The Nature Conservancy, American Whitewater, Appalachian Mountain Club, Crab Apple Whitewater, Inc. New England Flow, and Zoar Outdoor have signed off on the 50-year-deal.
There are, on average, about 300,000 shad migrating on the Connecticut River each spring, according to counts monitored at Holyoke and reported by the Connecticut River Conservancy. But there once were, and could one day be, tens of millions of shad in the river, said Andrew Fisk, Executive Director of the Connecticut River Conservancy. One problem is that the fish ladder at Turners Falls was .
My Turn: Time to retire the Northfield Mountain Pumped Hydro Storage Station
FILE PHOTOConnecticut River
Published: 4/29/2021 1:17:13 PM
After reading Alicia Barton’s (CEO of FirstLight Power Resources) My Turn column (April 23) promoting the Northfield Mountain Pumped Hydro Storage (NMPHS) Station as “an asset in fight against climate change” and “… the largest clean power producer in New England .” I felt compelled to write.
NMPHS is not now nor has it ever been a source of clean, renewable hydropower. It is a hydropower storage facility that buys off-peak, lower-priced energy (primarily from non-renewable energy sources) to pull water from the Connecticut River backwards and uphill to a storage reservoir to be released back to the river as “hydropower” during higher-priced peak periods. It’s a classic “buy low/sell high” investment strategy and is highly profitable. From a financial perspective it makes perfect sense. From an environmental perspective i