Maine
Why we again fought against a CMP power line corridor in western Maine
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Pamela Prodan of Wilton is a lawyer who practiced environmental advocacy and property regulation.
This occurred earlier than. Central Maine Energy and Hydro-Quebec already tried to run an influence line hall via western Maine. In the summertime of 1987, households, mates and neighbors realized about a number of attainable hall options via western Maine to attach Hydro-Quebec to southern New England.
Similar to it has taken this time, it took years again then, to kill the Hydro-Quebec hall. A whole lot of volunteers round western Maine held organizing conferences, circulated and signed petitions, participated in state and federal company proceedings, and protested on the State Home in Augusta. We traveled inside and outdoors Maine, even to Canada, to teach folks. We uncovered and disputed the misrepresentations of CMP and Hydro-Quebec.
CMP and Hydro-Quebec had countless assets whereas we have been simply volunteers who didn’t select this work. We decided we needed to cease that challenge to stop the environmental destruction and the impression on cultural assets from the facility line and hall. We named our group No Thank Q Hydro-Quebec.
After we gained the battle on the Maine Public Utilities Fee, I went to regulation college. Whereas a scholar on the College of Maine Faculty of Legislation, I gained a nationwide power regulation writing competitors for my paper, “The Authorized Framework for Hydro-Quebec Imports.”
I concluded in my paper that “The US and Canadian authorized methods are structured in order to advertise wasteful and environmentally harmful power improvement.” I additionally warned: “Legally, nothing precludes CMP from returning with a brand new Hydro-Quebec proposal for the facility line.”
Right here we’re, 35 years later with the New England Clear Vitality Join transmission line challenge. Maine folks voted final November to say we’re going to place a cease to this. By interesting the outcomes of the direct poll initiative, which is now earlier than Maine’s highest courtroom, NECEC Transmission and Avangrid Networks, each affiliated with CMP, have proven they don’t intend to surrender.
For therefore many people right here in western Maine, the land has extra wealth than something you might compensate for. It’s our tradition and future well-being. No quantity of compensation or mitigation is sufficient to justify the destruction that might be brought on by this energy line hall.
Any “sweetening of the deal” is simply cash. It doesn’t and won’t ever compensate for the horrible factor that’s proposed. Mitigation, similar to making the developer purchase conservation lands, doesn’t cease the environmental destruction of the hall.
Maine folks noticed they couldn’t depend on Maine elected officers and authorities companies to hold out Maine’s public insurance policies in such a means as to cease this environmentally harmful energy line hall. Maine folks determined to take duty for these public insurance policies themselves and voted for the initiative to be able to put some guardrails on this newest notion of a CMP-Hydro-Quebec energy line hall.
Beneath Maine’s Structure, there isn’t a increased expression of public coverage than the direct poll initiative. Within the final 50 years, many points have gone to the voters, when folks needed to amend Maine regulation as a result of they thought that state authorities was not being responsive. With out the direct poll initiative, we’d not have various legal guidelines meant to guard Maine’s atmosphere and its folks.
Previous poll initiatives have created the Bigelow Protect, deauthorized the widening of the Maine Turnpike, required voter approval of low-level radioactive waste disposal, and upheld Maine’s returnable bottle regulation. Every of those votes focused a selected improvement challenge or difficulty, and most, if not all, had retroactive impact meant to guard Maine’s atmosphere and its folks.
Will Maine’s highest courtroom overturn the need of a whole lot of hundreds of Maine individuals who voted this previous November to appropriate the general public coverage that they realized wouldn’t forestall this environmentally harmful power improvement? The folks of Maine have spoken.