PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • November 7, 2023
LS Power’s “Aroostook Renewable Gateway” would carve a 150-foot-wide corridor through 41 municipalities over 140-160 miles. It would negatively impact hundreds of landowners who would face significantly diminished property values, the marring of generational land, and the prospect of eminent domain. The route would entail clear-cutting around 2,000 acres of forest sequestering nearly 12 million pounds less carbon annually. It will mean inviting more out-of-state firms to construct a massive “gateway grid” that gouges new corridors into the landscape, wrecking ecosystems and tourism alike. Running lines within existing corridors would all but eliminate the cost of clearing new ones; save millions of dollars in environmental impact assessments and mitigation; reduce maintenance and weather-related costs over the system lifetime; curb the threat of expensive lawsuits; offer scalable transmission for future King Pine Wind equivalents with a corridor that’s only 5 feet wide and 5 feet deep; potentially attract millions in federal grant money available for innovative transmission projects; and capitalize on the ability to run fiber-optic cable within the system, helping Maine reach its goal of delivering high-speed internet to rural areas. ~ Joshua Abram Kercsmar, associate professor of Environmental Humanities at Unity Environmental University and vice president of Preserve Rural Maine