There are a little over 3,300 electrical utility companies in the United States. Last year a nationwide
survey of business customers found our own Central Maine Power dead last in its ratings for reliability
and business confidence. Even Pacific Gas and Electric, flirting with bankruptcy and blamed for California’s devastating wildfires, performed better than CMP in a survey of business leaders.
Unfortunately for us it is a status rightly earned. Their dishonesty around billing problems and their dismal reputation for poor service are common knowledge. Central Maine Power has been fined twice, at a net cost of 800,000 for violating transmission and reliability standards. And in their ongoing campaign to push through the CMP corridor they have been caught out in lie after lie. Lets look at these.
The most recent deception is their flagrant violation of its permit by cutting twice the right of way
agreed upon with the state. CMP had advertised and promised a right of way of 54 feet with a graded
buffer on either side of their clearing. In truth there have been no buffers and the swathe width in the
fragile, first 54 miles averages over one hundred feet.
This is only the latest falsehood about this project. Despite their advertising claims we already know,
and they have admitted in testimony, that this will not save greenhouse gas emissions or blunt climate
change. In like manner the promised, great boon to the Maine economy seems destined to be the
opposite. The number of permanent jobs created will be meager and yet the hits to Maine’s renewable
energy and tourist industries will be substantial.
Either this company takes us for fools, or they don’t care that their lies are found out. The only truth that persists is that this will be a big money maker for them and HydroQuebec. Twenty-five towns have
rejected this project as well as our own county commissioners. I hope you will join me in voting yes next November to shut this project down for good.
Steve Bien
Jay
