[NEWS] New Hampshire Loggers Say Biomass Subsidy Veto Hitting Them Hard
– by John Lippman, June 30, 2018, Valley News
Photo: New Hampshire Business Review
Eric Cole was at home on Poverty Lane making dinner earlier this month when his phone rang. One of his customers was calling with bad news: A new $390,000 logging skidder that Cole, a heavy equipment salesman, had just delivered would have to be returned.
The customer, an Upper Valley logger whom Cole declined to identify, explained that Gov. Chris Sununu’s veto the day before of a bill that would have required utilities to purchase a portion of their electricity from the state’s wood-burning power plants had dealt a blow to his business. He would no longer be able to afford the $5,000 monthly payments for the piece of machinery that grabs logs, hauls them out of the woods and loads them onto trucks.
Cole, who works for New England heavy equipment distributor Milton Cat, dispatched a crew at 7 a.m. the following Monday to retrieve the skidder. It is now back on the sales lot in Londonderry, N.H.
