Letter to the editor: CMP corridor would damage trout habitat

I write in reference to your Jan. 13 story “Group backing CMP power line wins support of former environmental leaders,” and to subsequent statements by those former leaders about Central Maine Power’s proposed corridor.

The statement released by Mainers for Clean Energy Jobs ended with a plea that the public debate over the corridor “focus on the facts.” I am therefore deeply disappointed in videotaped statements from my old fishing buddy Dick Anderson about the corridor’s impacts on brook trout. In the videotape, Dick asserts that we should not worry about the impacts of the corridor on brook trout, because CMP’s impacts amount to “a few hundred yards of streams” and refers to concerns that I and others have raised about CMP’s stream crossings as “a ridiculous argument.”

Dick should have read CMP’s application, which states directly that “the NECEC will have 11.02 linear miles of forested conversion impact to streams.” His “few hundred yards” understates the project’s direct impacts on brook trout habitat by a factor of more than 60.

Dick’s an old fishing buddy, and I know how he’d react if I told him I planned to remove the trees from the banks of the pool on the Rapid River where I once handled the boat while he landed a 16-inch trout.

He ought to know better, and he ought to have the facts.

Jeff Reardon,

director, Maine Brook Trout Project

Manchester