The question now is what will Massachusetts do? Will they offer to pick up the whole tab? Will they drop out? Will they retaliate by refusing to pay the additional half billion dollars to keep the NECEC project going? There is opportunity for Maine who now has the leverage over any action by Massachusetts.
The NMREDP is still in the early stages with many permitting hurdles awaiting the project. Maine people are learning what a disastrous project this is and now have a dollar figure that can not be exceeded for this project to succeed. Massachusetts, even given they may offer a greater than 40% of the cost, would come to regret such a move as this project will never survive environmental permits, not to mention rejection by the many localities within the path of this monstrous power corridor.
If they decide to target NECEC and refuse to pay the additional half billion, the numbers already show that a half billion paid by Maine for a third of the output from NECEC is a far better option to allowing the NMREDP to proceed and imperil Maine's possibility of ever reverting back to the states' sovereignty over its own power supply and delivery, as Maine was before the electric market restructuring act of 1999, which enrolled us into ISO-NE, a market which we as a state have little to no influence upon due to our relative size compared to Mass., and Connecticut.
The question now is what will Massachusetts do? Will they offer to pick up the whole tab? Will they drop out? Will they retaliate by refusing to pay the additional half billion dollars to keep the NECEC project going? There is opportunity for Maine who now has the leverage over any action by Massachusetts.
The NMREDP is still in the early stages with many permitting hurdles awaiting the project. Maine people are learning what a disastrous project this is and now have a dollar figure that can not be exceeded for this project to succeed. Massachusetts, even given they may offer a greater than 40% of the cost, would come to regret such a move as this project will never survive environmental permits, not to mention rejection by the many localities within the path of this monstrous power corridor.
If they decide to target NECEC and refuse to pay the additional half billion, the numbers already show that a half billion paid by Maine for a third of the output from NECEC is a far better option to allowing the NMREDP to proceed and imperil Maine's possibility of ever reverting back to the states' sovereignty over its own power supply and delivery, as Maine was before the electric market restructuring act of 1999, which enrolled us into ISO-NE, a market which we as a state have little to no influence upon due to our relative size compared to Mass., and Connecticut.