Fish and
Game announced a proposal to reinstate a bobcat hunting season. Perhaps a
coincidence, but it looked for all the world like a state-sponsored
“shoot, shovel and shut up” solution to the presence of an animal that
could hinder the pipeline from being built. Speaking to Evan Mulholland
at Fish and Game in Concord did little to reassure me with these answers
to my concerns. None of their officers had reported seeing a lynx. No,
hunters wouldn’t mistake a bobcat for a lynx. If they did accidently
shoot it, of course they’d report it. And if the lynx were dead, at
least we’d know that there had been one there.
The presence of a protected
species is only one of the many reasons why not one blade of grass
should be disturbed, nor even one tree cut down, nor one square inch of
land stolen from private citizens to build this environmental nightmare.
The majority of the product to be transmitted through this pipeline is
for export. Construction costs will be paid by us through a surcharge on
our electric bills.
Gov. Hassan, it is time you
considered the interests of the people who have Homo sapiens DNA, not a
corporation “people” with fat wallets loaded with campaign
contributions.
Jennie L. Hill
Richmond
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