In a recent opinion letter to the editor, Farmington resident Jamie Beaulieu writes that its “easy to lose sight of the big picture” in regards to The CMP Corridor and climate change. What he fails to bring to the table is the entirety of the negative impacts of Hydro Quebec’s mega-dams, the clear cutting of the corridor in Maine or the fact that CMP and Hydro Quebec fought an objective study of their “claims” of greenhouse gas reductions. Trees sequester carbon, and the blue deserts that are the sources of power for Hydro Quebec remove hundreds of thousands of trees from the equation, replacing them with rotting organic debris beneath those blue deserts. This rotting debris gives off methane as it decomposes, and methane is worse than CO2 as a green house gas.
If you do the research, claims of climate solutions by this project are questionable at best. There are multiple sources to research the damaging impacts of HQ’s mega-dams, including the book Blue Deserts by Stephen M. Kasprzak. Dr. Brad Hager, PHD from MIT states “These studies show that there’s an extremely wide range of greenhouse gas emissions from hydro but six of Hydro Quebec’s reservoirs are among the top 25 percent of greenhouse gas emitters of hydro plants worldwide.” Hager says their emissions, which come from decay of submerged trees and disturbed soils, range from that of a natural gas power plant to over twice those of coal power plants.
So do your research, and form your own opinion, but ask yourself: Why did HQ and CMP send 30 lobbyists to Augusta to fight an independent study of the greenhouse gas reduction claims? And why does CMP and Hydro Quebec have to spend millions of dollars in radio, TV and social media propaganda to convince Mainers the CMP corridor is key to climate change?
I am an outdoorsman who cares deeply about the environment. I would be behind this project if it was good for Maine and actually supported GHG reductions. It’s not, it’s all about profits and exploiting Maine by 2 massive foreign corporations. Stay smart and strong Maine, and be prepared to vote YES to stop the corridor this fall.
Darryl Wood
New Sharon
