Landowner outreach – what’s the process?

An illustration of the process project team members are following as they work with landowners.

Direct outreach to property owners along the proposed preferred route of the project continues this week with a letter to landowners in Columbia. Here’s a sample

The Process – Following receipt of the letter, a landowner will be contacted by a member of the project team in order to schedule a meeting to discuss accessing the property in order to collect data.

As you can see from the process illustration chart to the right, data collection, which is necessary as part of the Federal and State permitting processes, is done to fully understand the various characteristics of the property so that the best information is available when planning the specific locations of lines and structures.

A payment of $400.00 is typically made to the landowner in recognition of the inconvenience of the process; an additional $400.00 payment is made if soil borings are necessary.

Granting access to the Northern Pass project team for this data collection in no way diminishes any existing landowner rights.  It simply allows for access to the property for the data collection.