In a stunning development last week, the Department of Marine Resources (DMR) announced it was abandoning its effort to amend dam licenses on the Kennebec River that could have prompted federal orders to remove four main-stream hydroelectric dams.
The move came after Brookfield Renewable Partners, the international renewable energy giant based in Canada, which owns the dams and many other hydro facilities in Maine, filed suit in Kennebec County Superior Court to block the rulemaking.
Next-day reporting left much to be desired. One account had DMR Commissioner Patrick Keliher describing it as a “process problem.” Another said Keliher “would halt the process,” which was true, but did nothing to explain the sudden reversal.
The Bangor Daily News came closest to the truth, reporting that “the state mistakenly developed the plan under a law that does not give it the requisite authority.”
But this was no ordinary mistake. Brookfield’s filings for preliminary injunction said, “Contrary to the legislative mandate to promote hydropower, DMR is in the process of illegally changing the 1993 Plan to force the removal of Brookfield’s dams on the lower Kennebec River.”
The company is correct. DMR is not allowed, under the relevant law, to amend an existing plan; the agency that could do so, the Department of Agriculture Conservation and Forestry, was not involved in the rulemaking.
DMR spokesman Jeff Nichols conceded the point, though he said DMR could write an entirely new plan “under a different section of law.” Asked whether DMR will develop such a plan, Nichols said it “intends to determine the best path forward,” beginning with “stakeholder meetings.”
It could be a tough sell. Waterville, which is reinventing its downtown as an arts-and-eateries destination, supports dam removal, but most other towns on the upper Kennebec, including Skowhegan, Norridgewock, Madison, Fairfield and Winslow, oppose it, as do two of the area’s state senators.
The rule changes, which at first seemed to be traveling under the radar, have now become a cause célèbre.
Bigger questions surround the Mills administration and what appears to be a major legal screw-up: State government, guided by the Attorney General’s office, is supposed to know the statutes better than anyone.
What’s more, it’s difficult to square Gov. Janet Mills’s support for Central Maine Power’s line to Canada, wheeling Canadian hydropower to Massachusetts – a stance for which she’s taken grief from both left and right – with her apparent approval of taking out hydro facilities in Maine that have been steadily producing base-load, non-intermittent electricity for nearly a century.
Supporters of dam removal point to the demise of the Edwards Dam in Augusta in 1999, removed by federal order, and the Penobscot River restoration plan, which removed some dams and increased power output at others.
They contend that removal, not better fish passage construction, is the only way to encourage return of Atlantic salmon and other endangered species.
Yet a lot has changed in two decades, and neither precedent seems relevant. The Penobscot project saw dam owners and conservationists collaborating. The Edwards process, like Brookfield’s, was adversarial, but Edwards was a minor producer of electricity, and its removal restored 20 miles of free-flowing river.
Since then, global warming has become a huge threat not only to human life, but precisely to endangered species like salmon that depend on cool spawning streams. Improved river flow, in this instance, could easily be overwhelmed by rising water temperatures.
One might also observe the irony of Maine lobstermen making a huge fuss over locating a couple of wind turbines miles off-shore, depicting it as a major threat to their industry, when in fact warming oceans could be catastrophic. Lobsters have already disappeared from southern New England waters, and there’s no guarantee Maine won’t be next.
Wind energy, like hydro, is a means of holding back climate Armageddon from fossil fuel burning. We should be speeding wind’s development, and hydro’s retention, as our best means of slowing inevitable temperature increases, with the only question how fast they will occur.
Some environmental groups, which once supported hydro as “renewable energy” and saw a place for new small-scale hydro development in Maine, turned against it in the 1990s, for reasons that still seem murky. Nor have they reconsidered their stance despite looming climate disaster.
One expects more of the Mills administration. Sure, nearly everyone would like salmon and shad and alewives to return to Maine’s great rivers in abundance, but it’s by no means clear that dam removal is the best approach.
The administration has produced ambitious and detailed plans for “decarbonizing” transportation and energy sectors. Yet it must quickly resolve the apparent contradictions in its approach for actually getting there.
Douglas Rooks has been a Maine editor, commentator, reporter and author since 1984. His new book is “First Franco: Albert Beliveau in Law, Politics and Love.” Visit the website, https://douglasrooks.weebly.com/#/ or e-mail: drooks@tds.net
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