[HN Gopher] Maine voters reject Quebec hydropower transmission line ___________________________________________________________________ Maine voters reject Quebec hydropower transmission line Author : algo_trader Score : 32 points Date : 2021-11-03 20:54 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.reuters.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com) | throwawaycuriou wrote: | Another interesting tidbit of Maine news is that a municipal | Portland election ended in a tie in the final round of ranked | choice voting. Around ~19,000 votes total. | | By state law they'll resolve the tie by drawing lots at the city | hall building tomorrow morning: | https://www.pressherald.com/2021/11/03/tied-instant-runoff-f... | algo_trader wrote: | This is beyond depressing (I am not a US resident..) | | The entire New England is going brown by closing nuclear | reactors, fighting wind and now this. | | IIRC, out of $1BN, about $300M was compensation and pork for | local residents | paleotrope wrote: | I have family in Maine and have spent alot of time there | recently. The voters up there are schizophrenic. Very little | makes any sense. A high tax state, high cost of living that is | 1/2 retirees from southern new england, 1/2 dirt poor people. | They vote against anything that would improve their economic | conditions. It's like Alaska and Florida combined without oil | or sun. | TrisMcC wrote: | This is a warped view of Maine's demographics and pretty | insulting. | throwawaycuriou wrote: | Ironically, much of the funding for 'Yes' (which was in | opposition to the new power lines) was provided by a nuclear | reactor in New Hampshire that didn't want to compete against | the lower electricity rates this would bring. | snsr wrote: | I guess Quebec hasn't heard, they are now allowed to | advertise a position on US ballot initiatives. | | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/11/02/foreign-m. | .. | throwawaycuriou wrote: | I believe HydroQuebec put in more money than anyone for | this referendum. | TrisMcC wrote: | Mainers HATE Central Maine Power. Anything that hurts them is | seen as a positive. The lease they got on the land for | transmission lines was ruled illegal. | | We have tried (and still are trying) to create a public utility | to replace CMP called Pine Tree Power. It was passed in the | legislature but vetoed by our governor this year. | | There was also a story about the First Nations of Quebec not | having their voices heard regarding the transmission lines that | pass through their lands. | throwaway0a5e wrote: | Mainers hate Massholes too. They get two give two groups they | hate the bird with just one vote. Of course they voted the | way they did. | throwaway0a5e wrote: | The company that wanted to build the line (CMP) spend the last | 20yr burning any political capitol it had. They've screwed | people out of lots of money while delivering crap service. Now | they wanna build a line to line their pockets while mostly | befitting Massashusetts, a state full of people that everyone | in Maine not employed in tourism hates (and the tourism simply | tolerates). | | You don't get to do business like that and expect voters not to | see the opportunity to screw you back. People aren't that | stupid. | favorited wrote: | "From what I've seen, it's not going to be that beneficial to | Maine," said one voter[0]. | | Oh, is your end of the boat not sinking? You're probably fine, | then. | | Luckily the referendum is being challenged in the courts. | | [0]https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/11/03/science/maine- | voters-... | algo_trader wrote: | Its still a cold/rural zone. When a carbon tax/madate is | inevitably enforced, they are going to end up with escalating | bills for heating and transport. | paleotrope wrote: | They are going to end up burning their precious woodlands. | algo_trader wrote: | No doubt they will start by cuttings up trees along the | transmission corridor, just to spite everyone else /s | LatteLazy wrote: | The problem is, to make a difference you also need to get 7bn | other people to do something... | CircleSpokes wrote: | Protecting woodlands is important but cutting through woodlands | for transmission lines shouldn't be a big deal. Hydro is pretty | clean power so it seems silly not to bring more of that in. Plus | they have already cut most of it.. | | "More than three-quarters of the corridor has already been | cleared, with about 100 poles installed, Avangrid said last | week." | oblio wrote: | The thing is, how much are they really cutting for transmission | line poles? Their footprint is probably really small, | inconsequential, really. It's not like they're building a | highway :-) | throwawaycuriou wrote: | 75 feet wide over a 53 mile section of land already owned by | the local power company. | https://www.pressherald.com/2021/10/17/qa-on- | question-1-will... | loeg wrote: | 75 ft x 53 miles is a total of 0.74 square miles. The North | Maine Woods are 3.5 million acres, or ~5500 square miles. | | The total area consumed by the corridor will be about | 0.014% of the woods. | Gracana wrote: | It pretty much is like building a highway. Transmission tower | lines are very big and wide. We (in Maine) also suffered the | results of a natural gas pipeline installation, with people's | yards taken by eminent domain laws to make way for the | construction.. I'm not surprised people voted against it this | time around. | oblio wrote: | I'm confused, how could they be like a highway? | | Don't your power lines look like this? | | https://energytransition.org/wp- | content/uploads/2018/04/Wind... | | 1 pole of maybe... I don't know, 30m by 10m, every several | hundred meters? That's a tiny footprint. | | Isn't the rest just electrical cables hanging 20m in the | air? | fhood wrote: | By size maybe. Way less disruptive than a highway though. | subpixel wrote: | Arguments were effectively made that it's not all hydro power - | it's a connection to the grid not a single source of energy. | | But in the end this was doomed by the route. If it were | economically possible to go around the north woods it would | have had little opposition. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-11-03 23:00 UTC)