PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • October 17, 2021
Few Mainers have heard of the Johnson Mountain Township and West Forks Plantation public lots. Covering a combined 1,241 acres, they contain two small ponds with brook trout fisheries surrounded mostly by forest that’s managed by the state for timber harvesting. Since 1963, a Central Maine Power transmission line has followed the township boundary across West Forks Plantation. Would another transmission line bisecting the lots result in a “substantial change” to these so-called public reserved lands? The answer is at the heart of a legal dispute that could trip up the New England Clean Energy Connect project.