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Poll results

Central Maine Power’s controversial $950 million New England Clean Energy Connect transmission project in western Maine received a critical “certificate of public convenience and necessity” last Thursday from the Maine Public Utilities Commission. Additional hurdles remain as it makes its way through regulatory reviews by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection and Land Use Planning Commission and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. But a new wrinkle in the approval process has been introduced in the Legislature, where at least two bills have been introduced adding new requirements on CMP before its proposed 145-mile transmission line could be built. One bill would require CMP to receive approval in public votes from every town in the corridor before its transmission line is built. Another would mandate a study of the project’s greenhouse gas emissions before it can proceed. But Anthony Buxton, an attorney at Preti Flaherty representing the Industrial Energy Consumers Group, which supports CMP’s project, says partisan politics shouldn’t be allowed to override “the considered judgment” of regulatory officials. “If we have a process which allows a party to file for one solution and then have it reversed by the political process, what we have is no regulatory process at all,” he told the Bangor Daily News.

Do you agree that lawmakers should not interfere with regulatory processes already under way for CMP’s project?
Yes (42%, 1053 VOTES)
No (58%, 1432 VOTES)
Poll Description

Central Maine Power’s controversial $950 million New England Clean Energy Connect transmission project in western Maine received a critical “certificate of public convenience and necessity” last Thursday from the Maine Public Utilities Commission. Additional hurdles remain as it makes its way through regulatory reviews by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection and Land Use Planning Commission and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. But a new wrinkle in the approval process has been introduced in the Legislature, where at least two bills have been introduced adding new requirements on CMP before its proposed 145-mile transmission line could be built. One bill would require CMP to receive approval in public votes from every town in the corridor before its transmission line is built. Another would mandate a study of the project’s greenhouse gas emissions before it can proceed. But Anthony Buxton, an attorney at Preti Flaherty representing the Industrial Energy Consumers Group, which supports CMP’s project, says partisan politics shouldn’t be allowed to override “the considered judgment” of regulatory officials. “If we have a process which allows a party to file for one solution and then have it reversed by the political process, what we have is no regulatory process at all,” he told the Bangor Daily News.

  • 2485 Votes
  • 49 Comments
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49 Comments

  • April 18, 2019
    The net gain does not outweigh the cost to the State.
  • April 18, 2019
    This project is not fair to the environment or the people of Maine .
  • April 18, 2019
    Looks as if we have people in Maine who are able to read something badly worded! The people who have to live with the aftermath of this decision should have a voice. Ugly, clear cut corridors from pipelines laid in the 1950’s in the Midwest still haunt the countrysides of those states. The word “regulatory” should have been more precisely qualified in the question.
  • April 17, 2019
    A project of this scale and this damaging to the environment should get the highest degree of scrutiny there is. The PUC staff released this statement when they threw their support behind the NECEC: "With respect to the effects of the project on scenic and recreational values, and the associated impacts on tourism and the economies of communities in proximity to the Project, the Commission finds that these effects are adverse and significant. However..." Adverse and significant. Let's put the screws to an area that's already economically depressed. Spain-owned CMP/Avangrid/Iberdrola doesn't care about Mainers or the environment- they care about the billions they'll make if this monstrosity is approved. #notonecec
  • April 17, 2019
    Who serves whom? Agencies are to serve the people. Not the other way around. The majority of Maine people do not want the CMP corridor. Thank you Maine PUC for selling us out in favor of a foreign corporation.