CONCORD — House and Senate negotiators agreed on a bill that would have state utility regulators determine if Public Service of New Hampshire should sell its fossil-fuel generating plants and establishes new criteria for approving wind turbine projects.

Under House Bill 1602, the Public Utilities Commission would determine if PSNH should divest, modify or retire its generating facilities, submitting a progress report to the Legislative Oversight Committee on Electric Utility Restructuring by March 31, 2015.

The electric utility would be allowed to recover its stranded costs due to the divestiture or retirement under the bill.

Several House members were concerned the Senate version of the bill does not include the retirement of the plants under the PUC’s authority, and Senate Majority Leader Jeb Bradley, R-Wolfeboro, said retirement would drive up the stranded costs PSNH would be allowed to charge ratepayers. If the plants are sold, stranded costs would be less, he said.

Ann Ross, PUC general counsel, said the commission has other tools to pressure PSNH to retire generating assets, noting they have to be “used and useful” in order to charge ratepayers for their operation.

House negotiator Bob Backus, D-Manchester, asked if the commission would use the tool to force retirement if a facility is not longer economically viable.

Ross noted the commission is currently determining how much of the cost of the Merrimack Station air emissions scrubber consumers will have to pay.

“That is hard-fought litigation,” Ross said. “It would probably be a similar situation if the commission determined plants are not usable or not economic.”

The bill also establishes new guidelines for siting wind energy systems, including setback requirements, noise, shadow flicker, ice throw, sound, impacts on plants and wildlife, fire protection and decommissioning costs.

Negotiators decided to eliminate from the criteria the impact of turbine vibrations.

Bradley said there had been a lot of discussion about what vibration impact is and if experts exist to measure their impact on neighborhoods.

“Low frequency sound is covered and is measurable and is currently being done,” Bradley said.

House member Rep. Laurence Rappaport, R-Colebrook, noted low-frequencies cannot be heard but do have an impact on people, saying that should be one of the criteria.

Applicants would also be required to use the best practices of the industry going forward.

The bill also requires the Site Evaluation Committee to make its decision based on the “best available evidence.”

Lawmakers have revamped the Site Evaluation Committee and the process its uses to determine whether to approve applicants over the last two years.

The committee was inundated with wind turbine projects and is about to embark on the Northern Pass electric transmission project once it receives the federal okay.

HB 1602 deals with wind projects before the Site Evaluation Committee.

The House and Senate will have to vote on the compromise next week.

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Helps shift cost of rescues to people who mostly need them.

CONWAY — More than a year after it was first proposed, lawmakers in Concord are moving forward on a voluntary hiker safety card designed to offset the cost of rescues.
House Bill 256, which was proposed and spearheaded by Mount Washington Valley legislators, would create a $25 card hikers can buy to reduce their liability for the cost of a rescue should they need one.
The bill made it through the senate last week and now goes back to the house for final approval. Then it will go to the governor to become law, all of which local lawmakers are confident will happen.
“We’ve been working on this for quite a few years,” Rep. Gene Chandler (R–Bartlett), the bill’s primary sponsor, said on Monday. “Now we’ll just have to see how much money we can raise.”
Chandler proposed the bill in an effort to get hikers to help shoulder the cost of funding the Department of Fish and Game’s rescue fund. Fish and Game is the agency tasked with conducting searches and rescues in New Hampshire. Currently the rescue fund generates money through the sale of hunting and fishing licenses and ATV and snowmobile registrations. Hikers, meanwhile, comprise the bulk of the rescues in the state, particularly some of the more high profile and expensive ones.
Many sportsmen, including Chandler, have long held that the funding mechanism as it now exists unfairly burdens them, while hikers get the service for free. Over the years there have been various efforts to solve the problem, from charging for rescues to tacking a fee onto overnight stays at high mountain huts, but each attempt has encountered resistance. State law currently allows Fish and Game to charge hikers deemed reckless or negligent who needs a rescue the cost of finding or extracting them, but often times that raises the ire of the volunteer groups who work alongside conservation officers.
This new card, however, could be a way to help fill the coffers of Fish and Game without provoking a backlash.
“The hiker safety card is voluntary, voluntary, voluntary,” said Sen. Jeb Bradley (R–Wolfeboro), an avid hiker and co-sponsor of HB 256. No one will be forced to buy it, but those who do will be supporting local rescues and giving themselves an additional layer of protection should they ever find themselves out in the woods needing help.
The hiking community needs to be part of the puzzle in paying for rescues, he said, and this card is “a good step in the right direction.”
One of the card’s benefits, Bradley said, is it’s sort of like a get out of jail free card: those who buy one will not be charged for rescues, “as long as you’re not reckless.”
New Hampshire law used to allow Fish and Game to charge people for their rescues if they were deemed reckless, but that standard was raised to “negligence” several years later. “It’s tougher to prove recklessness,” Bradley said, so those who get the card will have an added layer of protection.
When the idea of the hiker card was first proposed, Bradley said, it included provisions to charge everyone who was rescued some portion of the expense of their rescue, but that was eventually stripped from the bill. As it is, unless 10,000 people decide to buy the cards there are still going to be challenges filling the rescue fund coffers. “There are big issues that Fish and Game faces,” he said.
Chandler made similar remarks. He’s hoping several thousand people will buy the voluntary hiker safety card, but “even if it’s wildly successful it will not solve the problem,” he said.
And at this point, with no precedent in New Hampshire for such a card, it’s unclear how many people will pick one up.
“If 500 people buy them that’ll be a good first step,” Bradley said. “If a thousand people bought it I’d be pretty pleased.”
“It’s never been done or tried here,” Chandler said, so “we don’t know” how much revenue it will raise.
Bradley said he wants to see the cards available in the local outdoor stores, not just sold online, so people can get their hands on them easily.
“We’d certainly be glad to sell them,” Rick Wilcox, owner of International Mountain Equipment in North Conway and president of the all-volunteer Mountain Rescue Service, said, though he is skeptical they’ll be effective. “In an ideal world it makes a lot of sense,” he said, but he’d be surprised if many people will be willing to pick up the voluntary cards. In his experience, he said, many hikers and climbers are “too cheap to do that.”

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RYE — Despite technological advancements that allow people to instantaneously connect with someone on the other side of the globe, officials fear not enough has been done to ensure locals can actually take advantage of the gadgets at their fingertips — particularly during emergencies.

A number of Seacoast communities struggle with cell-phone reception, particularly in low-lying beach areas and on days with a heavy load on the local network.

Rye police Chief Kevin Walsh said his department and others would have “no way” of getting services to an individual in those areas if reception issues prevented calls from going out. Walsh said cell phones are the “first thing” people reach for when they need emergency services and more needs to be done to prevent the devices from being rendered useless.

“We haven’t matched (wireless network) technology with the level of services available,” Walsh said. “If they can’t call us, how would we know they need assistance?”

A new law, RSA 12-K, seeks to overcome this issue by no longer requiring individuals to obtain variances from municipal land-use boards or to appear at a public hearing before they add new antenna arrays to existing structures or enhance existing cell towers.

Over the years, a number of municipal, business and public safety officials throughout the Seacoast have used terms like “spotty” and “terrible” to describe the reliability of systems along the coast.

While they recognize RSA 12-K as a way to change that, many of those same individuals have reservations about the fact that the efforts will come at the expense of local towns’ oversight.

“It’s a significant issue,” said Rye Selectman Craig Musselman, who is also president and founder of CMA Engineers of Portsmouth. “This certainly would change things significantly.”

RSA 12-K, introduced as Senate Bill 101 last year and signed into law in September, is designed to enhance the state’s wireless communications by reducing the time and steps required to receive approval for attaching new equipment to existing towers, mounts, electrical transmission towers, water towers and buildings.

“It was meant to expedite the process of using existing towers to try to minimize the impact of new towers,” said Sen. Jeb Bradley, the bill’s prime sponsor. “By (building onto existing structures), you would need fewer overall towers … (to help) areas of the state that were underserved.”

The law ties in with the goals of the National Broadband Plan. Any applicant seeking to add onto these structures and buildings now no longer needs variances as long as they have permission from the owner of the property and don’t exceed the law’s “substantial modification” clauses, which dictate limits to changes in height, configuration and construction.

Hampton and its Zoning Board of Adjustment found this out recently after receiving an application that sought to add 12 multi-band panel antennas to the top of a newly constructed condominium building in the heart of Hampton Beach. The board was set to make a decision on the proposal last month, though members granted the applicant permission to withdraw the application because Hampton discovered it no longer had jurisdiction over the matter. This didn’t sit well with board members.

“To me, we should have at least some kind of overview,” said Ed St. Pierre, the ZBA’s clerk. “I have a problem with the fact that they’re taking the local control away from this board. I felt we had a right to review this.”

Stratham Town Planner Lincoln Daley said the law doesn’t give all cell tower proposals “carte blanche” approval, though. Towns and cities still have the ability to make sure the erection of new towers and replacement towers comply with local ordinances, as well as solicit input from the public on such matters. A cell tower currently before the town of Stratham falls under this category, as it seeks to completely replace an existing freestanding monopole, Daley said.

Paul Sanderson, staff attorney for the New Hampshire Municipal Association, said the modified rules will “surely” lead to issues for municipalities as they learn the ins and outs of the new law, particularly because he said the law stipulates projects “must be approved without local land-use board review” even if they “appear to violate conditions” imposed when the affected tower or mount was first reviewed.

“It is possible that existing applications will have to be changed, time frames for review will change, existing fee structures will have to be changed, and land-use board members will have to be trained about why they will no longer be involved in the review of these matters,” Sanderson said.

Another issue could stem from the fact that while applicants do have to seek a building permit for the work, the application is automatically deemed approved if the receiving municipality doesn’t issue a decision within 45 days.

Daley described this as a new “shot clock” to speed up applications, while Hampton Building Inspector Kevin Schultz said he believes it essentially means applicants “just keep going” as long as they comply with the new law’s restrictions.

“They don’t need me,” Schultz said.

Sanderson said the law also raises a number of other questions. He said there are no provisions that allow for an extension for the building permit deadline if a municipality’s building inspector needs to seek input from outside experts about whether the new equipment could affect the structural integrity of the existing structure or its electrical system.

Some municipalities seek building permit reviews from the state fire marshal’s office because they haven’t adopted their own permit enforcement process, and Sanderson said there is no deadline extension provision in RSA 12-K for this type of review.

Wireless communications applicants also used to be able to seek an appeal through the town’s appeals process, though the new law states this type of review is only available at the superior court level. Sanderson said the new law doesn’t state how many days a “person aggrieved” by a local-level decision — whether an applicant or anyone else with what he described as a “legally protected interest in the decision” — would have to take action in superior court, though.

“There are practical difficulties, which will arise under this scheme, and there are no clear answers as yet to guide resolution of these issues,” he said.

Daley described the law as an “interesting change.” Because it hasn’t yet affected his town, which has seen strong public opposition during hearings on the majority of its cell tower proposals, he said it’s “unclear” whether it would truly benefit local governments to allow certain applicants to skip the site plan approval process.

“It’s a dramatically different scenario than what we’re used to as a town,” Daley said.

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CONCORD — Education voucher opponent William Duncan of New Castle has been nominated by Gov. Maggie Hassan to the state Board of Education — and Republicans are lining up in opposition.

The Executive Council is expected to vote on Duncan’s nomination at its meeting this Thursday, May 8, said Hassan’s press secretary, William Hinkle.

Duncan is the founder of Advancing New Hampshire Public Education, a state public education advocacy organization.

Duncan filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a state law that allows business education tax credits to fund scholarships benefitting private and religious schools, and home schooling. The suit contends an education voucher program will undermine the funding of public education.

The case was heard by the New Hampshire Supreme Court in April. Hassan filed a “friend of the court” brief siding with Duncan.

In making Duncan’s nomination, Hassan cited his support of education, said Hinkle.

“As a businessman, Bill Duncan knows the value of a strong public education system in New Hampshire. He has been a tireless advocate for college and career-ready standards supported by the business and education communities,” Hinkle said.

Duncan agrees his strength comes from seeing the value of public education from a business owner’s perspective.

“As a member of the Board of Education, I will work to make sure that all of our public schools are providing our children with the career and college preparation they need to succeed in today’s economy,” he said.

Opposition to the news was swift. Republican candidates for governor Walt Havenstein and Andrew Hemingway both expressed outrage at the nomination in statements.

“How can you be on the state Board of Education while suing the state over its existing laws?” said Hemingway, who has started an online petition to oppose the appointment.

“The state Board of Education is a place for many opinions, but it is irresponsible to appoint an anti-charter school activist to regulate something he wants to destroy,” said Havenstein.

Sen. Jeb Bradley, R-Wolfboro, also spoke out against the choice of Duncan.

“How can Mr. Duncan serve as an unbiased administrator of programs he has spent years trying to dismantle?” said Bradley.

Duncan said the Board of Education “does not have a role in administering or overseeing the voucher program, which is part of my objection to the voucher scheme. Like many people in New Hampshire, I do not believe we should be diverting limited taxpayer dollars to unaccountable private religious schools.”

Duncan said he “strongly supports” what he calls the “cooperative role” played by charter schools such as the Great Bay eLearning Charter School and the Next Charter School in Derry, “and the others that establish close working relationships with their school districts. I do have concerns about ensuring that charters schools are geographically diverse, partner with their communities and are economically sustainable.”

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