Central Maine Power corridor through Maine woods to resume construction - WMTW Portland

Central Maine Power corridor through Maine woods to resume construction

Project now projected to cost $1.5 billion after nearly two-year delay

Almost two years after Central Maine Power's hydroelectric corridor through the Maine woods, New England Clean Energy Connect (NECEC) was stopped by a referendum, construction will restart on Thursday, Aug. 3.

That's because CMP and its parent company, Avangrid, sued the state to undo the retroactive rejection and won in court with a unanimous civil jury verdict in April.

After a 21-month work stoppage, the project will resume first with a conversion station in Lewiston, where the 145-mile corridor, whch starts at Maine's border with Canada, ends.

Four buildings totaling 36,000 square feet will be erected on a 20-acre site.

CMP declined to provide someone for an interview or give a tour of the site, which is less than a mile down a gravel road off Lewiston’s Main Street.

Lincoln Jeffers, Lewiston's Director of Economic & Community Development, said in an interview on Wednesday, "There has been blasting, is what they had done, prior to being shut down, because of the referendum. They sort of leveled the site."

The station will convert electricity, after being generated by hydropower in Quebec, from direct current (DC) to alternating current (AC).

That power will be sent to an existing CMP substation a two-minute drive away, and from there connect to the New England grid.

The city expects to receive $6 to $7 million annually in new property tax revenue and secure three dozen permanent jobs at the conversion station.

Jeffers said, "For the city of Lewiston itself, our taxpayers, it is a huge bonus."

Corridor proponents have said the project will mitigate climate change by shifting reliance on burning fossil fuels for electricity to clean, renewable hydropower.

But oppoenents have said the purported economic and enviromental benefits are exaggerated and decried the clear-cuttiong of trees to forge the path.

While 59% of Mainers voted to stop the corridor in the November 2021 referendum (Question 1), a majority of Lewiston residents, 56%, favored it.

Jeffers said, “We've got to get off of fossil fuels. There is hydroelectricity being generated in Canada that's not being used."

Almost all of the path is cleared of trees, and about 100 of 800 needed utility poles are in the ground.

Avangrid CEO Pedro Azagra Blázquez disclosed last week the corridor construction budget has grown from $1 billion to $1.5 billion.

When the project is completed, the electricity will primarily benefit Massachusetts. That was supposed to start this year, but because of the delays, CMP is now renegotiating that deal. y