MAINE PUBLIC • November 29, 2022
Maine's highest court has sided with the state and Central Maine Power over a lease needed to construct a controversial transmission line through western Maine. In a ruling Tuesday morning, Maine's Supreme Judicial Court said that the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands "acted within its constitutional and statutory authority" when granting CMP a lease through state-owned lands in 2020. The lease accounts for only one mile of the proposed 145-mile long transmission line that would allow Hydro-Quebec to connect into New England's electricity grid. But the lease is critical to the project moving forward, although construction cannot resume until another pending court case is resolved. Sen. Rick Bennett, who helped craft the 1993 constitutional amendment that required a two-thirds vote from both chambers of the Legislature for any uses that “substantially altered” state-owned lands, said he was “appalled at this court’s action.”