9/11 light tribute planned atop Mount Washington as N.H. weighs environmental impacts
To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a nonprofit group is preparing to illuminate New Hampshire’s night sky with two vertical beams of light shining from the top of Mount Washington.
The temporary installation, modeled after New York City’s iconic annual Tribute in Light near where the Twin Towers once stood, is called the Honor Summit. It’s dedicated to the thousands who lost their lives, as well as to first responders, military veterans, and communities in need.
The columns of light could stretch for miles above New England’s tallest peak and be visible from 135 miles away, depending on weather conditions, organizers said.
Renee Plummer, a businesswoman and nonprofit founder based in Portsmouth, N.H., announced the project last week, saying the goal is to create a unifying experience.
“For many of us, the memory is immediate and deeply personal,” she said in a statement. “For others, especially kids, it is something learned — not lived.”
The technical details for this event, which is six weeks away, haven’t been finalized. State officials had yet to approve the group’s permit application, as of Thursday afternoon, and organizers were still grappling with the potential environmental impacts of their plan.
Andrew Farnsworth, a bird migration researcher with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, said artificial lighting can attract and disorient some birds that migrate at night. To minimize that risk, it’s best to use lower-intensity lighting that’s redder in hue, shielded, and pointed directly at the place in need of illumination, which is pretty much “the polar opposite” of pointing stark pillars of blue or white light straight into the sky, he said.
For years, Farnsworth and fellow researchers have observed how New York’s Tribute in Light impacts migrating birds, which can be drawn to the bright beams and left confused in an urban environment rife with hazards. The researchers have worked with organizers on a protocol to mitigate risks: Whenever more than 1,000 birds are seen circling the beams, the lights are shut off for about 20 minutes.
Farnsworth said the temporary shutdown protocol, first triggered during a major migration event in 2010, proved effective. Researchers documented how the birds quickly dispersed and returned to their more typical migration patterns once the lights were turned off at several points throughout the night, he said.
There are obvious differences between lower Manhattan and the summit of Mount Washington, in terms of overall light pollution and the built environment. But those differences don’t necessarily preclude the possibility of a major mortality event for the birds in New Hampshire, Farnsworth said, especially since Sept. 11 has historically coincided with the state’s peak nocturnal bird migration traffic.
Farnsworth said smaller songbirds — including warblers, sparrows, and buntings — are among the avian species that seem to be most susceptible to the attraction and disorientation effects of artificial lighting.
As a New Yorker who remembers 9/11 and its aftermath, Farnsworth said he recognizes the importance of unifying events like the Honor Summit.
“I think it should happen,” he said. “But if it’s going to happen, it had better have the protocols to shut it down if there are problems.”
When asked about that recommendation, Honor Summit organizers said on Wednesday they intend to create a shutdown protocol modeled after the approach that has been used at New York’s Tribute in Light.
The application for a special use permit to install the lights at Mount Washington State Park — which Honor Summit organizers submitted to the state on July 24, after the Globe requested information about the state’s approvals for their event — didn’t mention an environmental impact mitigation plan.
Chris Malloy, whose events company has been hired to handle planning and logistics for the Honor Summit, said on Wednesday in a statement via a spokesperson that his team has been in talks with State Parks staff for months. The team is addressing the environmental plan based on guidance from the state, and the team remains comfortable with the timeline, he said.
“The application is part of the formal process of approval, but was not the first time they were made aware of this project,” he said.
A spokesperson for the New Hampshire Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, which oversees the State Parks, said on Monday that some other state agencies, including the Department of Environmental Services and the Fish and Game Department, have been invited to weigh in on the Honor Summit application. That review process hadn’t concluded, as of Thursday afternoon, according to a spokesperson for the Fish and Game Department.
According to the application, organizers plan to illuminate the lights from 8 p.m. to 12 a.m. every night, from Sept. 9 through Sept. 12.
While some details are still in flux, organizers have mustered significant support for their undertaking. A spokesperson for Eversource said the utility company has committed to donate $25,000 and has tasked an electric operations team to work with a vendor to secure and operate the generators and cabling that will be needed to turn the lights on each night.
Plummer’s nonprofit, the Granite Springs Foundation, is behind the Honor Summit, which has attracted nearly $150,000 in sponsorships so far. The event’s website suggests organizers are aiming to raise at least $300,000 more.
Any funds collected beyond what is needed to cover the cost of the installation itself will be donated, organizers said, to four veterans service organizations: Harbor Care, Operation Delta Dog, Hidden Battles Foundation, and Camp Resilience.
The victims who died on Sept. 11, 2001, included dozens of people with New Hampshire ties, including a doctor, a professor, recent college graduates, business leaders, professional hockey scouts, new grandparents, a flight attendant who relayed information about the hijackers, and co-pilots whose plane was taken over and crashed into the World Trade Center.
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