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SHOCKED

Homeowners Learn They Must Maintain Buried Power Lines

Eastham has a plan for 150 households to upgrade to Eversource infrastructure

By K.C. Myers Nov 2, 2022

WELLFLEET — During a downpour on Oct. 14, seven houses on Dalmas Trail lost power. The homeowners called Eversource for repairs. Then they discovered that they are among an unfortunate — and unknown — number of Outer Cape residents whose electric service equipment is not owned by Eversource.

Sandra Paredes and her neighbors on Dalmas Trail in Wellfleet have learned they own their underground electric cables. They just paid $35,000 for repairs. (Photo by Agata Storer)

In the case of Dalmas Trail, and apparently many others streets, the developer installed underground electric cables along a private road off the main utility lines on a public road — in this case, Gross Hill Road. Eversource told the Dalmas Trail residents they would have to pay for the repairs.

The seven homeowners divided up a $35,000 charge from Farrell Electric of Eastham, said Jack McCormick of 70 Dalmas Trail.

“It is really unfortunate,” said Wellfleet Fire Chief Rich Pauley. “There are a lot of roads in the Cape Cod National Seashore that have private equipment, and Eversource refuses to take it over because it was not done with their oversight.”

According to Gerry Parent, a Wellfleet planning board member for over 30 years and a local developer since the 1970s, it is legal for a developer to install utility equipment privately.

Wellfleet has long required subdivision developers to install underground power, Parent said, but most arrange for the electric company to own and maintain the service. It might be less costly to install private equipment, Parent said, but that also leaves the developer liable for repairs if something goes wrong before all the lots are sold.

Wellfleet Town Administrator Rich Waldo said he does not know which roads or homeowners are in the same situation as those on Dalmas Trail. Provincetown DPW Deputy Director Sherry Prada also did not have a list of Provincetown residents who own their own power lines. Truro officials did not respond to inquiries.

Eversource spokesman Chris McKinnon said he was tracking down a list of properties with private utilities but could not produce it before this week’s deadline. Customers can call Eversource and ask who owns the equipment at any given address, McKinnon said.

Though some residents of Dalmas Trail have owned their homes since the 1980s, none of them knew they also owned the neighborhood’s electricity infrastructure.

Sandra Paredes, who works from her 40 Dalmas Trail home while caring for a two-year-old, said that when they lost power on Oct. 14 it took eight days for the power to be restored. Farrell Electric was able to do a quick repair, but then the system failed again, and the electrician said the main cable had to be replaced.

“How is it that we are 100-percent responsible for this and we did not know about this?” Paredes said. “None of us knew.”

They paid for the repair “because we needed power,” Paredes said. They could have had Eversource do the work, but “Farrell Electric told us, if Eversource took it over, it would take eight months and cost four times as much,” McCormick said.

Tim Farrell, the president of Farrell Electric, did not return a call seeking comment.

Eastham’s Plan

In July 2020 the 21 residents of Thoreau Drive in Eastham found out they, too, owned underground power lines installed about 50 years ago when the street was developed, said Wayne Sokoly of 75 Thoreau Drive.

They paid Farrell Electric a few hundred dollars each to get their power back. Then they got organized.

Resident Elaine Lipton met with Town Administrator Jacqui Beebe. They came up with a plan for the town to pay an estimated $110,000 up front for an upgrade on Thoreau Drive that meets Eversource standards. That would allow Eversource to take ownership, Beebe said. The town will handle the bidding and oversee construction. Each property owner will then pay the town a betterment fee estimated at about $5,000 per home.

“We have submitted design plans to Eversource, and once Eversource approves it, the town will go out to bid,” Beebe said. “We have created a mechanism so people can upgrade utilities and have them taken over by Eversource.”

Eastham found 150 Eversource customers on 64 roads that are in this situation, Beebe added. In some cases, there is a single home on a street with private equipment. Some have privately owned utility poles, and many of the homes are on public roads. Beebe said she will post the list of streets online so people can see for themselves whether they or Eversource owns the lines and, if need be, apply to initiate the process now in motion on Thoreau Drive.

“Every once in a while, I get a complicated problem and there is a solution,” Beebe said. “This is why I love my job.”

GROUNDHOG DAY

Eversource’s New Five-Year Power Line Plan Looks Familiar

Despite public opposition, the company still relies on herbicides

By Christine Legere Oct 26, 2022

Eversource’s draft plan for managing vegetation under its power lines on Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard for the next five years looks essentially the same as the plan for the previous five years — it calls for a combination of mowing and herbicide application.

Woods and homes flank the right of way under the power lines that cross Long Pond Road in Wellfleet, which are cleared by Eversource using mowing and spraying of herbicides. (Photo by Teresa Parker)

“It’s like Groundhog Day,” said Cape & Islands state Sen. Julian Cyr. Each time the five-year plan comes out, and each time the yearly plan is released, officials in all 15 Barnstable County towns, the region’s legislators, and residents write letters expressing strong opposition to the use of herbicides, citing Cape Cod’s sandy soil and sole-source aquifer.

The Mass. Dept. of Agricultural Resources will hold a virtual public hearing to listen to comments on Eversource’s five-year draft at 11 a.m. on Thursday, Nov. 3. The deadline for written comments is Nov. 7. But when contacted last week, officials in Outer Cape towns were unaware that the draft had been published and that a hearing had been set for next week.

The draft and related hearings were discussed last week at the Brewster Select Board meeting when Kimberly Pearson, who is on the town’s natural resources advisory commission as well as a state advisory board, offered a draft of Brewster’s letter opposing the plan, which the select board adjusted and sent.

“They announced this really quietly and that irked me,” said Cyr. “That’s not lost on residents concerned about exposure to pesticides. Of course, Rep. [Sarah] Peake and I will submit testimony opposing the five-year vegetation management plan.”

The five-year plans don’t list the chemicals Eversource would apply along its rights of way. Those are published in its yearly treatment plans, which show that the company has used the same compounds for several years. The list includes glyphosate, fosamine ammonium, metsulfuron-methyl, imazapyr, and triclopyr choline.

Glyphosate is the most widely known and controversial of those compounds. The World Health Organization concluded in 2015 that it may be linked to cancer, and several countries have banned its use. So far, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency stands by its finding that glyphosate is not likely to be carcinogenic to humans. But in September, the agency withdrew its interim registration of the compound following legal challenges by environmental groups. In accordance with a decision in June by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the EPA says it “intends to revisit and better explain its evaluation of the carcinogenic potential of glyphosate and to consider whether to do so for other aspects of its human health analysis.”

The agency will also consider whether additional mitigation is necessary based on the compound’s effects on species protected under the Endangered Species Act, and it will prepare an analysis of glyphosate’s effects on monarch butterfly habitat.

The EPA predicts a final decision on the registration of glyphosate will be made in 2026; in the meantime, the compound can continue to be used.

Residents, town officials, and environmental groups whose attempts to halt herbicide application by Eversource on the company’s rights of way have so far been unsuccessful are worried that the sandy soil here allows compounds applied to the surface to quickly filter into the groundwater.

State legislators have filed bills in the last two sessions that would give communities more control over herbicide use on rights of way. Cyr said he is once again working to advance a bill that would require the Dept. of Public Health and the Dept. of Environmental Protection to sign off on vegetation management plans. “The approach I’m taking is trying to bolster oversight,” the senator said.

While they were caught by surprise, officials on the Outer Cape said they now plan to submit letters of opposition to the five-year draft before the deadline. Hillary Greenberg-Lemos, Wellfleet’s health and conservation agent, said her letter will repeat opposition expressed in past letters. In those, she pointed out the town has 13 properties with private drinking wells along Eversource’s right of way, and some of those are as close as 10 feet from where the herbicides are applied.

The town’s municipal well field is less than 400 feet away. Greenberg-Lemos will again note that the right of way in Wellfleet crosses several wetlands, including the Herring River, Hatches Creek, Silver Spring Brook, and Fresh Brook.

Lezli Rowell, Provincetown’s health agent and interim health director, sent a letter on behalf of the board of health late last week, urging the Dept. of Agricultural Resources to require Eversource to use alternative methods like hand-pruning and mowing to control vegetation under the power lines. “Provincetown gets its drinking water from the Pamet lens, which is a mere five feet underground,” wrote Rowell. The risk of contamination here is exacerbated by the Cape’s sandy soil, “through which contaminants can travel at the rate of a foot per day,” Rowell wrote.

In Brewster, where officials have attempted in the past to get court injunctions to stop Eversource’s application of herbicides, the select board sent a letter expressing “grave concern” with the current draft plan, calling it “fundamentally flawed” and therefore inadequate to serve as the guiding document for the company’s yearly vegetation management plans.

The Brewster board questioned Eversource’s documentation of sensitive areas and cited an example of an abutter who emailed Eversource asking how the company determined the location of private wells. The emailed response from Eversource’s lead mapping technician said, “We do not track private wells on our maps,” according to the select board’s letter.

The Brewster board added that the town “does not have confidence that the Vegetation Management Plan’s protocol is adequate to protect residents and believes some private well users may be at risk.”

Laura Kelley, president of Protect Our Cape Cod Aquifer, said all the towns in Barnstable County except Bourne and Truro had taken votes to voluntarily stop using glyphosate on town-owned land. Her group has organized volunteer efforts to cut back brush. According to Kelley, abutters to the right of way can contact Eversource directly to say they don’t want chemicals applied in their areas.

“Can you imagine if 500 people did this?” Kelley said. “It would bug Eversource so much, something would have to give.”

Eversource provided the following statement: “We take seriously our responsibility to provide safe, reliable service to our customers while being responsible environmental stewards, and our vegetation management programs are a fundamental part of those efforts. To enhance reliability for our customers, we continually evaluate our Integrated Vegetation Management (IVM) plan while investigating the safest, most effective and sustainable methods to keep our rights of way clear of vegetation that could threaten electrical service on Cape Cod.”

Eversource’s five-year draft plan can be found at mass.gov/doc/eversource-cape-cod-marthas-vineyard-2023-2027-vmp/download. The link to the Nov. 3 hearing and address for comments can be found at mass.gov/doc/eversource-cape-cod-2023-2027-vmp-emn/download.

UNDERSTORY

Under the Power Lines, an Edible Forest Grows

Initiative expands an area protected from herbicide spraying

By Christine Legere Oct 26, 2022

HARWICH — The Food Forest Initiative of Cape Cod has found a way to protect a section of Eversource’s right of way off Bay Road from herbicide application, planting it with perennials that will provide fruit and nuts for passersby — both human and nonhuman — to enjoy.

The group, founded in 2015, has drawn members from several towns on the Cape and even a few from Plymouth. Among their projects is a sustainable garden at the Lighthouse Charter School in Harwich and at the Long Pasture Wildlife Sanctuary in Barnstable.

Members of the Food Forest Initiative, town staff, and Eversource employees work together to prepare the edible garden under the power lines in Harwich. (Photos courtesy Rand Burkert)

In 2020, Harwich resident and Food Forest Initiative member Patrick Otton suggested the group plant an area in Eversource’s right of way. “I live on the power lines and walk there daily with my dog,” Otton said. “I was thinking how satisfying it would be to see a line of apple trees.”

That was the start of a project that has resulted in a 100-by-600-foot “food forest” of hardy and essentially self-sustaining plants.

The Harwich Water Dept., along with the town’s water commissioners, embraced the initiative’s idea and suggested planting in an area the town owns adjacent to the primary protection zone of a municipal well.

Eversource is not allowed to apply herbicides in the well-protection zone. “The garden starts at the 400-foot buffer and works outward, so we were able to expand the protection area and push back the application of herbicides,” said Water Supt. Dan Pelletier. “It’s not a big lift for us, and it’s something that’s been beneficial.”

Work on the garden started in March 2020, with volunteers arriving with wheelbarrows, shovels, and branch loppers to get the site ready. Then planting began. The area now features American hazelnuts, beach plum, blueberry, and chokeberry bushes, as well as fig, dwarf apple, pear, and pawpaw trees, said Food Forest Initiative member Clara McLardy.

The list of plants that make up the “food forest” that inspired an expansion of the unsprayed right of way in Harwich.

According to Otton, Eversource has been an enthusiastic partner. “Eversource paid for the plants and helped do the planting,” he said.

Pelletier arranged for the group to use a nearby fire hydrant as its water source to get the plantings established and hardy enough to make it through the dry season. McLardy said the watering would be needed for only a couple of years as the new plantings get established.

Now that the group has shown this is a viable alternative, McLardy said, “we would be happy to help any other group do it.”

Planted areas provide habitat for wildlife in addition to food. A pollinator garden has been planted at the entryway to the right of way off Bay Road.

“It’s a pretty simple solution for making Cape Cod a better place to live,” said Otton. “The public gets a garden and enjoys the benefit of sharing with nature, the Food Forest Initiative does the work, and Eversource doesn’t spray.”

WHITEOUTS AND BLACKOUTS

Blizzard Review: Power to the Outermost People

Eversource’s long-awaited battery backup system is promised by summer

By Lee Kahrs Feb 16, 2022

PROVINCETOWN — The first large-scale battery backup system on Cape Cod is set to go online in Provincetown this summer. When it does, according to electric utility officials, power outages like the one during the Jan. 29 blizzard will be a thing of the past.

Eversource officials appeared at a Valentine’s Day select board meeting with an update on the $46-million Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) being built at the Provincetown Transfer Station. The board is investigating the local response to the blizzard, which knocked out power for thousands. While Eversource was able to restore power within 24 hours to most Provincetown customers, many asked, “Whatever happened to BESS?”

Eversource Manager of Distribution System Engineering John Ventura said that the housing is completed and most of the equipment has been installed. The next phase involves intricate testing and commissioning exercises through the spring, and the facility should be operational by July, he said.

“We want to be sure it is up and running properly by hurricane season,” Ventura said. “The batteries are in. It’s down to commissioning.”

Ventura said there would be “robust” testing of the BESS this spring that would include “brief overnight outages” lasting a few minutes, and that residents would be warned well ahead of those tests.

The BESS was designed as an alternative to running another line to Provincetown, which would have been equally expensive but more difficult to permit through the Cape Cod National Seashore, said Ventura. The battery is designed to buy time during dangerous storms when it may be unsafe for utility crews to go out and make repairs immediately.

Voters approved the project at town meeting in April 2019 and have been waiting for the backup system ever since.

The facility is the first of its kind for Eversource. Another battery planned on Martha’s Vineyard was canceled last May because of its high cost, so Provincetown’s BESS will be the first and only one of its kind for now.

According to Eversource spokesman Chris McKinnon, the BESS is a series of interconnected batteries along with a microgrid to distribute that stored energy to customers. The BESS is always connected to the grid and relies on it for charging. It stays fully charged when not providing power in an outage.

If the battery power is used up, it is disconnected and the system will recharge overnight once power is restored, McKinnon said.

The 24.9-megawatt lithium-ion battery system is designed to come online if the power fails in Provincetown, Truro, or Wellfleet, according to Eversource officials. It can provide power to all 10,000 customers in those three towns simultaneously, if necessary, they claim. Fully charged, the BESS is supposed to provide 10 hours of backup electric power in the winter and three hours in the summer. The BESS is designed to restore power to customers across the three towns. Customers closer to the battery are told to expect a more immediate restoration.

Provincetown customers will always be the first to switch to battery power, being the outermost host to the BESS, Ventura explained at Monday’s meeting.

If the battery had been up and running last fall, residents of Provincetown would not have lost power during the Oct. 27 nor’easter or the Nov. 12 storm that brought heavy rain and wind to the Cape, the Eversource officials said.

“By design, when the system is in service, the entire town of Provincetown immediately goes on to the battery system,” Ventura said. “You might see a blink or a slight dip in the voltage, but the batteries will immediately carry the town of Provincetown, and Circuit 96 gets disconnected. Customers would have had power restored in less than a minute.”

Ventura said the Jan. 29 blizzard was different from the fall storms in that there were two faults along Circuit 96 and extreme weather prevented an immediate response by Eversource line crews.

“There were whiteout conditions and heavy, sustained winds, snow packing on lines and trees, so crews could not safety go in the air,” Ventura said. “But the battery certainly would have mitigated the outage and put customers in Provincetown back in service much sooner.”

Circuit 96 is the last singular 13-mile electrical circuit on the Cape. It runs from Wellfleet into Provincetown between Routes 6 and 6A, with the bay on one side and Atlantic on the other. It is routinely pummeled by strong winds, rain, snow, and salt water, leading to a much higher incidence of failure.

“There is a lot of force being applied to our pole lines along there,” Ventura said, adding that it is one of “the worst performing circuits in all of southeastern Massachusetts.”

Another component of the BESS project is the restoration scheme. It employs 24 sensors from Provincetown to Wellfleet that feed fault location information to a computer in the BESS facility. Ventura says that the computer then isolates the fault and reconfigures the circuit to as small a pocket of customers as possible while rerouting power outside the fault area, without ever using the battery at all.

“It also isolates the location along Circuit 96, allowing us to identify the fault and respond and make repairs more quickly,” Ventura said.

He said Eversource has been routinely investing in the line, installing corrosion-resistant wires and stronger cross arms on the poles and adding “more robust insulators.”

“The chronic problems we have with that circuit are how we justified building the battery facility,” he said. “Unfortunately, you folks have lived it, we have seen it, and we are confident that once this is up and running, the experience will be much better for the residents of Provincetown and Truro and Wellfleet.”

OCTOBER SURPRISE

High Winds Leave Outer Cape Powerless After Latest Nor’easter

Eversource back-up battery due in early 2021 won’t be ready until next spring

By K.C. Myers Nov 3, 2021

PROVINCETOWN — It sounds ironic, but the island of Nantucket is a good place to ride out a nor’easter like the one that struck on Oct. 27, bringing wind gusts clocked at up to 83 miles per hour on the Outer Cape.

Nantucket gets its electricity via two undersea cables. It’s the redundancy in the system that helps keep things running there. Nantucket Town Manager Elizabeth Gibson said she can count on one hand the number of times in the last 26 years that both cables went out at the same time.

Wind damage meant the end for a 200-year-old Siberian elm at Truro Vineyards. (Photo Nancy Bloom)

Downed trees can still cause localized outages, though another reason the island rarely goes dark for long is that its electricity provider, National Grid, makes tree trimming a priority that far out to sea, Gibson said. On Oct. 27, only five Nantucket homes lost power, according to Mike Dalo, a National Grid spokesman.

On the Outer Cape, meanwhile, thousands of people lost lights, water, and heat when high winds sent tree limbs crashing onto electric lines. Power has since been restored to 480,000 homes statewide, 280,000 of them on the Cape, said Chris McKinnon, a spokesman for Eversource.

In Wellfleet, the wind hit hard, with the strongest gust recorded at 83 m.p.h. at about 2:25 a.m. on Oct. 27, said Torry Gaucher, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. In Truro, he said, a gust of 80 m.p.h. was recorded at 2:23 a.m. In Provincetown, the wind topped out at 63 m.p.h. at 2:29 a.m. By 5 a.m., the worst was over, Gaucher said. Many people awoke in the gray dawn to no coffee.

This is when you appreciate businesses that have generators. In North Truro, it was Day’s Market & Deli. Mylan Janoplis, the owner, said his store has had a generator for years because Beach Point is so exposed. On Oct. 27, he and his staff of four sold 500 cups of coffee.

“That has never happened before,” Janoplis said. “We could not keep up with it.”

In Wellfleet, it was Blackfish Variety on Route 6. Laura Parker opened by herself. And by the time the second employee, Christina Enos, got in at 8:15 a.m., the parking lot was full. Customers were offering to help make coffee. It went on like that all day.

“At one point, we looked at each other and did not know whether to laugh or cry,” Enos said.

Mary Grace Smith, who lives on Taylor Farm Road in Wellfleet, did not just lose power for four days from the afternoon of Tuesday, Oct. 26 until 7 p.m. on Oct. 29., she was also trapped in her house by a tree that collapsed on one side of her street and downed power lines on the other.

“Fortunately, I have a generator,” she said.

In Truro, the wrapper on the scaffolding surrounding the Highland Light was peeled off by the winds, offering passersby a glimpse of the light’s old familiar form.

The wrapper covering repairs at the Highland Light was stripped away by the wind. (Photo Nancy Bloom)

Truro Vineyards lost a 200-year-old Siberian elm to the storm, said owner Kristen Roberts. “It wasn’t the mulberry,” Roberts said. “Everybody keeps asking about it, and somehow that tree did survive.”

The elm had already been trussed due to damage from other storms, and the experts from Bartlett Tree Service who helped care for it advised Roberts that it could not safely be saved. Neighbors watched as the complex operation to take it down ensued. “I’m so sad about it,” Roberts said. She said she is making special plans to repurpose the wood.

In Provincetown, most residents got their power back during the day after the worst of the storm had passed, according to Richard Waldo, the DPW director.

Still, restaurants and shops lost food, the library was completely down, and those co-working at the Commons hit the internet via their cell phones while they waited for power to return to the wi-fi system that connects to the Open Cape network.

Provincetown’s CVS staff had to throw out medications and vaccines that required temperature control, said Matt Blanchett, a company spokesman. Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine requires storage in an ultra-cold freezer. Moderna’s and Johnson & Johnson’s must be refrigerated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

At the Eastham Superette, owner Sarah Wilcox said they had to toss all their frozen and refrigerated foods after losing power for two full days. It filled two dumpsters, she said.

Is there a way for the Outer Cape to become at least as stormproof as Nantucket?

The bear in the big blue chair was worse for wear at Provincetown House of Pizza. (Photo Paul Benson)

Eversource’s $46-million battery backup system is under construction at the Provincetown Transfer Station. Town meeting voters authorized the leasing of the land to Eversource in 2019, and the 24.9-megawatt battery was supposed to be up and running by early 2021, according to Eversource’s website. The pandemic delayed construction, Waldo said. It is now expected to be done by the “first half of 2022,” McKinnon said.

The battery should provide power for up to 10 hours during an outage in Provincetown, Truro, and Wellfleet during the winter, and for up to three hours during peak use in the summer, according to Eversource.

“We are really excited about the energy-storing system,” McKinnon said. “It is a first of its kind in this area, and we really think it will make a difference.”

Burying utility cables underground is often suggested as a possibility. Nantucket buried utility lines under about 25 percent of the downtown area during a massive 20-year project that commenced in 1986, Gibson said.

Moving cables underground is expensive — the industry standard ranges from $2 million to $6 million per mile, McKinnon said.

“You cannot just dig a trench — there is a lot of storing of equipment and materials,” McKinnon said, adding, “You have to build up an entire infrastructure.”

ENVIRONMENT

Eversource to Use Glyphosate on Power Lines

The company will clear rights-of-way with herbicides this summer

By Christine Legere Mar 24, 2021

Wellfleet and Eastham are among a dozen towns on the Cape and Martha’s Vineyard scheduled for herbicide application this year by Eversource along the company’s rights-of-way. Workers will be out there with backpack sprayers from June to mid-October.

On the Outer Cape, the last leg of the main electricity transmission line through Eastham and Wellfleet is targeted. “The right-of-way roughly follows Route 6 up to Wellfleet but much deeper east,” said Bill Hayes, transmission vegetation supervisor for Eversource. It includes some areas in the Cape Cod National Seashore.

Glyphosate, a herbicidal compound historically applied along the power lines, is once again listed for use this year on the Cape. It is the principal ingredient in the weed killer Rodeo. As usual, its planned use here is stirring opposition.

Glyphosate has been the subject of several high-profile lawsuits that claim its use in herbicides causes non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a type of cancer. According to Reuters, more than 100,000 lawsuits have been filed over the herbicide Roundup and other products containing glyphosate.

The World Health Organization concluded in 2015 that glyphosate had a probable link to cancer, and several countries have banned its use.

In addition to glyphosate, other herbicides slated for application here contain fosamine ammonium, metsulfuron-methyl, imazapyr, and triclopyr choline.

Local Concern

In 2017, concern over a plan to use herbicides to control phragmites as part of the Herring River Restoration Project prompted the executive council overseeing the proposal to vote not to use herbicides. That decision still holds, according to Martha Craig, executive director of the Friends of Herring River.

In 2019, both Wellfleet and Eastham adopted policies that prohibit the use of glyphosate on town-owned properties.

But under the state’s Pesticide Control Act, the Mass. Dept. of Agricultural Resources (MDAR) “retains the sole right to regulate the use of pesticides, including herbicides.” The law trumps any town policies or regulations on herbicide use.

The Eastham Select Board planned to send a letter to the state Pesticide Bureau earlier this week, expressing strong opposition to the use of chemical vegetation management. “MDAR, in continuing to support chemical vegetation control measures, shows a lack of concern for the special environment with the sole source aquifer on Cape Cod,” said the board in its letter.

“It is the Town’s position that spraying herbicides is unnecessary and irresponsible, given that there are so many other alternative vegetation management techniques,” said Town Administrator Jacqueline Beebe in an email. “We would be happy to partner with Eversource to assist them with developing and implementing a program of manual removal of invasive/overgrown plants for the health of our community and the preservation of our water supply.”

Once the comment period on this year’s vegetation management plan ends at 5 p.m. on April 9, MDAR will decide whether to approve it. Its approval year after year has frustrated Cape Cod residents. (Comments should be sent to Clayton Edwards, director of the Rights-of-Way Program at Mass. State Pesticide Bureau: [email protected].)

MDAR should be listening to the communities, said Don Keeran, assistant director of the Association to Preserve Cape Cod. “It’s incumbent on MDAR to write some satisfactory legislation that is more responsive to regional concerns,” he said.

The Cape’s sandy soil allows compounds applied on the surface to quickly filter down to the groundwater. Residents, town officials, and state legislators have spent several years attempting to halt herbicide application in the region.

Susan Phelan of the environmental group GreenCAPE said she would like a better “on the ground” picture of where herbicides will be applied. “The Cape is spending so much money to clean up the water, it seems reckless and irresponsible to continue using herbicide when they can do it mechanically,” Phelan said.

Laura Kelley, the founder and president of Protect Our Cape Cod Aquifer, is urging residents to submit comments. “It’s a chance to put in writing that we don’t want this,” Kelley said. “There is power in numbers. It’s the only thing that will change this. If 5,000 people wrote, it would have an impact.”

Kelley has organized teams of volunteers who prune along the right-of-way in order to eliminate the need for weed killers. She has also arranged for goats to chew back vegetation.

Kelley is urging abutters who own land in the rights-of-way but have easements on their deeds for utility work to contact Hayes to say they don’t want herbicides applied. They can offer to cut the brush back themselves, Kelley said.

According to Hayes, Eversource doesn’t want residents taking vegetation control into their own hands. “It’s our company’s responsibility,” he said. Well-meaning volunteers could be damaging valuable natural habitat, he said.

Supt. Brian Carlstrom said the Cape Cod National Seashore “doesn’t have an outright ban, but only uses chemicals as a last resort. We work very closely with Eversource. We do provide feedback to them to have the smallest footprint possible.”

Legislative Efforts

Cape Cod’s legislative delegation has unsuccessfully filed bills during the past two sessions that would give communities more control over herbicide use on rights-of-way. State Rep. Dylan Fernandes of Woods Hole, with Rep. Sarah Peake of Provincetown as co-sponsor, filed a bill that would allow communities, by majority votes of town meetings and with the approval of local boards of health, to adopt ordinances and bylaws stricter than state law that restrict or prohibit the use, application, and disposal of pesticides within their borders.

State Sen. Julian Cyr of Truro and Sen. Susan Moran of Falmouth are working on a similar bill for the Senate.

Cyr has already filed a bill that would wrest some control over pesticide use from MDAR. Under its provisions, the commissioner of the Dept. of Food and Agriculture would have to “consult and concur” with the commissioners of environmental protection and public health regarding the protection of drinking water sources from pesticide contamination.

National Action

There may be some future restriction on where glyphosate can be used from the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which has been required, under a court settlement with the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, to analyze the effects of the federally registered uses of glyphosate on endangered species.

An EPA draft, released in November 2020, concluded that glyphosate may injure or kill 93 percent of the plants and animals protected under the Endangered Species Act. The draft also found that glyphosate could adversely affect 96 percent of critical habitat.

Nathan Donley, a senior scientist for the Center for Biological Diversity, said changing restrictions is a two-step process. The EPA will finalize its evaluation and review comments that have been submitted. The agency will then release a final report.

From there, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service will do an analysis, based on their expertise. “The numbers may come down a bit,” Donley said. “When Fish and Wildlife and Marine Fisheries find a species at risk, they will propose mitigations that could be geographical restrictions or buffers. The process takes about two years.”

Despite a series of lawsuits that ultimately led to a $10 billion settlement last year, the EPA once again approved registered uses of glyphosate in January 2020. “They gave interim approval, subject to additional mitigation,” Donley said. “Basically, it gave the green light with the possibility of reining in.”

BIG BIRDS

It’s a Bird! It’s a Plane! No, It’s Eversource.

By Saskia Maxwell Keller Nov 19, 2020

Eversource1 — Eversource says working via helicopter makes sense in environmentally sensitive places like the Outer Cape. This is the marsh in south Eastham. (Photo Linda Culhane)

Eversource2 — ] It’s a long commute. Don’t forget your tool buckets. (Photo Nancy Bloom)

Eversource3 — At work on the power lines in Wellfleet. (Photo Nancy Bloom)

Eversource4 — On the way down, an Eversource worker passes an osprey’s nest (Photo Nancy Bloom)

“It was so loud I could not hear myself think,” said Elena Ruehr, a composer who splits her time between Brookline and Wellfleet. “I felt like there was a giant mosquito hovering over me.”

Last week, residents of Wellfleet, Eastham, and Orleans had similar complaints. The reason for the noise, it turns out, was Eversource installing optical ground wire, or OPGW, on their transmission structures via helicopter.

It started on Nov. 9, but will, weather permitting, be finished by this weekend, said Eversource spokesperson Priscilla Ress. They carry out the work from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m.

According to Ress, OPGW “protects important equipment from lightning with the added benefit of containing optical fibers to transmit data.” She said OPGW will also reduce the duration of power outages.

“Over the years, Eversource has learned that the fastest and most efficient way to install the transmission wire in areas like Cape Cod is by using a helicopter,” said Ress. This way the work requires less equipment and fewer vehicles on the ground. The company says the approach results in “fewer impacts to residents and environmentally sensitive areas.”

NATURAL SELECTION

Outer Cape Outage Revives Osprey Debate

Audubon and Eversource disagree on how to keep nests off power lines

By Devin Sean Martin Aug 27, 2020

Over 100 years ago, in an agrarian Massachusetts, farmers began training ospreys to nest — not in trees, but on man-made platforms.

The intent was to use the birds of prey on farms to ward off red-tailed hawks, which fed on chickens.

The training was successful, and Cape Cod is dealing with the consequences to this day.

Osprey nest is on a utility pole — This osprey nest is on a utility pole on Howard Court, off Cahoon Hollow Road in Wellfleet. (Photos Ben Achtenberg)

On Thursday, Aug. 13, about 10,000 people from Wellfleet to Provincetown lost power in their homes because of an osprey nest on a power line on Gross Hill Road in Wellfleet. Eversource took down the nest in the process of restoring power.

Osprey nests interfering with power lines are a common occurrence on the Cape, according to Mark Faherty, science coordinator at Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary.

“Either the birds themselves or sticks from the nest can interfere with the wires and cause a fire, or cause outages,” he said.

The recent outage has rekindled strife between wildlife organizations such as Mass Audubon and the state’s largest energy company, Eversource, over how to handle osprey nests on power lines.

Under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, it is illegal for utility companies to remove nests with eggs in them, or with recently hatched chicks that cannot fly. In the case of the Gross Hill Road nest, the chicks had fledged, meaning they had already learned to fly.

That doesn’t mean the birds aren’t still using the nest, however.

“There is this vague period after [ospreys] fledge when they can fly but they haven’t learned how to fish,” said Emily Achtenberg, who has been a volunteer osprey monitor at the Wellfleet sanctuary for 10 years.

“They use the nest, and the parents bring back the fish,” she said. “That’s where they all eat.”

Achtenberg has observed the Gross Hill Road nest for Mass Audubon since before Eversource took it down. She said the family is still flying around the area where the nest was.

Faherty doesn’t see a problem with Eversource taking the nest down at Gross Hill Road, calling it a “no-brainer,” considering that it cut power for 10,000 people.

His issue is with Eversource’s commitment to providing the birds with a safe alternative to nesting on power lines.

Members of Mass Audubon, Wild Care, and Cape Wildlife have met several times with Eversource to discuss a more neutral way to deal with the osprey population, according to Faherty. The wildlife community, he said, wants Eversource to pay for the construction of nest platforms, like the one at Wellfleet Harbor.

Building the platforms is easier said than done, according to Eversource spokesperson Reid Lamberty.

“Every time we try to build an osprey platform, we not only need the permission of the town, but sometimes the property owner, if it is on private property,” he said. “The home owners have told us no.”

Instead, Eversource’s primary strategy for dealing with nests is to install “deterrents” on poles to keep the birds from building. The most common deterrent is a corrugated half-pipe designed to make the nest slip off when the birds try to build.

Osprey enjoys lunch. — An osprey from the Gross Hill Road nest that caused a power outage on Aug. 13 enjoys lunch on a nearby pole.

Every fall, when the ospreys migrate from the northeast, Eversource removes the empty nests and installs the deterrents in their place.

The problem is that deterrents don’t work, according to Faherty.

When ospreys migrate back to the Cape in the spring, they look for their old nest to reuse, he said. Ospreys are often so stubborn about using the same nest that they will rebuild a new one in the same place right on top of the slippery pipe.

“[Eversource] rips the nest down, puts up some deterrents, and hopes the birds will nest in the trees,” Faherty said. “They won’t — they nest on the next pole down. We don’t feel that they have a good system to deal with nests on local power lines.”

Nests built on the deterrents are also more likely to shed loose sticks onto the lines and cause fires or outages, meaning that the strategy creates more problems than it solves, he added.

Lamberty acknowledged the issue, saying, “When we install a deterrent, sometimes they will go back there still and try to build.” But he added that there is no clear alternative.

“We will work to help out as much as we can,” he said. “We do try, because the ospreys are very important.”

Finding a safe alternative for the birds is not something the company can do for every case of a nest on a power line, Lamberty said.

Faherty believes Eversource needs to take more responsibility for the nests.

“They are not Audubon’s birds, they are not God’s birds — they are your birds,” he said.

ENERGY

Wellfleet Solar Array Idled by Past Error

While court corrects title, a delay in turning on the juice

By Sophie Ruehr Mar 5, 2020

Solar array at Wellfleet Transfer Station — The solar array at the Wellfleet Transfer Station will not be connected until the land court acts. (Photo Molly Newman)

WELLFLEET — The array of 2,400 solar panels atop the transfer station’s landfill is ready to start making electricity. But the town is awaiting clearance from the Mass. Land Court before the final connection to the grid can be completed.

Construction of the 1.2-megawatt installation was completed in October 2019, nearly five months ago. The timeline on the energy committee’s website suggests that the array will begin commercial operation in the first quarter of 2020.