It‘s dark reading CEO Thorn Dickinson’s gleeful seasons greetings on the eve of CMP wanting to launch its devastating power-line clearing operations in western Maine, from Lake Moxie to Quebec. They will start construction in the Moxie Lake area. However, Segment 1, 54 miles long to the Quebec border, is currently under a month long no-construction court injunction.
If not denied, this project will yield jillions for CMP and their complicit partner HQ, Hydro Quebec, from their providing hydro-power to Massachusetts’s customers, and slashing through Maine’s very special woods and waters in the Upper Kennebec Basin.
In this international corporate power system, Maine is expected to host the CMP_HQ power cord, including a 54-mile long x150 foot wide new cleared corridor for CMP_HQ. This permanent fragmentation will easily and likely expand to 300 feet wide with multiple power lines and towers, after this first one goes in.
Maine stands to gain little from this CMP_HQ project. Maine people and communities are being left to bear most of the social, economic, and environmental costs of the NECEC project. And ‘wee people’ know it. The big boys up on the porch in their privileged palaces are trying to rule the roost with promises of mega-bucks for all. As far as what Mainers may think about any of this, CMP_HQ has ignored and dismissed us, and now they mislabel and dump us in with the fossil fuel crowd.
This is no different than what HQ did to the Cree Nation through HQ’s destructive James Bay Hydro Project, which connects to NECEC and CMP in Maine. HQ ignored the Cree Community, dismissed the value of their sustainable hunting, fishing and community territories, all now buried alive, a former boreal forest and carbon sink region, now under water in a HQ reservoir the size of Massachusetts. Today I say, dam that state, they have rivers.
Having studied James Bay history and read about how HQ conducted itself, I’d have to wonder that CMP must have gotten substantial training and coaching from mighty HQ, on how to push the NECEC project through, regardless of the fact that no “independent environmental analysis and impact study” was conducted for NECEC Project, as was also the case with HQ’s destructive James Bay Project.
The fact that this huge, impactful project was never put to the test of science from an independent assessment and analysis, commissioned and supported by Maine regulatory agencies such PUC, DEP, ACE and others; strikes me as blatant dismissal of public concerns, and raises questions about the failure of regulators to discharge reasoned project review, on behalf of the interests and concerns of Maine people. Yes, CMP shared findings from their consultants reports, paid for by CMP, but my friends, this is not independent review.
The fact that 25 Maine towns and over 60,000 people have signed petitions against the CMP_HQ_NECEC Project is not some minor public hiccup. That calls for legislative review and public referendum are on the table is a clear statement of position, will and opposition. In the case of HQ_CMP_NECEC slashing their way through Maine, the signals from local people, business and communities are clear, corporations will not rule our world, locally and globally.
Happy 2021 Mr. Thorn Dickinson, we hope to see you at the next round…
Roger Merchant
Glenburn, Maine
