Not Clean, Not Green: Proposed CMP Corridor/NECEC An Environmental Disaster From Beginning To End

White privilege means living in a bubble that prevents us from knowing how our actions and our lifestyle harm people who don't look like us. Class privilege means living in a bubble that prevents us from knowing how our wealth was built on trampling the prosperity of others we either can't see or don't care about.

Rita & Tommy Monias and Amy Norman on their speaking tour. Photo source: Resist Megadams Facebook page

When the North American Megadam Resistance Alliance third annual Megadams = Megadamage Speaking Tour came to UMaine at Farmington November 25, I went because I wanted to learn more about the origins of the proposed CMP project New England "Clean" Energy Corridor (NECEC). Origins in the sense of, where does this electricity start out, and what is the cost to the environment of generating electric power in this fashion?

I learned that and much more, certainly more than I had anticipated.

The environmental devastation described by indigenous speakers from Labrador to Quebec to Manitoba was incredible, almost beyond belief.

Grandes Chutes today, after Hydro-Quebec’s Romaine River project that includes four megadams. 
Source: Megadams Resistance website

“Hydropower development has altered 50,000 square miles of land that my people used for millennia to hunt, fish and trap and gather.  We can longer practice our traditional ways like our ancestors before us,” Carlton Richards of Pimicikamak territory, an Indigenous youth activist said. 

“This is cultural genocide.” 

Because I live in Maine where hydro power dams dot the Kennebec River, I thought I understood the effects of flooding, erosion, and management (sometimes catastrophically bad) of the water flow. But any dam I've experienced is puny in comparison to the megadams that cover northern Canada. 

Imagine a dam that flooded a reservoir the size of Ireland.

Now imagine 80 of them.

Photo credit: Tommy Monias

Imagine watersheds drained to divert water through turbines that make wealthy people wealthier.

"2019. Flooding boreal forests for Muskrat Falls on the Churchill River"
Photo credit: North American Megadam Resistance Alliance - NAMRA

Imagine a flooded area with water bubbling with methane from the thousands of acres of trees drowned. How would it smell? Imagine it filled with methyl mercury released by the submerged forests. How would a food chain filled with concentrated mercury sustain life?


Imagine trying to practice traditional food harvesting of wildlife in a landscape that is literally no longer recognizable to the elders who received tens of thousands of years of accumulated wisdom about sustainable living in that place.

Photo credit: Tommy Monias

Imagine a frozen river that fluctuates up and down, creating air pockets between ice layers, and ridges of ice as tall as a person, invisible beneath the snow. Now imagine driving a snowmobile across it, hoping you guess correctly where the dangerous spots are.

Imagine driving a fishing boat through a river full of submerged islands and dead heads i.e. submerged trees trunks, hoping you don't hit one and die.

Photo credit: Tommy Monias

Noretta Miswaggon of Pimicikamak territory doesn't have to imagine any of the above, because it is reality for her family. They are at the receiving end of bad water management policies intended to generate huge profits, funded through bonds issued by Goldman Sachs and other profiteers. The "crown corporations" of Canada function like the odious private-public projects that neoliberals in the U.S. are so fond of: the cost and risks are borne by the public, while the profits flow to private investors. 

Rita and Tommy Monias, also of Pimicikamak territory, are elders who experienced traditional life along the waterways before the megadams ruined them. They spoke of their people paying for the electric power generated in every way possible, including exorbitant rates that subsidize cheap rates for U.S. customers. 

When Rita's granddaughter gets sores from swimming in murky, polluted water that has replaced a once pristine river she will never swim in or fish from, what compensation can there be? 




Amy Norman (speaking above) is a Labrador Land Protector who has been arrested many times for resisting megadams. She spoke of the food insecurity created by ruining traditional sustenance fishing and hunting grounds in remote areas where purchasing food is not within the reach of ordinary working people. She explained how methyl mercury moves from up the food chain to concentrate in the body fat of  fish and then seals -- and the Inuit who survive by hunting them. She observes of megadam generated hydropower,

"It's not clean, and it's not green."

Roberta Benefiel, Grand Riverkeeper of Labrador, explained that it's not cheap either. She's calculated that the cost out of a turbine at the Muskrat Falls project is 62 cents per kilowat hour while the selling price to U.S. customers is 5 cents. She wants us to know the truth about the allegations that hydro power is cheap or clean.

"We came down here because the purchasers of the power have the power to stop it."

Now that we, the purchasers, know the truth of why CMP wants to cut through the Maine woods to deliver Hydro-Quebec megadam power to customers in Massachusetts, we can help stop this environmental racism.

Here are resources to take action:

• Support opposition in Maine to the proposed CMP project NECEC
• Contact Maine legislators and Gov. Janet Mills to let them know you do not want the project built
• Attend the public hearing December 5 in Lewiston at 4pm at the Ramada Inn to testify to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of Energy about why you oppose construction of NECEC. (Submit written testimony by January 2020 if you are unable to attend.)
• Sign a petition to put NECEC before the voters in a referendum

Racism Is What Makes U.S. Wars, Pollution Invisible To Those Who Fund Them

Houdieda, Yemen September 9, 2016. © Abduljabbar Zeyad / Reuters

Racism is what makes U.S. wars around the planet largely invisible to those who fund them. We've payed to starve and bomb the people of Yemen for years now courtesy of U.S. good buddy Saudi Arabia, but who among us could find Yemen on a map?

Racism is what makes many in the U.S. label anyone with the hint of Middle Eastern origin or culture a "terrorist" when it's obvious that our government and its military (and militarized police) are the worst terrorists ever.

It's what covers for NATO when it upsets regimes that are providing for people in ways that a few years later sound like the best of times: clean water, no power outages, and health care systems intact (think Iraq here).

A scene from Gaza last week shows how Israel uses U.S. taxpayer support in the form of millions annually in military aid.

Racism is what makes most U.S. taxpayers turn a blind eye to Israel's genocidal policies in Gaza and the West Bank. Last week Israel passed an apartheid law establishing itself as a Jewish state with its capital in Jerusalem, and it issues maps wiping Palestine off the Earth -- but most here in the U.S. side with white Zionists over Arab Muslim or even Christian Palestinians.

Racism is also what makes the most dire effects of pollution and climate change invisible to those who cause them. 

Malecon, Cuba beach cleanup

The people who live in the Dominican Republic and Bua are brown and black and speak Spanish, so who cares if "their" ocean is covered with trash, right? I would say put the indigenous grandmothers back in charge but sadly Taino/Arawak people were wiped out by genocide after Columbus landed here first.

Will racism lead most polluters to continue ignoring this problem because (for now) it presents in places where the population is mostly not white?

Map from Parley for the Oceans

Most people in the U.S. cannot see racism because they are white, and they don't believe they suffer from it.



Liberals will react with horror when the annual Unite the Right rally occurs next month in Washington DC, the very heart of white supremacist government. Last year's rally in Charlottesville, Virginia (which is nearby) resulted in violence against people of color and a white counter demonstrator being killed when a white nationalist drove his car into the crowd. Afterwards, the demagogue with bad hair said from the White House that there were some "fine people" in Unite the Right.

Racism is what keeps most white people silent, and allows a vocal minority to claim their hate speech represents majority opinion.


Sadly, that's not far from true. Brown, black and Native children have been torn from their families for years, and they have inter-generational trauma to show for it. Brown, black and indigenous families continue to suffer under the militarized terror regimes our taxes support.




A lot of jokes have been made about the so-called Second Civil War coming. This video of police officers brutalizing brown children in El Paso, Texas brought that phrase to mind for me. 

I think this is what the Second Civil War will look like: heavily armed state agents battling young people who scare them by not acting scared enough.


Unfortunately, most people in the U.S. will side with the highly militarized police when the time comes. So did the Germans. And look where that got them.

Guest Post: Elizabeth Ann Mitchell, Penobscot, On Why She Disrupted Janet Mills With Some Truth

Elizabeth Ann Mitchell at center.  Photo credit: Carl D. Walsh, Portland Press Herald

This Saturday, June 10, water protectors led by the Penobscot Nation will gather at the river in Bangor to show their determination to protect their water from the state of Maine. Attorney General Janet Mills has absurdly claimed that the Penobscot's ancestral fishing rights do not include control of the waterways that their canoes were designed for, and the conflict came to a head in Portland at last weekend's Democratic Party "truth" rally.

Today's guest post by Elizabeth Ann Mitchell explains why she confronted Mills and what happened after that. Her account was first published on facebook.

(Written June 3, 2017)

We never really talk about what it means to be an activist. Some days you show up to a rally and you just end up holding a sign, or following a chant that someone starts. I think that we see activism how it is portrayed in the movies.

Sometimes, we forget that being an activist is maybe one of the most dangerous things that you'll partake in, in your lifetime.

I'm not saying this to be dramatic because life is dramatic enough as it is. I think we forget that people die for less. Die for just having different colored skin.

 Janet Mills continued speaking as her supporters roughed up protesters
at Portland, Maine "March for Truth" rally 

Today I got a reminder of how dangerous activism is. I was reminded of how the world looks at me. Today, I got called a bitch. I got called useless, worthless, a disgrace, disgusting, disrespectful, rude. I had more people than I could count on two hands and two feet approach me and violate my personal boundaries and use physical force against me. Men using their strength to silence me. Women would grab my arm and when I snatched it back, cried out for the help of a man to come save them from me.

Today I was given a literal shove back into reality.

Activism is nothing like you see on TV. You can't just stand up in front of a crowd and expect everyone to sing Kumbaya at the end of your speech. Most of the time, people demonize you and decide that it's their job to take you down because you're too loud, or you're too angry, or your “disrespectful”, or “rude”. Or you just don't “have the right” to do it. Today I remembered that activism is scary. Today I remember that being an activist means putting your hands in the air and smiling at the waiting mob, ready tear you to pieces once the first punch is thrown.

Mentally preparing yourself and your body for what may come, while speaking the truth, which is their trigger to hurt you.

Photo shared by Marena Blanchard, who posted it with
some useful links to readings on environmental racism.

I didn't know what to expect going to the rally. All I knew is that I was going to say the things that nobody else wants to. To say the things that everyone needs to hear but doesn't want to hear. I knew that I had a message for Janet Mills but I didn't know how I was going to deliver it. I decided to walk up to the podium today because I realized that my message needed to be heard not only by her, but by everybody. The rally was for truth apparently so I figured they had the right to know the truth too.

The truth is, Attorney General Janet Mills is trying to steal the rights to the Penobscot river, from my people. The State of Maine took Penobscot land, Penobscot children, and now they want to take the Penobscot river.

We are people of the river; our lives are interwoven with its fate. Just like it's every Mainer's responsibility to hold their leadership accountable, it is my responsibility to stand for the water, for Nebi.

Elizabeth Ann Mitchell at center and Maine Attorney General Janet Mills at far right.
Photo credit: Carl D. Walsh, Portland Press Herald. 

I took the platform today because I had the opportunity to. It was the perfect opportunity. A crowd of over 100 people with news photographers, and reporters with cameras. My message could be spread who knows how far with these tools at my disposal for the first time. We forget that indigenous peoples do not have platforms like Janet Mills. We almost never get recognition for our truth because we are continuously silenced. These platforms don't exist for us for a reason.

Youth water protector Luke Sekera with mic being supported to speak by Elizabeth Ann Mitchell.
Banner by ARRT! Photo credit: Dorcas Ngaliema

Today I got to see the kind of a person our Maine attorney general is. She's the kind of person who would allow a mob of angry men to assault young women of color without batting an eye. The kind of woman who allows her dedicated followers to use violence against the people who expose her. The kind of woman who has the power to stop a mob but allows it to escalate anyway.

photo credit: Dorcas Ngaliema

The article that was written in the Portland Press Herald forgot a whole part of my message. They forgot that at the end of the rally I spoke again. At the end of the rally I reminded everybody that I was there out of love. That I wasn't there to be “disrespectful” or “rude”.

I was there for Nebi. I was there because I stand for the water. I was there to remind people that water is life.

I was there to remind people that we are destroying our Mother Earth. I was there to remind folks that my people are still fighting for what is rightfully ours. That we cannot live without water. I was reminding people of how sacred water is, and how we need to protect it from people like Janet Mills.

Sometimes love comes in the form of radical truth.

"It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains."
-Assata Shakur

Check out my friend Marena's post on the action:
https://www.facebook.com/marenafaith/posts/10101707882407024

TAKE ACTION:

1. Show up for the Indigenous leadership protecting water in Maine: https://www.facebook.com/events/101752987077517/?acontext=%7B%22action_history%22%3A%22null%22%7D

2. Follow Dawnland Environmental Defense and donate to the ongoing legal battle.

3. Watch a video to educate yourself about this issue: http://www.sunlightmediacollective.org/index.…/the-penobscot

4. Follow Sunlight Media Collective on Facebook.

5. Follow the efforts of No Juniper Ridge Megadump Expansion, another issue also affecting the water and our Indigenous family in Maine.

6. Also follow Community Water Justice and get involved in the struggle against corporate water mining in Maine.

Dawnland Environmental Defense
Community Water Justice
Sunlight Media Collective
No Juniper Ridge Megadump Expansion

#speaktruthtopower
#waterislife