Letter to the Editor: More falsehoods about the NECEC

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CMP/Avangrid recently announced $300 million in contracts for Maine companies for the construction of the New England Clean Energy Connect (NECEC) project. That statement was untrue.

Irby Construction, which specializes in the construction of large electric transmission lines, is located in Mississippi. Northern Clearing is located in Wisconsin. Sargent Electric is located in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania.
The fourth company mentioned in the press release, Cianbro, is a Maine based company. The President of Cianbro was more transparent in stating that the workers would come from Cianbro locations outside Maine. Cianbro would try to use workers who had formerly lived and worked in Maine. These four companies would primarily use their own skilled workforce and try to prioritize work for local Maine companies, using Maine workers to the extent possible.
The press release mentioned that two of the out-of-state companies have offices in Maine. These offices exist because they were informed about these contracts more than a year ago.

What does this mean? It means that the economic benefit from the NECEC is misleading and overstated. The out-of-state companies and workers will pay Maine income tax and sales tax. But, their net income, the bulk of their earnings, will be spent in their states of origin.

When the two-year construction of the NECEC is over, all that will be left will be an ugly transmission line through the beautiful western Maine mountains and a handful of permanent jobs. The claim that the NECEC will produce long-term economic benefits is either misinformed or dishonest.

It’s still a bad deal for Maine!

John Nicholas
Winthrop, Maine 04364

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18 Comments

  1. It sounds like CMP defines “local” the same way that MalWart does- if it is US based, it is “local”. The use of out-of-state contractors for the corridor work was one of my initial sticking points on this project (and something that CMP was open about in the beginning).

  2. Denying additional electricity capacity while promoting electric heat and electric transportation appears to be illogical, no matter who builds it.

  3. Can hardly wait to hear the responses to this letter from the ‘locals’: ‘CMP can do what they want, it’s their land and their money’ blah blah. I think the point of this letter is to highlight the fact that lobbyists like Ben Dudley try to frame this $300 million contract as Cianbro getting the contract so that thousands of Mainers will get work for a few years. The reality is quite different. So, it’s not really a question of what cmp can or cannot do, it’s a matter of the propaganda machine lying or intentionally leaving out key facts. This letter highlights just another day in cmp’s plan to build this corridor at all costs including false advertising, corruption, and lying directly or cleverly omitting key information. Well done, John.

  4. Captain Planet, I think John is doing this to make a reference to a Ben Dudley (Dudley Do Wrong) article in PPH stating with elation that Cianbro just inked a $300 million contract and will be able to put Mainers to work for 3 years. Turns out that what John states above is the REAL truth behind Dudley’s intentional omission of critical information. Dudley is the lobbyist for CMP who is very skilled at not telling the truth.

  5. John Nichols is on target…if NECEC was such a good thing for Maine…why would CMP need to lie. NECEC is not about extra capacity for Maine it is about profits from diverting current capacity to Massachusetts where consumption is so great the profits are runaway. None of the power transmitted will be for Maine…why does Ben Dudley, CMP’s shill, in a letter to the editor in the KJ today, say it is power for Maine as well as MA?.

    What on earth could Captain Planet be thinking…how is not wanting a lying self centered Spanish Company to pillage the mountains of Maine to increase their bottom line…be un American? What is wrong with resisting being used?

  6. WHAT!!???
    LIES FROM CMP!!!!????
    Noooooo, Please say it ain’t so!!??
    They have the word Maine in their name so why would they deceive Mainahs’??
    I mean it’s “Mom, Apple Pie and CMP,”, right??

    WRONG!!
    Get caught up folks, its 2020.
    CMP is “some theiving liars” these days.
    The Money flows
    “””from Canada,,
    “NONSTOP THRU MAINE”,,,
    to Massachusetts
    and on to its final destination in Spain”””.
    All makes this (all together now),
    A “BAD DEAL FOR MAINE.”
    No Corridor.
    What a bunch of liars.

  7. John…. I am not sure what the big deal is regarding worker from away… we have two from away and a third from away looking to represent us in DC..

  8. A lot of the equipment used on these big lines are specialized and it would not pay local companies to keep them on hand. I believe a lot of the work done on the MPRP power project were done by a group from Indiana. There was a construction outfit over beyond the Augusta area that got work moving the wooden eco mats the EPA required to be placed as some of the work went on. In all fairness there would be some benefit to some Maine companies but in my opinion no where near as much as the hype is trying to make out. I am still waiting for a good will gesture from CMP to the areas involved but it looks like greed is going to win the day again. This is why I am so pro small business. The simple fact of life is if your big enough and grease the right hands doors open for opportunities that never reach the small business man.

  9. Ozerki, The naysayers have done more than their fair share of spreading lies, half truths and omissions. That the ratepayers will suffer, there is zero proof of that, that Maine workers won’t be hired, when not a single worker has yet been hired, not to mention that running power lines is a specialized trade, Maine more than likely only has so many people trained and licensed to do it, so they will probably get out of state union linemen, but Maine law says if a company uses union tradesmen, the company must use local non-union laborers, Verso does it all the time the United Paperworkers International make the paper, non-union workers do the grunt work.

  10. Hrtlss Verso hasn’t been a union mill since the strike back in the 80’s. Sappi is a union mill. Maybe instead of acting like you know everything you should proof read what you are saying or maybe like CMP get your facts straight.

  11. Well said Glen.
    ASR, folks from Mississippi are Americans, does that help you understand my comment? You seem to hate a company from Spain, one of our allies, but I bet your house is full of crap from China, a country that would be happy to see us wiped from the planet. You and your nimby crowd should rethink your priorities. As for me, sacrificing a few acres of marginal forest is a great trade off to support a company that powers my life for $2/day.

  12. Might as well stop the bickering and just get on with it – you’re getting the corridor. Mills’ brother says so, and we need the money anyway. We’ll be lucky if we don’t have to totally strip Maine’s forests to pay for Democrats and Mills’ horrible budget fiasco with the insane budget they set followed by this economy-shattering ‘rainy day’ we’re having that people have warned about for years. Hey – gotta take care of those people here illegally before Mainers, right?

  13. HB, yes, I am sure that companies from Mississippi, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania will hire Mainers perhaps because working with HVDC power lines is nothing that anyone in Maine holds much expertise. Further, when a company starts out with flaunting 3500 jobs and then drops that to 1600 I get suspicious. Further, when someone states “1600 jobs in Maine” but doesn’t say “Mainers will be hired for 1600 jobs” I also get a bit suspicious. Sure, time will tell, but of course time moving toward November might help Mainers make that decision for themselves.

  14. Momof2, I don’t believe I specifically said that Jay was Union did I, nor that Pixelle was either, Verso is a union company and has several mills that are union, the Verso mill in Bucksport was union. However, the people who are brought in to fix things, the masons who fix the mix silos for example are union,they just can’t identify as union while in Jay, so they work under dummy companies, that is the reason for the law, union tradesmen, non union laborers. I chose Verso because people know they make paper, had I said, I don’t know…some unknown to Maine company like Koch Industries for example, people would scratch their heads wondering who I was talking about, BTW Koch Industries owns Georgia Pacific, they make all kinds of wood and paper products including Angel Soft toilet paper…

  15. CMP. If you are even thinking along the lines of doing something for the affected areas here are a few simple truths as I see them. Our state spends money like water. By the time that money actually reaches the problem its suppose to solve the amount has changed for various reasons. You need to approach a few good men that are politicians and outdoors people from the affected areas and challenge them to come up with some ideas that are accountable and specific or the money goes back to CMP. No “GENERAL FUND” B.S–T. General funds are nothing more then an invitation to trouble for both government and private business.One of the first examples that come to my mind would be an advertising program for business along the way. A committee of outdoors people and politicians from the area submitting merit based ideas to a dedicated fund from CMP would go a long way in convincing many people you care about the public in “PUBLIC UTILITY’. Come up with some numbers and through out a challenge to some people, you may be surprised at the results. Our small business is on the front lines of our fight against poverty in this state. I want to see some kind of a balance in your feeding of bureaucracy and the throwing of the dice for the landowners and small business in that area.

  16. Hey, we all know they lie like a dirty rotten rug. They’ll push through this crappy power line no matter what we people say or want. So let em do it. BUT ! Every county , this line runs through should get FREE, FREE ,FREE FREE , ELECTRICITY FOR EVERY RESIDENTIAL ADDRESS , PERIOD ! fair trade id say.

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