PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • June 19, 2020
Hydro-Quebec’s Serge Abergel claims their electrical power is clean by presenting self-serving studies. Other unbiased sources tell a very different story. Hydro-Quebec has a long history of creating environmental disasters. In 1984, a New York Times story describes 22,000 caribou being killed during their annual migration below one of Hydro-Quebec’s mega dams. An independent 2016 Harvard study projected that the impact of the bioaccumulative neurotoxin methylmercury at 22 Canadian hydroelectric facilities would increase 10-fold. NECEC’s proposed route would destroy one of the last truly wild places with intact ecosystems left in Maine. If Massachusetts really wants Hydro-Quebec’s dirty, “deal with the devil” power, it needs to go through the already-permitted and approved Vermont route. ~ Steve Brooke, Farmingdale, was coordinator of the Kennebec Coalition