I would like to remind Gov. Janet Mills and members of the PUC that the people of Maine sent them to Augusta to represent the people and ensure its wishes are carried out, and not to be blinded by a $253 million pie-in-the-sky gift (which is a tax-deductible donation for the CMP/Avangrid/Iberdroia conglomerate) that you would end Maine’s statehood a few months shy of celebrating 200 years of independence by relegating this vacationland back to being a district — not of Massachusetts again — but of Spain.

Burying the 145-mile transmission line underground with a tote road alongside would be one thing, and acceptable, but a long row of massive towers on a clear-cut swath even half the width of a turnpike is quite another and totally unacceptable in keeping Maine (life the way it should be) full of scenic beauty and unspoiled habitat for creatures of the wild, which residents and visitors enjoy viewing.

One proponent wrote that the grass will grow back. Yes, during summertime; but producing barely an iota of oxygen in comparison to what those trees release daily. Certainly their permanent removal is not going to lessen the atmosphere’s carbon pollution the NECEC touts the project will achieve and, particularly, not the air we breathe in Maine.

I hope the Land Use Planning Committee, Department of Environment Protection and the Army Corps of Engineers all find the project as having too negative an above-ground impact on all fronts to allow the conglomerate to proceed.

John Davis, South Paris