N.E. Clean Power Connect in Maine - Should we care ?

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This story has more plot twists than a good crime novel.

Maine-Quebec power corridor in jeopardy after judge vacates public land lease
The decision may imperil the planned New England Clean Energy Connect corridor, intended to bring hydroelectric power from Quebec to Lewiston.

A state judge has vacated a lease of public land to Central Maine Power parent company Avangrid for part of its planned 145-mile electric corridor through western Maine, likely putting the entire project in peril.

Superior Court Justice Michaela Murphy said in her ruling Tuesday that state public land officials failed to make a required finding that the lease would result in no reduction or substantial alteration to the public lands being leased and, therefore, the agreement was not valid. https://www.pressherald.com/2021/08/10/maine-quebec-power-corridor-in-jeopardy-after-judge-vacates-public-land-lease/
 
The history for this could arguably go back to Governors Baxter's fairly convoluted method used to transfer BSP to the state by forcing multiple legislative sessions to reaffirm that the land was accepted with perpetual restrictions. He was a politician and realized that politicians could not be trusted to do the right thing. Maine and NH both have a sad history of taking large blocks of public land and selling it at low cost to well connected private businesses. Maine sold off almost all its public lands at one point and if not for a quirk in the township rules and a long lawsuit much of the state owned land would still be private. This came back to head where there was public demand to preserve Bigelow Mountain from a planned ski resort but well connected developers working with state officials ignored voter sentiment. The result was a citizens referendum that forced the state to create the Bigelow reserve and fund the purchase of the lands. After the Bigelow project, Land for Maine's future funding rounds have had high voter support. Just as importantly they forced the legislature to create the Bureau of Public lands that attempted to isolate the lands from short term political manipulation. This was most recently tested in court during the LePage administration where the Governor tried to force the BPL to substantially exceed sustainable harvest levels on public lands to increase short term revenue. Le Page also refused to spend voter approved funding for public land during his administration.

The current governor's support for CPC has been suspicious. She is from Western Maine (Farmington area) which has been in a long term economic slump due to the collapse of the wood products industry. That area is going to be major benefactor of the short term economic boost from the construction. Central Maine Power has been a long term political supporter in Maine and quite generous with political support. Many of the claimed environmental benefits of the project would not hold up under proper carbon accounting (its effectively rebranding fossil power as "clean hydro") and my guess is the governor would rather get some minimal long term benefits and some big short term benefits before the entire project goes down the drain.

If its up to the legislature, there has already been one citizens referendum to shut down the project (blocked by the state supreme court)and another block of three linked ballot initiatives scheduled for this November. Its likely this initiative will pass effectively shutting the project down and no doubt the results will be in court for a few years.
 
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And people wonder why these projects are so expensive and take so long...
 
There is an already permitted project in VT with support from the population with far more return to the state in the long term. It has been in place for several years ready to go in VT. HQ shopped the project to get power to Mass around to whatever entity would build it the cheapest. The VT project under Lake Champlain and along existing roads and right of ways was not the cheapest. Eversource initially won out with NP by claiming to do it for a lower cost and we all know the result of cutting corners. CMP did a postmortem of NP and tried to come up with another cheap project. Unlike NP, they thought they had locked in the right of way(apparently someone assumed they could pull off the lease on the state owned land), they got Conservation Law Foundation (a predominantly Mass funded Non Profit) tp support (CLF opposed NP) and they bought off several prominent environmental leaders in the state to support the project (or at least not oppose it) which delayed the organization of the opposition.

Large projects like this can be done quickly, PNGTS did it 20 years ago through Northern NH and SW Maine. It can be done but trying to cut corners and using political influence to take shortcuts can lead to delays and over runs like this. The VT line would have been up and running by now although it would still be power from a very questionable source.
 
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Name this project: A highway (road) almost 1400 miles long thru pristine wilderness completed in 6 months. The paperwork for this project alone would probably take 10 times as long, and...the project would probably never be green lighted.
 
Assuming you are referring to the Al Can highway, I think it took 8 Months ;). Pretty simple when a war allows complete disregard for environmental degradation. Plus no problem with landowners and pesky natives and basically infinite resources thrown at it. Arguably the road took far longer to build as it has been under reconstruction since it was originally built.

Currently the Chinese and Brazilian governments are funding far more epic road building projects for resource exploitation.
 
So the latest comes down to a one mile stretch over state land. https://bangordailynews.com/2021/10...ive-delays-if-maine-pulls-corridor-approvals/ The subject of direction drilling under the Kennebec river gorge came up early in the project. CPC had stated that it was impossible to drill under the gorge but when it was obvious that running overhead lines over the gorge might torpedo the project they switched to underground drilling under the gorge which I think reduced the capacity of the line. Now drilling is coming up again to deal with this inconvenient strip fo Maine Public Reserve land.
Despite being over the state line I do get a lot of the targeted ads for the project when streaming regional Maine news. There must be 10 to 20 variations of the vote no ads, each one obviously crafted to misinform a different portion of the voters. There are probably 3 variations of the vote yes ads admittedly with some bias towards different voters.
 
It’s amazing to me that anyone would listen to a political ad. They are always over the top misleading. You have to do your own homework and make an informed decision, which unfortunately few people do (in defense, because it’s time consuming). It’s a shame there isn’t much in the way of a decent media outlet that would fairly present both sides of the issue and present a simple balance sheet that you could look at and decide what matters most to you.
 
Its the Big Lie Concept, repeat a falsehood multiple times and its enough to sway the undecided. Its a complex issue as are many future decisions required to decarbonize the grid. IMHO its too complex for a typical voter to understand and ultimately they will fall back on trusting people who claim to understand the issues when they cast their vote. It a perfect place for marketing to sway votes and recent news is this is the most expensive referendum campaign ever held in Maine. Many hot buttons are being pushed with the campaigns.

BTW there is another large power line proposed to connect Northern Maine to the ISO New England grid which is in the background. There are several major proposed wind farms that are currently on the Northern Maine grid (actually the New Brunswick grid) that are stalled until that line is installed to give them access to the ISO New England grid.
 
peakbagger said:
Its the Big Lie Concept, repeat a falsehood multiple times and its enough to sway the undecided. Its a complex issue as are many future decisions required to decarbonize the grid. IMHO its too complex for a typical voter to understand and ultimately they will fall back on trusting people who claim to understand the issues when they cast their vote. It a perfect place for marketing to sway votes and recent news is this is the most expensive referendum campaign ever held in Maine. Many hot buttons are being pushed with the campaigns.

BTW there is another large power line proposed to connect Northern Maine to the ISO New England grid which is in the background. There are several major proposed wind farms that are currently on the Northern Maine grid (actually the New Brunswick grid) that are stalled until that line is installed to give them access to the ISO New England grid.
Click to expand...

And sadly most people think only one side does it.
 
Everybody does it. Look only at outcomes. How is your home heating cost? How is the sea level?
 
Its interesting to see how the PR morphed over the weeks. As issues come up Hydro Quebec has created new ads trying to counter them.

Its been a default Anti CMP referendum for quite awhile.

Of late, the No side hired a "grandma" that barely mentions the actual corridor and somehow tries to link the project with heating costs. There is a tenuous link to heating as one of the few benefits to Mainers is future financing of some air source heat pumps. The amount of money spent so far on advertising far exceeds the amount the project was going to subsidize.

There are quite a few ads linking the opposition to "out of state oil and gas" and implying its referendum against oil and gas. The yes side is heavily funded by companies that own two fairly efficient natural gas plants in Maine , plus the nuclear power station in Seabrook NH and the mostly backup 800 MW oil fired power plant at Cousins Island in Yarmouth. They are not oil and gas firms as such but use oil and gas to generate power. Cousins Island will still be needed for peaking supply and backup for the indefinite future. The gas plants will have a tougher time of it. Seabrook is carbon neutral (per current standards) so its not impacted.

Retroactivity by the legislature is also an issue that is hyped up to get conservative voters to vote no. CMP recently reportedly targeted conservatives with mailers linking a yes vote to new anti gun laws.

There has been a deliberate blending of environmental benefits to Maine versus "New England" by the No side. The power on the corridor is strictly for Mass, it does not change. Since HQ will not certify that the power will come from strictly hydroelectric sources, its questionable about the overall impact to global warming as HQ has a problematical gas fired power plant in Three Rivers Quebec that they have been having to pay not to run that could just as well be dispatched to displace existing hydro power used in Quebec that is sent down the corridor.

Not many name brand headliners for either side, the yes groups tend to identify their supporters while the no ads have mix of unnamed individuals, some firms that are directly benefiting from the construction and a clothing manufacturer whose connection to the project is unknown.

The vote yes groups have pretty well stuck to the impact the environment but on occasion counter the PR by the against group.

The latest polls look like its going against the corridor https://bangordailynews.com/2021/10...e-big-edge-on-cmp-going-into-question-1-vote/ . No doubt the lawsuits will continue. The big downside to CMP is if they fight it, it makes them look like bully and in the background is an attempt for the state to create a public power company to take over power generation in the state.
 
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Looks like the Maine voters voted for a second time to stop the corridor project in western Maine by a big margin (currently 59% against the powerline 39% for) . Considering it was an off season election (no president, senators or reps on the ballot) it meant that the people going to the polls tended to be more committed voters. Now the new legal maneuvering starts. Even in Lewiston Maine, a city that was going to get a big property tax boost, reportedly voted to shut down the project. (it will be interesting to see the numbers). CPC will argue that they already have sunk a lot of money into the construction of a large portion of the line while the anti CPC will argue that the construction that has already occurred was at risk as the Maine voters had given a clear indication that the project should not proceed during the first referendum. Both sides have deep enough pockets to keep the lawsuits funded.

The governor of Mass had bet on the prior Northern Pass project and subsequently this CPC project (along with offshore wind) to meet an aggressive climate goal. Offshore wind is multiple years out currently while Hydro Quebec "clean branded power" should have been on line already. So does Mass stick with CPC to get them that "clean Canadian hydro power" or do they switch to the already permitted proposed Vermont transmission project on the bottom of Lake Champlain or another project that had been floated to add a second HVDC line next to the current line that runs roughly down the NH/VT state line? Both of those proposed projects were potentially less lucrative for Hydro Quebec and the sponsoring non regulated side of the public utilities. Had the more expensive permitted VT project replaced Northern Pass instead of the claimed less expensive CPC, it would be on line. So assuming the CPC project does not get an emergency stay to allow them to keep building the line, how long does Mass stay committed to CPC?

Unlike the yet to be distributed large block of lands in Northern NH purchased by Eversource and the Forest Society in anticipation of the failed Northern Pass project, I am unsure if CPC had actually purchased the long strip of land versus buying just a right of way?. The 33 miles of right of way already cut in Maine will start growing back once the legal maneuvers are exhausted, but intensive industrial forestry will remain on either side of the strip. There were several proposed large wind projects in Western Maine along the border west of the Kibby Wind project (a very large one was proposed on and near the "six pack" of NE 100 highest) that were dependent on new transmission line though the same region so I expect they will remain unbuilt.
 
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CMP is a universally hated utility throughout ME including my town, except for the local company that sells and installs whole house generators. They love CMP:rolleyes:

The real news from the election (at least in my town) concerns roosters...

rooster noise.png

It went down to defeat
 
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Is “rooster” code for our politicians at all levels of govt? Would have been a good law for that!

Not surprised by the CMP defeat at all.
 
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