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To the Editor: As Tyler Resch notes (“Bill Scully’s advice to Vermont: Go hydro,” Banner, July 16, 2021), hydropower development is neglected in Vermont nowadays. It was not neglected a few decades ago, when small hydro power was rejuvenated in rural Rockingham (Brockways Mills) on the Williams River and urban Springfield on the Black River.

Developed and undeveloped small hydropower, however, are insignificant to powering Vermont.

There is one undeveloped larger hydropower site on the Connecticut River: Sumner Falls between Hartland, Vt., and Plainfield, N.H.

And there is one undeveloped pumped-storage hydropower site: Fall Mountain in Walpole, N.H., opposite Bellows Falls, Vt.

Meanwhile, Hydro-Québec has a large and growing hydro- and wind-power surplus, but tapping it again now is politically incorrect.

While New England’s coal and nuclear power plants are closing, natural gas is taking up the slack, including pipeline capacity: also now politically incorrect.

Selling Vermont’s renewable energy credits to Southern New England so that they do not have to allow solar- and wind-power development in their backyards now is politically correct, because it feels good.

“Vermont’s energy future” is political, not practical.

Howard Fairman,

Putney


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