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G. Melvin Hovey is a retired Maine Public Service Company executive.
Maine and New Brunswick are not at war with one another. We are friends and neighbors. And until the Trump administration initiated a trade war with Canada, we had no reason to fear a disruption in our electricity supply from New Brunswick. Yet here we are.
The New Brunswick provincial government is seriously considering shutting off the flow of electricity from New Brunswick into northern Maine. Specifically, Canadian officials said they could not rule out this possibility as retaliation for the U.S. imposing tariffs on imports from Canada. This would have a devastating impact on 58,000 Maine consumers who live and work in communities near the Canadian border and depend on New Brunswick to keep their lights on.
These Mainers have done nothing to deserve this. They simply live and work near the Canadian border.
I spent 37 years working for Maine Public Service Company (now part of Versant Power), the last 11 years as its president. We worked hard to keep the lights on in Aroostook County and keep electricity prices affordable. Part of our strategy was developing a mutually beneficial partnership with the Province of New Brunswick to share resources for the benefit of both New Brunswick and Aroostook County consumers.
They would provide us with their surplus electricity when it was cheaper for them to generate than for us to do so. They would also transmit through New Brunswick to Aroostook County our share of electricity from generators we owned in southern Maine and New Hampshire, including Maine Yankee, Wyman 4 and Seabrook. As a result, our need for generating capacity located inside Aroostook County was limited. And we were always ready to supply them with any surplus electricity from our generators, should they ever need it.
Over time, we built up a high level of mutual trust that benefited electricity consumers on both sides of the international boundary. Because of this relationship, Aroostook County was never electrically connected to the rest of Maine; instead, we were connected to New Brunswick. As a result, Aroostook County depends heavily on electricity imported from New Brunswick.
The tariffs imposed by our own federal government risk harming our close working relationship with New Brunswick and, more significantly, the ability to keep the lights on in Aroostook County. In the event New Brunswick stops the flow of electricity into Maine, there is not enough generating capacity in Northern Maine to keep all the lights on; preserve all our food; keep all our heating systems energized; keep our stores open; keep our businesses running; and keep our citizens employed. It may be spring, but it’s still cold in Northern Maine.
As a lifelong Republican, I’m stunned that a Republican administration would initiate federal intervention in local markets. I never thought I would see the day when a Republican president would impose tariffs (taxes) to the detriment of hard-working, innocent Maine consumers. But things have changed.
It boggles the mind that we, as a nation, would turn on our most trusted ally. In border states across the country, we are driving a stake through local economies and even families. Border towns often behave as one large community. Frequently people live on one side of the border and work on the other. Families extend across the border.
In the case of Aroostook County and the Province of New Brunswick, our electric utilities share resources to the benefit of all the ratepayers of both utilities. If the tariffs imposed by Washington lead to New Brunswick retaliating by cutting off electricity to Maine, our northern residents will pay the price of this tariff war.
I urge all my friends and former colleagues to speak up and demand that our congressional delegation use all available resources to stop the president from putting innocent Maine consumers in the middle of his political battle with Ottawa and thereby risk plunging Aroostook County into darkness and a catastrophic black out.
