I certainly was surprised at the extent of the dislike for Central Maine Power and how the fossil fuel interest spent more than $20 million to channel that anger into rejecting the New England Clean Energy Corridor. What hasn’t surprised me is what has happened since.

It has become very clear why companies like NextEra and Calpine spent such huge amounts of money fighting the corridor. People should look at the prices that Maine homes and businesses are paying for electricity now. The business plan for these fossil fuel companies is very plain: fight any and all competition so they can thrive.

These companies played on people’s fears and emotions to reject a project that, without question, would have helped our state. Hopefully, the Maine Law Courts will see that the referendum process that was used to vote down this project was unconstitutional. No project should be retroactively killed, and I am deeply concerned for what may happen in the future should this practice stand.

I do wonder if Mainers should rethink how this all went down. If they knew then what we know now, I wonder if more of us would have voted in favor of this project.

The average cost to produce a kilowatt-hour of power by hydropower is 0.85 cents, which is far below the amount we are currently being billed for at 11.8 cents. The NECEC would have gone a long way to saving us all a lot of money.

Clayton Putnam, Livermore Falls

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