In his June 7 letter, Serge Abergel, director of media and external relations at Hydro-Quebec, seems to have it wrong in  promulgating a recurring myth about New England Clean Energy Connect being “clean” power.

Electrical power from Hydro Quebec is not clean. “Politicians who describe dams as ‘clean energy projects’ are talking ‘nonsense’ and rejecting decades of science, says David Schindler, a leading water ecologist,” The Tyee, a Canadian online newsmagazine, has reported. 

At an Army Corps of Engineers NECEC hearing in Lewiston last Dec. 5, Bradford Hager (a Mercer resident), a professor in MIT’s department of earth and atmospheric sciences, submitted testimony in the form of two peer-reviewed scientific journal articles stating that hydropower from Quebec is as dirty as coal-fired heating plants. I believe that Mr. Abergel ought to get his science straightened out – and I might call into question his sources. (He provides none.)

Indigenous tribes have suffered from methylmercury pollution. There is no question this has happened. If Hydro-Quebec is so clean, then why didn’t company officials participate in hearings, under oath, to state what Mr. Abergel has stated? They could have provided critical testimony but chose not to do so.

I have reviewed Mr. Abergel’s prolific letters to the editor and critically reviewed each one. A foreign company is spending large amounts of money to influence Mainers on an invasive, for-profit project that provides little for Mainers. Let’s ask Hydro-Quebec to fund an environmental impact statement. This will clear up most questions.

Does anyone like the odds of this happening? I think not.

Richard W. Aishton, Ph.D.
Environmental dynamics analyst
Farmington

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