In a usually uneventful off-year election, Maine voters sparked headlines by rejecting, by a 60% majority in a statewide referendum, Central Maine Power’s $1-billion hydropower corridor project under construction, as utility owner Avangrid filed suit the next day, claiming the measure violates state and federal law.
Utilities spent more than $90 million leading up to the referendum measure, which sought to ban the 145-mi New England Clean Energy Corridor that would create a transmission system to import hydroelectric power from Quebec into the New England grid. The measure also sets a new requirement for legislative oversight of similar projects in the future.