Bow, NH Property Taxes: Why the Rate Advantage Is Uncertain

For most of the last fifty years, if you owned a home in Bow, New Hampshire, part of your tax bill was quietly being paid by a coal plant. Not paid for you exactly, but subsidized by it. Merrimack Station, sitting on 343 acres along the Merrimack River, was for decades one of the largest commercial taxpayers in a town that otherwise looks a lot like its neighbors: modest downtown, mostly residential, funded almost entirely by property taxes because New Hampshire has no income or sales tax to lean on.

That plant shut down for good in September 2025. The arrangement that let Bow post a lower tax rate than Concord or Pembroke for years didn't disappear with it, not yet, but the reason behind that arrangement did. What's left is a town whose numbers still look favorable on paper and whose underlying support structure is genuinely up in the air. If you're comparing Bow to the towns around it while house hunting, that distinction matters more than the headline rate.

The Rate Nobody Explains

Here's what a buyer sees if they line up the current numbers side by side:

Bow still comes in lower than both neighbors. On a median-priced home, that gap is the difference between a comfortable monthly number and one that makes you flinch. But a rate that's lower today isn't the same as a rate that's structurally lower. Concord and Pembroke's numbers come from a broad residential and commercial base spread across thousands of parcels. Bow's number, for most of its history, leaned on one very large, very unusual taxpayer.

One Taxpayer, Three Decades

Merrimack Station opened in 1968. According to the Concord Monitor, the plant once anchored Bow's finances, generating roughly 70 percent of the town's property tax revenue while it was owned by Eversource's subsidiary, Public Service of New Hampshire. That's not a typo. A single industrial site was covering most of what it costs to run a town of a few thousand households: the school budget, the roads, the fire department, all of it riding on one power plant's assessed value.

That kind of concentration works fine as long as the value of the thing being taxed holds steady. It stops working the moment someone with standing decides to argue about that value in court.

The Lawsuit That Shrank the Cushion

Eversource did exactly that. As energy markets deregulated through the 2010s, the company challenged how the state was valuing the plant for tax purposes, and the fight ended up in front of a superior court judge. The ruling went mostly in Eversource's favor, and New Hampshire's Supreme Court later ordered Bow's taxpayers to reimburse Eversource roughly $10 million over the disputed valuation, according to reporting compiled by the No Coal, No Gas campaign. By the time of that ruling, Merrimack Station's share of Bow's total taxable property had already fallen to about 13.6 percent, a fraction of what it had been decades earlier, and the decision threatened to cut the town's tax base by as much as 8 percent more.

That's the part of the story a median price doesn't tell you. Bow's low rate wasn't a settled fact about the town. It was the tail end of an arrangement that had already been shrinking for years, propped up by a plant that increasingly ran only when the regional grid needed extra power on the hottest summer days or the coldest winter nights, and that eventually stopped running altogether.

What Closing the Plant Actually Changed

Merrimack Station shut down for good in September 2025, ending its run as the last operating coal plant in New England. The commercial taxpayer that once anchored Bow's finances is now worth nothing to the town's tax base.

The effects are already showing up in budget season. Town documents from this past winter had the select board initially projecting the municipal portion of Bow's tax rate climbing from $4.62 to somewhere between $4.83 and $4.91 per $1,000, driven by ordinary line items like paving, health insurance costs, and a new fire department position, not by the plant closure directly. By January 2026, after budget committee trims, the town's proposed municipal rate had settled to something close to flat, a small reduction rather than an increase. Holding the line took real effort. A town that once had a single taxpayer doing outsized work now has to find every dollar the harder way, across thousands of ordinary residential and commercial parcels, the same way Concord and Pembroke always have.

Kevin and Anne McManus have lived in Bow for more than 30 years, and Anne told NHPR plainly where they stand on trading the plant's old benefits for whatever comes next: "we're not willing to trade lower taxes for this at all."

The 343 Acres Everyone's Watching

The obvious question for a town that just lost its biggest commercial taxpayer is what replaces it. As of this September, the answer is unresolved, and the site everyone is watching is the old plant footprint itself.

Granite Shore Power, the company that now owns the shuttered station, filed a request with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in April 2026 to begin discussions with Eversource about connecting a 350-megawatt project to the regional grid. No location or project type was named in the filing, but the former plant site checks nearly every box a hyperscale data center developer looks for: an existing grid connection, river access for cooling, and enough open acreage to build at scale.

No formal application has been submitted to the town. Bow's select board chair, Kip McDaniel, told residents at a September 23 meeting that the town hasn't received an application or any direct communication from Granite Shore Power about the idea, and clarified that if one does arrive, it goes to the planning board rather than the select board. Residents turned out in large numbers to that meeting to speak against the idea, organized in part by 350NH, the climate group that had spent years pushing for the coal plant's closure. Leslie Ring, who held a "Bow Says No" sign outside the meeting, told New Hampshire Public Radio she's "pretty sure it will reduce property values and not improve the quality of our lives." Other residents, including one who said he's keeping an open mind about the tax relief potential, aren't ready to rule it out before seeing a real proposal. Eleana Colby, a select board member and state representative, has called publicly for New Hampshire to pause data center development statewide until towns have clearer tools to evaluate projects like this one, since no state framework for local data center ordinances currently exists.

None of that resolves the underlying question. Whether Bow ends up with a large new commercial taxpayer, a smaller one, or nothing at all on those 343 acres is a decision that hasn't been made and could take months even if a formal application shows up tomorrow.

What This Means If You're Comparing Bow to Its Neighbors

If you're weighing Bow against Concord or Pembroke on a five to ten year horizon, the honest read is this: the rate gap you see today is real, but it's inherited, not guaranteed. Concord and Pembroke's rates reflect a broad, diversified base that isn't waiting on a single land-use decision to know what it looks like in five years. Bow's rate reflects a town in the middle of replacing the arrangement that shaped its finances for two generations, with the outcome still open.

That's not a reason to rule Bow out. A town that managed to hold its municipal rate close to flat during the first full budget cycle after losing its largest taxpayer is a town paying close attention to its numbers. But it is a reason to ask different questions than you would in a town where the tax picture has been stable and predictable for decades. Ask what's on the warrant at the next town meeting. Ask whether the planning board has received any applications for the former plant site. Look at your monthly total, mortgage plus taxes, rather than just the headline rate, since a rate that shifts even modestly over a few years changes that math more than most buyers expect.

A Few Questions Worth Asking Before You Compare

Is Bow's tax rate guaranteed to stay lower than Concord's or Pembroke's? No. The current gap reflects where each town's tax base stands today, not a fixed relationship. Bow's rate has moved noticeably in the past year as it adjusts to losing its largest commercial taxpayer, while Concord and Pembroke's rates reflect a more established, diversified base.

Has a data center actually been approved for the old plant site? Not as of this September. Granite Shore Power has filed only a grid interconnection request with federal regulators. No project application has gone to Bow's planning board, and town officials have said publicly that no formal proposal has been submitted.

Does any of this affect what a home in Bow is worth today? Not directly and not yet. Assessed values and market values are separate from the ongoing tax base question, and the plant closure and data center discussion are still working through the town's budget and planning process rather than showing up as concrete changes to individual property values.

Every New Hampshire town runs on its own math, and Bow's math is worth understanding before you compare it to anywhere else in the region. If you're weighing Bow against neighboring towns and want help reading the numbers behind the headline rate, Holistic Homes Group is glad to walk through it with you.

This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.