Tony Owens is an emergency medicine physician and lives in Cape Elizabeth. Lois Winter is a conservation biologist and lives in Portland.

To protect Maine people and our environment, state regulators need to push back on Central Maine Power’s efforts to secure a massive electricity rate increase, and CMP’s flawed mitigation plan for its transmission corridor in western Maine.

We say this not to impede CMP’s transmission project, known as the New England Clean Energy Connect (NECEC). Although Mainers voted to terminate the NECEC, that vote was invalidated by the courts and NECEC is on track to operate in 2026. And not because we think CMP should be a public utility. Maine voters overwhelmingly defeated a ballot measure on that topic, and we don’t see that issue returning anytime soon.

Rather, we think Maine regulators need to stand up to CMP because the company has grown out of touch with the interests of Maine people.

CMP is no longer the company that earned strong support following the 1998 ice storm. Instead, CMP now is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Spanish energy giant Iberdrola, with decision-makers focused on shareholder profits from 5,000 miles away.

The most recent affront came with CMP’s spending plan to collect an additional $1.4 billion from Maine ratepayers over five years, costing the average household $420 annually, while shareholders pocket $700 million in profits, according to one analysis. The plan quickly drew sharp public blowback, with Gov. Mills correctly saying it “blatantly ignores the economic reality that Maine people face every day.”

Thankfully, on Nov. 18, the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) denied CMP’s rate plan.
But CMP will return with a new plan next year, and regulators need to remain vigilant.

Ironically, on the same day the PUC said “no” to CMP’s rate increase, the Department of
Environmental Protection (DEP) said “yes” to a CMP “conservation plan” aimed at mitigating environmental impacts caused by the NECEC. As with the rate hike, hundreds of Mainers objected to CMP’s conservation plan.

The NECEC permit requires CMP to conserve 50,000 acres of forests, with a primary focus on conserving mature forest habitat. CMP had many years to develop a conservation plan but came back last spring with a junker — 50,000 acres of some of the most heavily harvested forestland in Maine, with almost no mature trees and little protection for the few remaining older trees still standing.

The location is OK, near other conserved lands, but the plan fails to comply with the mature forest requirement. To cheat the test, CMP proposed its own definition of mature forest, which John Hagan, one of the state’s leading forest ecologists, said “does not pass an ecological straight-face test.”

And here’s the kicker: CMP told regulators to wait 40 years for tall trees to return. But even then, in 2065, these lands wouldn’t support species preferring mature habitat, according to experts who weighed in.

Despite the flaws in CMP’s plan, DEP remarkably approved it and actually wrote in its decision that future regulators should ignore the precedent set by this decision. That is not how regulators should act when defending Maine’s interests against a corporate giant like Iberdrola, valued at more than $140 billion.

There’s no mystery why CMP chose such cut-over land. It almost certainly was the cheapest 50,000 acres the company could find. Conservation groups may appeal the decision to the Board of Environmental Protection (BEP). If they do, we hope the BEP overturns DEP’s decision.

CMP should be required to improve the plan with the purchase and permanent protection of at least 10,000 acres of forest that actually includes mature trees, as many have called for.

For CMP, the rate hike and the deficient mitigation plan are mostly about money. But it’s about more than that for Maine. We should not be hit by electricity price hikes tied to CMP’s profit-seeking, nor should we be left holding the short end of the stick, literally, with a lousy NECEC mitigation plan. Regulators need to protect our interests against CMP.