Maine’s highest court upholds lease for CMP corridor on state land

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Maine’s highest courtroom has sided with the state and Central Maine Energy over a lease wanted to assemble a controversial transmission line by means of western Maine.

In a ruling Tuesday morning, Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court docket stated that the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands “acted inside its constitutional and statutory authority” when granting CMP a lease by means of state-owned lands in 2020. The lease accounts for just one mile of the proposed 145-mile-long transmission line that may permit Hydro-Quebec to attach into New England’s electrical energy grid.

Hall opponents had argued that the bureau had didn’t comply with the right process to find out whether or not the lease would “considerably alter” the general public reserved lands in western Maine. A decrease courtroom agreed final 12 months, elevating questions on whether or not CMP and its companions on the New England Clear Vitality Join mission had entry to the complete size of the hall.

The Regulation Court docket disagreed, nonetheless, and stated the bureau adopted the required procedures. Moreover, the courtroom identified that the Johnson Mountain and West Forks Plantation public reserved lands are already managed for a number of makes use of, together with timber harvesting, outside recreation and an current transmission line.

“Given the makes use of, bodily traits, and important functions of the Johnson Mountain and West Forks Plantation tracts, we see no cheap foundation for deciding {that a} second utility transmission line occupying 2.6% of the mixed tracts might considerably alter the bodily traits of a lot of the remaining 97.4% that the multiple-use functions for which the tracts are held can be pissed off,” the courtroom dominated.

Additional complicating issues, Maine voters accepted a referendum in November 2021 that may have retroactively required two-thirds approval from each chambers of the Legislature for the lease by means of the Johnson Mountain and West Forks Plantation public reserved lands.

However the excessive courtroom dominated earlier this 12 months that the referendum was doubtless unconstitutional and ordered a decrease courtroom to extra totally discover the query of whether or not the builders had achieved “vested rights” by means of the work finished on the hall previous to the referendum. Tuesday’s ruling is one other victory for CMP and its companions to construct a mission that’s key to Massachusetts’ plan to buy extra renewable power as a part of the state’s local weather motion plan.