WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senators Olympia J. Snowe and Susan Collins announced today that they successfully brokered an agreement with the Maine Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that would allow Bangor Hydro to proceed with their new transmission project for an electricity line from Orrington to Baileyville that will save Maine $100 million in energy costs over the next six years. This past week, Snowe and Collins stepped in to work with the Corp and the EPA to ensure that a permit was issued to Bangor Hydro in a timely and expeditious manner.
“We are pleased to announce that we have brokered an agreement between Bangor Hydro, the EPA and the Maine Army Corps to allow a vital economic development project to get underway in Maine , while ensuring that environmental protections will be in place. This project will supply Maine with additional supplies of energy and save our state $100 million over 6 years. We would like to praise all the different agencies involved, including the Maine office of the Army Corps who is responsible for oversight over the permitting process and the EPA for their hard work to ensure that the Northeast Reliability Interconnect could get off the ground,” Snowe and Collins said in a joint statement.
Bangor Hydro is embarking on an ambitious initiative to develop the Northeast Reliability Interconnect (NRI). NRI is an 85-mile long transmission line that extends from Orrington, Maine to the St. Croix River near Baileyville. There it will connect with a similar new line in New Brunswick linking the electrical systems of Maine and the Canadian Maritimes. Bangor Hydro has been working on this project since 2003 and has met all the relevant permitting requirements.
Any delays to the project could have pushed the start of the project off another year and could have cost Maine millions of dollars in lost energy savings.