Why do we support the New England Clean Energy Connect project? Because today’s climate crisis is the greatest threat to the health of the planet. If we do not take sensible and sometimes controversial action, it will soon be too late to avoid catastrophic impacts to the natural world that we have spent our careers protecting.

Steps large and small to shift from climate-damaging fuels to greener energy are urgently needed. Movement of greener Canadian hydropower to New England markets that depend on fossil fuels is an important step in that direction.

The Maine DEP has the staff knowledge and legal authority to take forest fragmentation impacts into consideration in its decision on the project; and to demand effective mitigation steps to address these. We trust the DEP and Army Corps to ensure that real concerns are addressed within the larger goal of de-carbonizing the New England electric grid we all depend upon.

Fossil fuels and the climate crisis are the real enemies here. We cannot address their dire impacts without accepting some trade-offs, without adding baseline Canadian hydropower to the regional power grid. We are willing to make these trade-offs and hope all will agree with us.

Dick Barringer
Dick Anderson
Lloyd Irland
Tom Rumpf