This story will be updated.
The $1 billion hydropower corridor proposed by Central Maine Power Co. got a reprieve from the state’s high court with a Tuesday ruling that upheld a public land lease.
In a 50-page opinion from five justices, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled that a lease covering about 1 acre crucial to the project in rural Somerset County was granted lawfully, turning back an argument from anti-corridor officials that it needed legislative approval.
The ruling was the second of two long-anticipated decisions from the court that could help revive the hydropower project formally called the New England Clean Energy Connect. But time could be the biggest obstacle for CMP and its affiliates, because another case before a lower court over the constitutionality of the referendum will stretch into next year, rubbing up against an end-of-2023 deadline to build the corridor.
The case decided Tuesday was originally filed March 2021 by state Sen. Russell Black, R-Wilton, and others against the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands, which manages public lands and determines whether leases substantially alter land use. If they do, both chambers of the Legislature must approve that use by two-thirds votes.
In August 2021, Superior Court Justice Michaela Murphy reversed the bureau’s decision to lease the land. Three days later, CMP and NECEC Transmission LLC, the company that would run the corridor, appealed to the law court. Initial arguments in the case were heard in May 2022.
The high court reversed Murphy’s decision Tuesday, declining to send it back to a lower court for more debate and saying the lease for the corridor did not constitute a substantial alteration of the land.
“We conclude that the record establishes that the Bureau acted within its constitutional and statutory authority in granting the 2020 lease,” the justices wrote.
In a separate challenge to the leases, the Bureau of Environmental Protection ruled in July that CMP could access the leases if Maine’s high court ultimately rules the referendum unconstitutional.
The law court ruled on the case in late August, saying part of a 2021 referendum blocking the controversial corridor was unconstitutional. Backers must still win in a lower court to keep the project on track. The anti-corridor referendum overwhelmingly passed and halted construction.
The referendum, which was aimed at stopping the project, was the most expensive ballot initiative in state history, with campaigns spending more than $90 million.
The milelong, 300-foot-wide parcel in question was initially leased to CMP in 2014 under former Gov. Paul LePage for $4,000 per year. On the same day in June 2020 that corridor critics filed a lawsuit challenging that lease, the administration of Gov. Janet Mills finalized a renegotiated lease with the utility and its partners, raising the fee to $65,000 per year.
Both Mills, a Democrat, and LePage, a Republican who lost to her in the November election, backed the corridor.
BDN writer Michael Shepherd contributed to this report.
