Court ruling puts Maine hydropower project in jeopardy

(The Center Square) – A 145 mile hydropower transmission line project through Maine is in jeopardy after a state judge ruled that Gov. Janet Mills’ administration exceeded its authority in granting a lease to the utility companies to develop the corridor on state lands.

On Tuesday, Superior Court Judge Michaela Murphy ruled that the state Bureau of Parks and Lands had no legal authority to sign the 2020 lease with Central Maine Power to build a section of the transmission corridor along 33-acres of state-owned land.

In her ruling, Murphy said there is no evidence that the state agency conducted a thorough review of the project to determine if it will substantially alter state lands, which would require a two-thirds vote by the state Legislature.

“The Court finds no competent evidence to support BPL’s claim that it made the constitutionally-required finding of no “reduction” and/or no “substantial alteration” before it entered into the 2020 lease with CMP,” Murphy wrote in the decision.

Opponents of the hydropower transmission corridor praised the ruling, saying it will send the project back to the Legislature for a vote.

“Now, CMP will have no choice but to negotiate the terms of this public lease in an open and transparent way, as the Maine Constitution and statutes require, before the full Legislature,” Tony Saviello, a member of the opposition group No CMP Corridor, said in a statement.

In July, the state Legislature – in its final vote of the session – passed a largely symbolic resolution stating that the project constituted a “substantial alteration” of public lands and should have been required to a two-thirds vote. The Senate approved the measure on a 28-6 vote. The House voted 66-52 to approve it.

The lease was originally signed by then-Gov. Paul LePage in 2014 and renegotiated by Mills a few years later. The state is getting paid $65,000 a year for leasing the land.

Sen. Rick Bennett, R-Oxford, one of several plaintiffs in the litigation, said the court’s ruling is “confirmation that this project has corrupted the integrity of two separate administrations to the point of willfully violating a 28-year-old constitutional norm.”

“CMP’s corridor project will substantially alter our public lands, requiring public oversight before it can move forward,” said Rep. Margaret O’Neill, D-Saco, another opponent of the project. “It’s time for the Legislature to take a vote, the way we have on all projects before it.”

Ultimately, the dispute over the state lease is expected to be appealed to the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, Murphy noted in her ruling.

“We are reviewing the Superior Court’s decision to determine our next steps on this matter,” Thorn Dickinson, president/CEO of NECEC Transmission, said in a statement.

The New England Clean Energy Connect project calls for providing up to 1,200 megawatts of Canadian hydropower to the region.

Backers of the project say it will create jobs, help green the regional power grid and reduce greenhouse gas emissions that scientists say are contributing to climate change.

Opponents say the project would carve through scenic swathes of forest in the North Maine Woods and lead to a loss of jobs and recreational tourism.

Both sides have waged a costly and bitter public relations war for several years over the details of the project, and whether it will negatively impact the state and its ratepayers.

A referendum set for the November ballot will ask Maine voters if they want to ban “high-impact electric transmission lines in the Upper Kennebec Region” and “require the Legislature to vote on other such projects in Maine retroactive to 2014, with a two-thirds vote required if a project uses public lands?”

A similar referendum was knocked off the ballot last year by the Supreme Judicial Court.

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