October 20, 2012

Connecticut River Headwaters in Peril

by Eesha Williams
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The Connecticut river starts in New Hampshire, near the state’s borders with Vermont and Canada. It flows through Brattleboro, Greenfield, Northampton, Holyoke, and Springfield on its way to the ocean. The town of Columbia, New Hampshire is home to about 750 people. It’s near Canada. In Columbia, Roaring brook flows into the Mohawk river which, in turn, flows into the Connecticut river.

Northeast Utilities Corporation of Hartford, Connecticut wants to do clear-cut logging near Roaring brook to build a power line to carry electricity from Canada to the Boston area. Activists are trying to stop the plan by buying land and permanently protecting it from development. The deadline for them to buy the land is October 31. Details are at:

www.forestsociety.org/howyoucanhelp/special-projects.asp#sp32

A series of electricity-generating dams on the Connecticut and Deerfield rivers is owned by TransCanada Corporation. This includes dams in Vernon, Vermont, which borders Massachusetts, and in the Massachusetts towns of Rowe, Shelburne, and Conway, all of which are near Greenfield.

TransCanada is building an oil pipeline called Keystone XL to carry oil from Canada to Texas. Information about the pipeline, and ongoing protests to stop its construction, is at:

www.foe.org/projects/climate-and-energy/tar-sands/keystone-xl-pipeline

and

www.democracynow.org/2012/10/15/texas_landowners_join_environmentalists_...

The Connecticut river electricity-generating dam in Turners Falls, Massachusetts, near Greenfield, is owned by GDF Suez Corporation, which owns a coal power plant in Holyoke that protesters are trying to close. Details about that struggle are at:

www.valleypost.org/2012/08/19/rally-against-coal-corporation-holyoke

The Connecticut river electricity-generating dam in Holyoke is owned by the city of Holyoke.

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