A tale of two court cases:
2014: The Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands issues a lease allowing CMP to cross two public lots in the upper Kennebec Valley. This is for a transmission line unrelated to the corridor project but will become important later. The right-of-way was granted 58 years ago by the State Forest Commissioner.
2016: Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker signs a law requiring his state to seek long-term contracts for offshore wind farms and land-based renewable energy. The law calls for 9.45 terawatt hours of "clean energy generation," which could be a combination of solar or wind with a hydropower backup (because solar and wind generate power intermittently, they must be supported for grid purposes by energy storage or a more consistent generating plant).
The law means that Massachusetts will likely have to acquire around 1,200 megawatts of hydropower or between 1,700 to 3,000 megawatts of onshore wind and hydropower. Hydropower has a higher capacity factor - how much energy a facility actually generates compared to what it could theoretically provide - than wind or solar, which is why fewer megawatts of hydropower would be necessary to meet the demand, and why it's an attractive option for Massachusetts' officials.
2017: CMP announces plans to build the transmission line and begins applying for permits, including from the Department of Energy, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Maine Public Utilities Commission, the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, and the City of Lewiston, where the new line would connect to the existing network.
As part of the project, CMP also plans to build a $200 million station in Lewiston to convert direct current (which travels more efficiently over transmission lines) from Canada to alternating current (what we use in our homes and businesses). The company plans to start construction in 2019 and be finished by 2022. The $1 billion proposal, called New England Clean Energy Connect, would be paid for by Massachusetts' ratepayers and provide up to 1,200 megawatts of energy.
The project calls for 145 miles of new transmission lines, most of which (92 miles) would be strung along existing poles. The rest (53 miles) would be new corridor. The company's right-of-way would extend for a width of 300 feet beneath the lines, 150 feet of which would be cleared of vegetation to install 850 new poles.
2018: CMP wins the bid to build the project after a plan in New Hampshire falls through.
2019: The Maine Public Utilities Commission grants a key permit for the project called a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity. This permit is required to build almost any transmission line in Maine, and means the Commission has determined that ratepayers will benefit from a proposal.
2020:
May 11: The Maine Department of Environmental Protection approves the project.
June 10: The Natural Resources Council of Maine appeals the Department of Environmental Protection's approval, arguing that "there will be significant adverse environmental effects if CMP begins construction."
June 23: The Bureau of Parks and Lands amends and restates that lease agreement we talked about earlier. The renegotiated lease increases payments from less than $5,000 up to $65,000.
June 26: Sen. Russell Black (R-Franklin) and a number of other plaintiffs, including the Natural Resources Council of Maine and Rep. Seth Berry (D-Bowdoinham), sue CMP and the Bureau of Public Lands over the lease agreement. The plaintiffs argue that the project represents a "substantial alteration" to the lease area, which would require a two-thirds approval by the state legislature.
October 27: Three environmental groups, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Council of Maine and the Appalachian Mountain Club, file a lawsuit against the Army Corps of Engineers. The lawsuit challenges the Corps' finding of "no significant impact" in its Environmental Assessment and argues that by conducting an Environmental Assessment, rather than an Environmental Impact Statement, the agency "failed to take the required 'hard look' at the CMP Project’s adverse environmental impacts" and failed to comply with the regulations of the National Environmental Policy Act.
November 4: CMP receives a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers.
2021:
January 15: The project receives a permit from the Department of Energy, allowing it to begin construction.
August 10: Remember that lease agreement? A judge at the Kennebec County Superior Court reverses the decision of the Director of the Bureau of Parks and Lands’ to enter into it, finding that the Director had "exceeded his authority."
August 12: The Maine Department of Environmental Protection initiates proceedings to suspend the approval of the permit it issued because the agency says that the company "will not have a lease to construct the approximately 0.9 mile portion of the transmission line approved in this location," which is "necessary to the overall project purpose of delivering electricity from Quebec to the New England grid."
August 13: Central Maine Power, NECEC Transmission, LLC, and the Bureau appeal the court's decision in the lease agreement case.
November 2: After the most expensive referendum campaign in state history, with $100 million spent on both sides, voters approve a ballot initiative retroactively banning the construction of "high-impact" electric transmission lines in the Upper Kennebec Region, including the NECEC, going back to 2014. The referendum also requires a two-thirds vote of each state legislative chamber to approve high-impact electric transmission line projects using public land retroactively to 2020.
November 3: CMP's parent company, Avangrid, files a motion asking the Maine Business and Consumer Court to block enactment of the ballot initiative.
November 23: The Maine Department of Environmental Protection suspends the permit it issued for the project "as a result of the approval of the Referendum."
December 16: A judge at the Maine Business and Consumer Court denies the motion by Avangrid for an injunction that would delay implementation of the ballot initiative.
2022:
This week, May 10: The Maine Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two cases: NECEC Transmission LLC et al. v. Bureau of Parks and Lands et al. (the referendum case) and Russell Black et al. v. Bureau of Parks and Lands et al. (the lease agreement case).
Next week, May 17 & 18: To make everything even more confusing, the Maine Board Environmental Protection is slated to take up the Natural Resources Council of Maine's appeal of the permit at its May 17 & 18 meeting.
We may see rulings on the cases as soon as early summer, according to some court observers. The cases, as the Portland Press Herald noted this week, have drawn national attention, in part because "New transmission lines will be crucial for states in the Northeast that have aggressive climate change goals because they hinge on phasing out oil- and gas-fired power plants and electrifying their economies with renewable sources."
But it's not going to be easy. A planned 339-mile underground line from Hydro-Québec to New York has also divided environmental groups in that state.
“At the end of the day, everyone might want more transmission for renewable energy,” said Timothy Fox, vice president at ClearView Energy Partners, an independent research firm, told the New York Times. “But no one wants it in their backyard.”
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