PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • August 13, 2021
The Maine Attorney General’s Office and the companies seeking to build a 145-mile, high-voltage transmission line through the western mountains plan to appeal a judge’s decision nullifying a crucial lease needed for the controversial project. The appeal decision came one day after Maine’s top environmental regulator began the administrative process to suspend New England Clean Energy Connect’s permit because the companies lost a lease to pass through state-owned lands. A Superior Court judge ruled that the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands had failed to follow proper procedures when granting Central Maine Power and NECEC a lease for the 0.9-mile section through two parcels of public reserved lands north of The Forks.