Another View: Editorials endorsing CMP plan overlook its many risks

Re: the Our View editorials of Feb. 24 (“Climate is top concern in CMP powerline case”) and Dec. 9 (“Hydro-Quebec answers key climate question”):

We are not surprised by the Editorial Board’s support of New England Clean Energy Connect – a boondoggle offered by Central Maine Power/Avangrid and Hydro-Quebec that sacrifices noncommercial ratepayers in Maine and our ability to protect our lands and environment from outsider waste and greed.

Claims in Our View that you are supporting a project that is environmentally sound are vacuous when the editorials have failed to address the already unrecoverable costs: the disregard and destruction of Innu and Cree lands, rivers, fish habitats and wildlife for centuries and potential, irreversible destruction of Maine’s wild regions, including water and wildlife.

Intimating that Maine ratepayers will benefit is laughable – unless, perhaps, you are a commercial enterprise. How can we even consider trusting a foreign, incompetent company that has lied to us about users’ costs and the efficiency and safety of so-called “smart” metering and billing? Those supposed savings do not explain why my electric bills have more than doubled since Iberdrola/Avangrid came into the state.

The ISO-New England grid, the “smart” meters and the Hydro-Quebec pact with CMP have been designed not to benefit Maine ratepayers or our environment, but to be the New England highway to get more electricity – affordable or not – to the states to our south, which will benefit with “clean energy” discounts. Further, for any Maine private or commercial attempts to develop solar, wind or other alternatives, the grid will pull in the unused kilowatt-hours and ship them south at our expense.

That is why Vermont and New Hampshire passed on the environmental offer made to them and why we should be concentrating efforts to develop our own internal alternatives.

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