PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • July 20, 2022
More than two years after the Maine Department of Environmental Protection granted a conditional construction permit for the $1 billion New England Clean Energy Connect transmission line, the agency’s citizen board met Wednesday to consider appeals filed by project opponents. The meeting of the Board of Environmental Protection opened a two-day session that marked yet another challenge to a divisive plan to bring a major new source of energy from Canada into New England’s electric grid. But the project has been on hold since November, when voters passed a statewide referendum aimed at killing it. Wednesday’s meeting was the latest front in a battle that has raged since the NECEC line was first proposed in 2017.