East-West Corridor Raises Questions For Coastal Maine

A 220-mile pipeline project across the state of Maine continues to raise questions. The project is being promoted by a Portland, Maine construction company that has built pipelines and bridges in other states. Critics have said details of how it would be funded and built, and the precise location of the route, have not been released by the company, Cianbro Corporation.

Several Maine towns have made formal statements in opposition to the project. Their complaints are focused on the decrease in property values, damaged quality of life, disruption of human and animal habitat and the fear of the use of eminent domain to force people off their land. The project is being promoted as a highway for trucks crossing the state from eastern Canada near Calais to Maine’s eastern border with Canada just above New Hampshire at Coburn Gore. However, critics such as Chris Buchanan, with the group Defending Water and stopthecorridor.org, said the project would build multiple pipelines for utilities, oil, gas, water, etc., with a highway over it. Buchanan said she is concerned the pipelines will be a means of extracting Maine’s clean water resources for export. And she said she is concerned about potential impacts on water quality, in a state with a large number of brooks, streams, rivers, wetlands and lakes – fresh water that empties into the estuaries and coastal waterways. The full range of fisheries in coastal Maine would be at the deposition point following any misjudgments or mishaps on the highway or in the pipelines, Buchanan said.

Construction of the proposed highway, 500 to 2,000 feet wide, and its potential impact on waterways, is of concern to others as well. Jym St. Pierre, with a group called Restore the North Woods, is a vocal opponent of the East-West Corridor. St. Pierre has written that the proposed Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Agreement could undermine health and environmental protections.