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Golden Calls For White House Review Of CMP Transmission Project

Robert F. Bukaty
/
Associated Press
Workers connect a section of the first pole of Central Maine Power's controversial hydropower transmission corridor, Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2021, near The Forks, Maine.

U.S. Rep. Jared Golden of Maine’s 2nd District today wrote a letter to the Biden administration calling for a review of a so-called “presidential permit” issued for Central Maine Power’s controversial power line project.

Required for infrastructure projects that cross international borders, the permit for CMP’s plan to link up with Canada’s Hydro-Quebec was issued in the waning days of the Trump administration.

In his letter, Golden says the permit was issued without a robust analysis of potential environmental harms, while the public was shut out of the process.

In a statement late Thursday, a CMP spokesman said recent presidents' review their predecessor’s executive actions as a matter of course.

Clarification: After this story was published, a Department of Energy official said that the CMP project was not being reviewed under the executive order originally cited by the White House. The DOE official says that there is a separate review underway of decisions made by the Trump administration in the late weeks of his presidency. But he could not confirm whether the CMP project is included in that set of reviews.

A Columbia University graduate, Fred began his journalism career as a print reporter in Vermont, then came to Maine Public in 2001 as its political reporter, as well as serving as a host for a variety of Maine Public Radio and Maine Public Television programs. Fred later went on to become news director for New England Public Radio in Western Massachusetts and worked as a freelancer for National Public Radio and a number of regional public radio stations, including WBUR in Boston and NHPR in New Hampshire.