N.E. Clean Power Connect in Maine - Should we care ?

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More than two sides if you talk to the indigenous people who lost their land to the resevoirs or live downstream from the mercury concentrating dams. I know those folks down south want to enjoy guilt free consumption, but once you know where that power comes from it is hard. Easier to pretend that it grows on trees.
 
More than two sides if you talk to the indigenous people who lost their land to the resevoirs or live downstream from the mercury concentrating dams. I know those folks down south want to enjoy guilt free consumption, but once you know where that power comes from it is hard. Easier to pretend that it grows on trees.
The reason that QH should not be considered ”green.”
 
Thus the term "Brown Hydro". A vestige of British heritage, Canada owns most of the rural land in the country, the government leases specific rights to various entities. I inherited some maps from the Old Brown company files dated in the 1920s showing the hydroelectic potential of Canada, It is huge. The problem is most of the potential is surrounded by boreal forests that have thin soils and not much economic value except for mineral extraction. It is also settled by various Indigenous peoples that were there long before the British (very similar parallels to the US) and treated as chattel. Up until the last of couple of decades the official government policy and tradition was to treat them as an inferior lower class. When Hydro Quebec built the first river system, they abused the local tribes and members big time evicting them and flooding out their communities. The tribes were dependent on native fish and seasonal salmon runs, these runs on the river system are effectively extinct. The other issue is that this is hydro electric system dependent on vast watershed of dammed lakes (roughly equivalent to the headwater of the upper lake being the Hudson River and the final dam being in Eastport Maine. These dams are run to keep the hydros running rather than naturally and the result is degraded water quality and wildlife impacts along with high methane emissions from vegetation killed by widely varying levels. Maine has a few of these degraded lakes like Aziscohos and Flagstaff lakes which show similar but lesser damages despite being run within some limits. The average boater is just not trained to see the damage, but its there.

Due to this history, many New England states long ago decided not to support HQs hydro and declared it "brown hydro" and treated it no better than fossil. HQ is owned by the Quebec government but is independent and has the reputation of being a kingmaker in the province, if someone gets on the wrong side of HQ, they probably have won their last election. They bought loyalty from the voters in the province as they kept the power cheap. HQ wants to build, build build, to grow but the voters have told them that if it raises their power costs, they will not support it, thus the move into the US markets. By marketing relabeled green power to the US at a hefty profit, that eventually means HQ gets to go back into building. Subsequent dam negotiations with the tribes have been somewhat more fair, but its done on the basis of the project will happen, it is just what do the tribes want to give up rather than fighting it, that usually means use of native labor during construction and hiring select natives to go to school to leatn how to run the plants greased with various financial incentives. Note CMP in Maine did similar tactics as the original HQ dams when the Long Falls Dam on the Dead River was built, the state approved the work and CMP flooded out two towns) using eminent domain as a "club" to negotiate (The Quabbin reservoir in Mass did the same).

Of late, a lot of the power is wheeled in from Newfoundland and Labrador from projects like Churchill Falls Churchill Falls Generating Station - Wikipedia.
Note the issues with the local tribes. The agreement will be up soon and that is putting HQ in bind as described in the article I posted.

It very much NIMBY on country level. Long ago there was the Dickey Lincoln Project proposed for the St John RIver in Maine (the last real free flowing river in Maine) it was puny compared to HQ but it was the teething ground for many an environmentalist and ultimately was opposed by many in state and killed Dickey-Lincoln School Lakes Project | Maine Government Documents | The University of Maine Far easier to let someone else trash their country. I expect to many folks,they do not even know where the Saint John river is in Maine or that it flows north. Its next door watershed neighbor, the Allagash gets the press despite it requiring dams to keep the water flowing season long.
 
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I thought it was the Furbish Lousewort. The snail darter was tied to the Tellico Dam in TN
Yes, you are right, I was confusing endangered species. In the end, the snail darter did not stop the Tellico Dam as the SCOTUS gave the dam the green light. But then the snail darter was found recovering elsewhere from earlier transplant efforts, and the snail darter was downgraded from endangered to threatened.
 
The reason that QH should not be considered ”green.”
I think the "folks down south" are well aware of where the energy comes from, thank you very much! Very good series on Quebec Hydro and the indigenous people with the dams.
http://outsideinradio.org/powerline
The dams are built, and they are generating renewable energy. Whatever was done, was done, and the story is quite a nuanced one, but the simple fact is that, "Energy lies at the red-hot heart of the climate crisis: our current system of burning fossil fuels drives the temperature ever higher, ad replacing that coal, oil, and gas with something else is the biggest task humanity has taken on."*

Quebec Hydro is green energy, and we must stop our use of carbon-emissions as quickly as possible. The dams are generating more green energy than can currently be consumed, and New England needs to start drawing upon that energy as quickly as possible in order to turn away from our current carbon-emitting sources.

* Bill Mckibben, "The Persistence of Fossils Fuels" in Greta Thunberg (ed.) The Climate Book, p.219
 
Due to this history, many New England states long ago decided not to support HQs hydro and declared it "brown hydro" and treated it no better than fossil.
It'll be interesting to see if something similar ever happens to other currently favored "renewable" solutions, which are partially sourced from devastating rare earth mineral mining and from areas using slave labor.
 
The stumps of the towers for this project are littered along Stream Rd. in Moscow, just South of Moxie Mountain. Some of the work is also visible from the tower on Coburn Mtn.

It's also worth noting that the bridge is out at mile 8 on Deadwater Road, so if you're trying to get to Heald Ponds, you have to take either Stream Rd. > Chase Pond Rd. > Heald Pond Rd. or Stream Rd. > Ripple Rd. (take a right off Stream Rd. instead of left onto Chase Pond Rd.) > Deadwater Rd. > Heald Pond Rd. All these roads are navigable by a Honda Accord all the way to the Moxie Mountain South Trail trailhead. There's one rocky, rutted section of Heald Pond Rd. a tenth of a mile or two before the trailhead. It may look daunting, but is passable.
 
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