WEST FORKS — Environmental groups on Thursday challenged the validity of Central Maine Power Co.’s proposed 50,000-acre conservation plan, a final hurdle for the utility’s new 53-mile segment of transmission line through rural northwestern Maine.
But utility company officials say conservation plan is only part of the requirements imposed, and many of those concerns are addressed elsewhere in the permit orders.
In May, CMP proposed the conservation plan, which would preserve about 78 square miles of northern Somerset County. Avangrid, CMP’s parent company, plans to make the controversial New England Clean Energy Connect line operational by the end of the year, but state regulators must first sign off on a conservation plan.
The Maine Council of Trout Unlimited, the Appalachian Mountain Club, Maine Audubon and the Natural Resources Council of Maine jointly submitted the comments to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection on Thursday.
In particular, the groups objected to the proposal’s efforts to conserve mature forest — a central requirement set by state regulators.
The environmental groups’ testimony says Avangrid misrepresented the character of the forest in the proposed 50,000-acre area. Forest ecologist John Hagan’s survey of the area found that 78% of the trees are less than 35 feet tall, not 60%, as claimed by Avangrid’s submission. The groups also said the number of trees over 50 feet tall were overestimated.
Even beyond tree height, Avangrid’s definition of a mature forest falls short, Luke Frankel, the Natural Resources Council of Maine’s staff scientist and woods, waters and wildlife director, said. The basal area, or the average amount of an acre covered by trees, doesn’t meet requirements either; most other conservation areas in Maine have almost double the tree density of the proposed land, he said.
“We find those, based on conversations that we’ve had with forest ecologists and foresters, to be severely inadequate,” he said. “It meets a commercial definition of mature forest. But really, that’s not the intent of the order. It’s really ecologically mature forest, and it falls well short of those.”
Most of the forest would also be available for harvesting during the life of the conservation easement, which the groups said defeated the purpose of the easement.
“Within a 100-foot buffer of perennial streams, they’re proposing no-cut,” Frankel said. “Everywhere else is eligible for harvesting, as long as 50% of the landscape is in this mature forest condition.”
He said this constant forestry work would create a “shifting mosaic” — a moving mature forest habitat that he said wouldn’t provide the stability for long-term wildlife habitat.
The groups also took issue with the fragmentation of the 50,000-acre space. U.S. Route 201 runs directly through the proposed area, and so does the NECEC line. Other areas are fragmented by a different transmission line that runs east to west, creating parcels smaller than allowed under the permit, Frankel said.
Other testimony submitted to the Department of Environmental Protection during the public comment period has supported the NECEC project.
Former Maine Bureau of Environmental Protection Chairman Matt Scott said he had “never witnessed such a large area in Maine, excluding Baxter Park, to be managed for mature forest, in perpetuity, with additional benefits and requirements in this Plan.”
The Bureau of Parks and Lands, which would administer the conservation easement, sent a letter saying Avangrid’s plan was “designed to comply” with the permit’s requirements.
Avangrid spokesperson Jonathan Breed said Thursday that he questions the motivations of the environmental groups that opposed the easement. He said the company reached out to the groups at the start of the public comment period, but they refused to meet.
“I do believe that this is ideological,” Breed said. “Environmental groups need to evolve from the reflective ‘no’ to a principled ‘yes’ if we’re going to be successful in meeting our climate challenges and making progress with some of the more challenging energy and climate issues we face.”
The plan’s effort to conserve mature forests at a height of 50 feet was “aggressive,” he said, and that a substantial portion of the forest would be well above the minimum maturity standards.
“They are taking basically one chapter of the story book and saying it does not comply, when really they need to be looking at the entire permit order that lays out all the protections including cold water fishery streams and other riparian areas, and deer travel corridors and all of these other factors,” Breed said.
The NECEC project would connect a Canadian hydroelectric plant to a converter station in Lewiston using an existing corridor that, until this proposal, went only as far north and west as The Forks. Voters rejected the project in a 2021 referendum, but subsequent court decisions allowed the project to move forward.
Following a 29-month permitting process, the Department of Environmental Protection required CMP to develop a plan to conserve 50,000 acres near the transmission line, saying the NECEC project would have “substantial impacts” that required extensive mitigation measures to “avoid or minimize those impacts.”
State regulators set a high bar for the conservation area, including promoting habitat connectivity, conserving mature forest areas and providing a wildlife travel corridor. But before considering approving the conservation plan, the department asked for public comment, leading environmental groups to seek expert opinions.
Those experts, the environmental groups said Thursday, agreed that CMP’s conservation proposal does not meet the state’s requirements.
“The NECEC transmission line was approved by the Department of Environmental Protection contingent on a plan to conserve high-value habitat in compensation for the corridor’s impacts: habitat fragmentation and loss of mature forest,” Eliza Townsend, the Appalachian Mountain Club’s Maine conservation policy director, said in a news release. “The proposed Conservation Plan put forward by NECEC does not meet the terms of its permit. The DEP must deny it and require a meaningful plan that truly compensates for the significant negative impacts of the NECEC.”
Breed said he was particularly concerned about financial connections between the Natural Resources Council of Maine and NextEra Energy — the Florida-based company that investigators found improperly funded the campaign to oppose the NECEC project.
The NECEC line has been the subject of controversy since it was proposed by CMP in 2017.
As the project moved through the permitting process, residents and environmental groups called for a statewide referendum to kill the project by making such transmission lines subject to approval by the state Legislature. The referendum applied retroactively to 2020 to make sure it prohibited the NECEC project.
Combined, the sides spent more than $100 million during the campaign — setting a spending record for a ballot question in Maine. Mainers voted decisively to kill the project in the November 2021 referendum.
Years of legal challenges ensued.
First, Avangrid challenged the referendum itself, arguing retroactive application was unconstitutional and violated the due process and vested rights of Avangrid. The Maine Supreme Judicial Court agreed and allowed the project to move forward.
Then, environmental groups challenged a lease of about a mile of public land for the project, saying it constituted a substantial change to the land and therefore required a two-thirds majority of the Legislature. The high court again sided with Avangrid and allowed the lease.
Environmental groups also sued federal permitters over their environmental analysis of the transmission line. That challenge was rejected in April, but environmental groups recently appealed that decision.
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