By Nikki Chiappa and Elizabeth McCarthy

The National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) is a major source of permitting delay for important clean energy infrastructure. NEPA lawsuits, filed disproportionately by large environmental NGOs, pose a real, sizable, and concerning risk to clean energy development and the future of American decarbonization. The most contentious NEPA challenges filed between 2013 and 2022, on average, delayed clean energy projects by just under 4 years. The majority of those lawsuits were filed by a small set of national NGOs who lost upwards of 70% of their cases. 

In most cases, NEPA litigation functions to delay and add cost to infrastructure development, not to improve environmental outcomes. The fight against the Tule Wind project shows how easily NEPA lends legitimacy to conspiracy theorists working to quash clean energy projects with misinformation.

This is the fourth installment of our ongoing series exposing the toll that the NEPA litigation doom loop takes on development of clean energy infrastructure in the United States. Stay tuned for future installments.

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Fringe conspiracy theorists love to hate electromagnetic frequency, or “EMF” for short. Despite an overwhelming body of scientific evidence refuting the claim, those donning tinfoil hats often blame EMF for everything from cancer to COVID-19. In the Imperial Valley, activists have put their own spin on “EMF poisoning”, claiming wind turbines emit “dirty electricity” that causes ailments like cancer, diabetes, and ADHD. At least that's the narrative pushed by Backcountry Against Dumps (BAD), a group that has weaponized environmental laws like NEPA to force federal agencies and judges to repeatedly debunk these unfounded theories. 

The story of Tule Wind begins in 2004, when the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) authorized Iberdrola to conduct environmental testing on land designated for a wind energy project. Designed to generate enough clean electricity to power 40,000 homes, Tule Wind was divided into two phases: Phase I, featuring 62 turbines on BLM-managed land, and Phase II, which would erect 24 turbines on land belonging to the Ewiiaapaayp Band of Kumeyaay Indians. BLM spent eight years conducting an exhaustive review of the project's environmental impacts, culminating in a 6,000-page NEPA analysis. Simultaneously, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) approved the lease between the developer and the Ewiiaapaayp Band of Kumeyaay Indians for Phase II, issuing its final decision in late 2013. Initially, construction was estimated to last about 2 years. But thanks to BAD’s slew of NEPA challenges, the project wasn’t energized until 2018.

BAD’s founder, Donna Tisdale, first took legal action against Phase I in 2014, claiming in part that BLM had failed to adequately assess the health impacts of Inaudible Infrasound and Low Frequency Noise (ILFN) as well as Electric and Magnetic Field (EMF) radiation. Her allegations linked wind turbines to everything from cancer to chronic fatigue syndrome, claiming they generated "dirty electricity." Unsurprisingly, Tisdale lost the case and the subsequent appeal, with the courts affirming that the agency adequately assessed her claims about EMF exposure and found them to be inconsistent with real, published science.

Undeterred by her defeat, Tisdale pivoted to Phase II of the Tule Wind project, which was located on the Ewiiaapaayp Band's tribal land. She abandoned her concern for EMF radiation, alleging instead that by approving the project, BIA granted the tribe permission to slaughter golden eagles—an accusation that, if true, would constitute a federal crime. Her legal team attempted to draw parallels with Anderson v. Evans, a case involving the government's authorization of whale hunting by a tribe. However, the judge dismissed the argument as absurd, stating that it “...ignores how our bureaucratic government works.” Predictably, Tisdale lost both the case and the subsequent appeal.

Comically, Tisdale’s anti-wind crusade is riddled with contradictions and tainted by self-interest. 

Despite her vocal opposition to wind turbines and their supposed health risks, she operates a private windmill on her own ranch—seemingly unbothered by the “dirty electricity” she claims to fear.

Furthermore, BAD’s track record suggests a pattern of opportunistic legal maneuvers aimed at extracting settlement fees rather than advancing legitimate environmental protections. In 2012, her organization secured $17.2 million from a settlement related to the Sunrise Powerlink project. Those funds were later used by her family to acquire farmland previously slated for a solar development—which were purchased at a bargain rate in exchange for dropping their opposition to another solar farm.

In reality, Tisdale’s legal onslaughts have less to do with protecting public health or the environment and more to do with obstruction. At best, these lawsuits are a distraction from real environmental issues; at worst, they’re an opportunistic exploitation of the legal system that hinders clean energy development. That NEPA, and other permitting bureaucracies, can be so easily scammed, manipulated, and weaponized, by conspiratorial and pseudoscientific litigation, like those from BAD, underlines how badly we need permitting reform. Tisdale’s motivations for taking Tule Wind hostage are dramatically different from the National Parks Conservation Association’s delaying the Skurry-Skifes Creek-Whealton transmission line, or the Sierra Club’s hamstringing the North Sky River Wind project, but all three demonstrate the ease by which motivated parties can hijack clean energy projects for spurious causes.

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The National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) is a major source of permitting delay for important clean energy infrastructure. NEPA lawsuits, filed disproportionately by large environmental NGOs, pose a real, sizable, and concerning risk to clean energy development and the future of American decarbonization. The most contentious NEPA challenges filed between 2013 and 2022, on average, delayed clean energy projects by just under 4 years. The majority of those lawsuits were filed by a small set of national NGOs who lost upwards of 70% of their cases. 

In most cases, NEPA litigation functions to delay and add cost to infrastructure development, not to improve environmental outcomes. The fight against the Surry-Skiffes Creek-Whealton transmission lines showcases how these lawsuits can even be weaponized to derail national climate policy.

This is the third installment of our ongoing series exposing the toll that the NEPA litigation doom loop takes on development of clean energy infrastructure in the United States. Stay tuned for future installments.

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Surry-Skiffes Creek-Whealton 

For decades the Yorktown Power Station and Chesapeake Power Station pumped nearly 3 million tons of carbon into the air every year in Hampton Roads, Virginia. The Clean Air Task Force estimated the two coal plants were responsible for 1,400 asthma attacks and 83 deaths per year. Like most coal plants, they were located in marginalized communities, meaning the most vulnerable bore the brunt of the burden of this pollution.

When the Environmental Protection Agency issued new air quality rules in 2011, Dominion Energy faced a choice: invest $1 billion in scrubbers to keep the plants online or decommission them entirely. Dominion chose the latter—a victory for local residents who had long suffered from the plants' pollution.

Activists hailed the closures as a major win. The Executive Director of Sierra Club proclaimed “Local activists and everyday Virginians have been working for years to ensure that plants like these get cleaned up or phased out; today they all celebrate this victory." 

But the closure of the Yorktown and Chesapeake plants created a new problem: how to deliver reliable, clean power to nearly 285,000 customers and two major military bases. Dominion’s solution was the Surry-Skiffes Creek-Whealton Transmission line. The project included 3 parts: 7.76 miles of new transmission lines delivering power from a nearby nuclear plant, a new switching station, and 20.2 miles of new transmission lines from the switching station to a substation. Initially estimated to cost $155 million and take approximately 12 months to build, the project was quickly hamstrung by permitting delays.

In 2012, Dominion Energy began gathering permits from local, state and federal authorities. Both the state utility commission and the regional transmission organization greenlit the project and bolstered Dominion’s initial assessment that the line was necessary for reliability. Concurrently, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers conducted the NEPA analysis.

The project was contentious, drawing criticism from preservationists who objected to the 17  transmission towers crossing the James River near Historic Jamestown. Their concern: the towers would mar the scenic view. “There are places in the watershed where you can look and see it pretty much as it was 400 years ago, and this stretch of the river is one of those places,” the director of programs for the Chesapeake Conservancy told the Bay Journal. 

The environmentalists pushed for an alternative: burying the lines under the river, to the tune of $310 million, using cutting edge technology that would destroy known oyster habitats. Desperate to preserve the view, they even commissioned a study suggesting that the Yorktown plant remain online. However, the cost and technological challenges made the underground option impractical, and keeping the coal plant running would have violated the EPA’s new clean air standards. Additional suggestions were even further detached from the realities of grid management, as noted by both Dominion and PJM.

Despite opposition, the project garnered support from local leaders including Charles City County, the Hampton Roads Economic Development Alliance, and the Charles City County Center for Local History. The Director of the county’s history center shared during a hearing:

“It is the national interest in clean air that stands behind Dominion's determination to retire coal-fired plants. It is the national interest in a failsafe electrical grid that stands behind Dominion's determination to construct a 500 KV line.

Both those national interests are threatened by further delay. We are confident, based on our participation in the SCC proceeding and our familiarity with the volumes of evidence submitted, that the negative impact on Carter's Grove and the Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail, while unfortunate, are relatively minor. And that in this case, the national interest in historic preservation must bow to the national interest in clean energy and grid reliability.”

Ultimately, Dominion Energy moved forward with the project as designed, but not without concessions. The company donated nearly $90 million to historic preservation projects in the region, aiming to mitigate concerns. Shortly thereafter, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued the project’s final permit, 3 years later than anticipated. Because of the delay, the Department of Energy had to issue a temporary exemption to its new clean air standards to allow the Yorktown plant to stay online.

What followed was a saga of legal theater. In 2017, the National Parks Conservation Association, National Trust for Historic Preservation, and Preservation Virginia filed a lawsuit against the Army Corps of Engineers, demanding a more extensive NEPA review. The judge denied the request to pause construction and later rejected their argument entirely. The conservation groups appealed. The line was built and energized on February 26th, 2019. In a convoluted ruling on March 1st, 2019, the Circuit Court reversed the previous opinion, ordering the Army Corps to conduct a more extensive review.

The Army Corps was then put in the unique position of conducting an environmental review for a project that was already built. Today, the line is still delivering reliable power to the community but the Environmental Impact Statement isn’t finished. The 189 page draft, however, confirmed what had been clear from the start: the Surry-Skiffes Creek-Whealton transmission line was the lowest-impact, most feasible option all along. The price tag, however, has ballooned to $435 million—nearly three times the original estimate. And ratepayers are responsible for the bill.

This case exemplifies the dysfunction of NEPA litigation. NEPA, a tool intended to bolster environmental protection, is so often misused to delay projects without achieving meaningful environmental improvements. In the case of the Surry-Skiffes Creek-Whealton transmission line, winning the legal battle simply meant producing more paperwork—paperwork that has not and likely will not change the project. That’s exactly why NEPA cannot be the guardian of environmental justice that many believe it to be. 

Paperwork and bureaucratic delays do not provide protection; only clear and enforceable policies, like the EPA’s air quality rules, can do that.

Stay tuned for future installments of NEPA Nightmares.

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• 6/11/2012: Dominion applies to the Virginia State Corporation Commission (SCC) for a Certificate of Public Necessity and Convenience (CPCN)

• 8/9/2013: Dominion submits application to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, initiating the NEPA process

• 11/26/13: The Virginia SCC grants CPCN

• 4/16/2015: The Virginia Supreme Court directs Dominion to secure approval from James City County for small stretch of land not covered by the SCC’s CPCN

• 4/24/2017: Dominion signs mitigation agreement

• 6/12/2017: The Army Corps of Engineers issues finalized NEPA documents

• 6/13/2017: PJM requests MATS exemption for Yorktown coal plant

• 7/12/2017: Plaintiffs file initial complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia seeking a preliminary injunction 

• 8/1/2017: Construction is scheduled to start

• 10/20/2017: The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia denies motion for preliminary injunction

• 5/24/2018: The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia confirms a robust EIS was not necessary to comply with NEPA

• 2/26/2019: The Skiffes Creek project is energized 

• 3/1/2019: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia overrules the prior District Court ruling and directs the Corps to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement

• 6/21/2019: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issues Notice of Intent to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement

• 11/27/2020: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers publishes draft Environmental Impact Statement

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By Nikki Chiappa and Elizabeth McCarthy

The National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) is a major source of permitting delay for important clean energy infrastructure. NEPA lawsuits, filed disproportionately by large environmental NGOs, pose a real, sizable, and concerning risk to clean energy development and the future of American decarbonization. The most contentious NEPA challenges filed between 2013 and 2022, on average, delayed clean energy projects by just under 4 years. The majority of those lawsuits were filed by a small set of national NGOs who lost upwards of 70% of their cases. 

In most cases, NEPA litigation functions to delay and add costs to infrastructure development, not to improve environmental outcomes. In the case of North Sky River Wind Energy Project, activist opposition to the project was purely obstructionist, aiming not to modify  the project but to impose more paperwork and hurdles for the development.

Perpetual litigation delays projects, driving up costs that are ultimately passed on to consumers through higher utility bills. Developers are often reluctant to disclose these costs, making it hard to precisely quantify the full impact. 

This is the second installment of our ongoing series exposing the toll that the NEPA litigation doom loop takes on development of clean energy infrastructure in the United States. Stay tuned for future installments.

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Case Study 2: North Sky River Wind Energy Project 

Kern County has long been the backbone of California’s energy sector, historically producing most of the state’s oil and gas. With one in seven jobs in the county tied to oil, the industry has been the bedrock of the local economy. While the industry has bolstered a proud middle class, it has also made the county vulnerable to fluctuations in the price of crude oil and left residents to grapple with some of the highest rates of air pollution in the country. In recent years, Kern has made bold strides toward diversifying its economy by becoming California’s leading producer of wind and solar energy. Although solar projects have waned in popularity due to minimal tax benefit, wind energy now generates more tax revenue for Kern County than both oil and gas.

Yet, this shift hasn’t been without challenges. While county officials recognize the economic benefit of renewables, some in the community have been harder to convince. Developers of the North Sky River Wind Project faced this challenge head-on. Despite earnest public engagement, NEPA afforded a small group of disgruntled activists power to delay the project. While their efforts were ultimately unsuccessful, this case study illustrates precisely how NEPA enables obstruction.

The fight for North Sky began in 2010. Situated next to an existing wind farm in the Sierra Nevada range, the project was designed to generate enough energy to power over 40,000 homes. In light of past opposition to wind projects on public land in the area, developers signed deals with 29 independent landowners to build the turbines exclusively on private land. Not only did this ensure community buy-in, it lessened the permitting burden. Most of the project was exempted from federal permitting processes, save for a 10-mile stretch of public land requiring approval from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

Developers simultaneously initiated the state and federal permitting processes. Kern County led the state-level review and spent almost 6 months producing a 5 volume environmental assessment. The county fielded 61 public comment letters in response and spent 2 months gathering information to address each. Some community objections, like the claim that turbines would cause epileptic seizures, were absurd and quickly debunked by experts. More serious concerns focused on the project's impact on local bird populations. The county’s thorough, 117 page avian assessment found that “the studies to date do not suggest that a wind development at the NSR Project would have significant impacts to most avian species.” With a few mitigation measures and a promise from developers to continue studying the issue, the County Board of Supervisors approved the project.

Simultaneously, the BLM conducted a NEPA analysis for the 10 mile stretch of public land needed to connect the wind farm to existing grid infrastructure. Since the project required only 962 feet of new road development, the BLM determined the environmental impact would be minimal and swiftly granted the permit.

Shortly thereafter, the Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity, and Defenders of Wildlife sued the BLM to stop the project, claiming it would kill too many birds. Significantly, they did not seek to alter the project itself but instead demanded more paperwork. They argued that the BLM’s NEPA analysis should cover the entire 13,000 acre project—an analysis that would have taken years. This was a clear attempt to delay construction long enough to financially cripple the project. 

The District Court for the Eastern District of California rejected their argument, noting that the plaintiffs were likely vying for more paperwork to simply pave the way for another lawsuit, writing:

Plaintiffs' contention that BLM unlawfully failed to conduct a full EIS and instead issued a FONSI appears to center more on the formalities of procedure rather than on environmental benefits potentially lost. While it is no doubt true that Plaintiffs disagree with the outcome of the state process, the court has no facts before it to conclude that requiring BLM to produce an EIS that takes into account the environmental impacts of the Wind Project would produce anything more than an opportunity for Plaintiffs to advance the same arguments on the same facts that were advanced in the state CEQA process.

The North Sky River Wind Project became fully operational in December 2012, as scheduled, but the legal battle stretched into 2015, albeit unsuccessfully for the plaintiffs. 

The North Sky River Wind legal battle demonstrates how NEPA lawsuits can be a tool used by activists to delay projects, not to legitimately improve environmental outcomes. These delays aim to drive up the costs of infrastructure projects until they become too high a burden for developers. While NEPA does not offer citizens and activists an outright veto, by allowing groups to hijack development projects, the law sanctions well-funded organizations to try to limit crucial clean energy, transmission, and other infrastructural projects.

Stay tuned for future installments of NEPA Nightmares.

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• 12/16/2010: Initiation of the Permitting Process 

• 5/6/2011: Kern County releases Draft Environmental Impact Report 

• July 27, 2011: Kern County publishes Final EIR with response to public comments 

• 8/11/2011: Kern County Board of Supervisors approves FEIR, authorizing the project to move forward

• 2/1/2012: California Public Utilities Commission approves 25-year power purchase agreement

• 3/15/2012: California Endangered Species Act Incidental Take Permit Approved

• 4/13/2012:  Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity, and Defenders of Wildlife file complaint in the District Court for the Eastern District of California

• December 2012: The North Sky River Wind Energy Project becomes fully operational

• 1/11/2013: District Court for the Eastern District of California rules in favor of BLM

• 3/15/2013: Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity, and Defenders of Wildlife appeal their case to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals 

• 5/27/2015: 9th Circuit Court of Appeals affirms ruling by District Court in favor of BLM

By Nikki Chiappa

The Biden administration ushered in a new age of climate optimism. The Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law included billions of dollars for investment in clean energy research and deployment. But while they were lauded by environmentalists as transformational upon their passage, these bills have quickly run into the buzzsaw of punishing regulations, proceduralist permitting hoops, and litigious environmentalists. 

For the Biden admin climate funding to achieve its objectives, the United States will need to rapidly expand construction of both clean energy production and energy transmission. Until the procedural barriers are lifted, more and more public resources will be spent not towards infrastructure and technology, but on regulatory approval processes and legal delay.

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is a major source of this delay. NEPA lawsuits, filed disproportionately by large environmental NGOs, pose a real, sizable, and concerning risk to clean energy development and the future of American decarbonization. The most contentious NEPA challenges filed between 2013 and 2022, on average, delayed clean energy projects by just under 4 years. The majority of those lawsuits were filed by a small set of national NGOs who lost upwards 70% of their cases. In other words, these cases function to delay and add costs to infrastructure development, not to improve environmental outcomes.

Claims made against clean energy projects and transmission lines are often outrageous. From NIMBYs to conspiracy theorists, crusaders often weaponize NEPA to undermine state and federal clean energy targets. And the impact can be catastrophic.

Perpetual litigation delays projects, driving up costs that are ultimately passed on to consumers through higher utility bills. Developers are often reluctant to disclose these costs, making it hard to precisely quantify the full impact. 

In this ongoing series, we’ll expose the toll that the NEPA litigation doom loop takes on development of clean energy infrastructure in the United States.

Case Study 1: New England Clean Energy Connect

Two environmental nonprofits and three fossil fuel companies partnered to convince residents of Maine that a transmission line was bad for the environment. After 21 months of legal antics, the power line is finally being built. New Englanders will likely have to pay $500 million as a result.

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Nearly half of energy supplied to New Englanders comes from natural gas. That’s about 20% more than other regions in the United States. A recent report from the Sierra Club and Strategen found that this outsized dependence has historically driven up utility bills in the region, not to mention carbon emissions.

In an effort to correct course, every state in the region has set renewable energy and greenhouse gas reduction targets. In 2017, the state of Massachusetts awarded the New England Clean Energy Connect (NECEC) transmission line a long term contract to help realize those goals. This project, stretching from Quebec through Maine to Massachusetts, promised to deliver hydropower to 1.2 million homes in the region, reducing carbon emissions by about 3.6 million metric tons annually—the equivalent of taking 767,000 gas-powered cars off the road.

Project developers spent 3 years gathering a slew of approvals from state and federal authorities before construction could begin. While most of the project was set to run through Massachusetts, obtaining permission for a small stretch of the line through Maine proved the most challenging. In part, because the project was a point of controversy for Mainers. After an exhaustive 29-month review, which included six hearings and two nights of public testimony, the Maine Department of Environmental Protection (MDEP) granted the project’s final permit. Despite intense public scrutiny, the MDEP ultimately determined that the project would have minimal adverse impacts.

Shortly thereafter, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Council of Maine and the Appalachian Mountain Club filed a lawsuit to stop the project. They targeted a minor permit—a NEPA analysis from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers covering just 1.9% of the project. The group alleged it would cause harm “...not only to aquatic resources but also the surrounding forest and wildlife." The Court determined that neither the Corp’s 164-page analysis nor the Maine Department of Environmental Protection 239 page analysis found that to be true. The plaintiffs lost the case and the ensuing appeal. Still, the group managed to delay construction for 5 months.

When activists failed in Federal Court, they pivoted to the court of public opinion. An unlikely coalition of environmental nonprofits and fossil fuel interests rallied to kill the transmission line with a creative ballot initiative. Three companies with vested interests in Maine’s fossil fuel industry raised almost $28 million in support—a move later investigated by the Maine Ethics Commission.

The campaign against the NECEC included a range of questionable talking points. The Sierra Club of Maine questioned the NECEC’s climate impact, dismissing hydropower as a “greenwashed energy source.” While hydropower isn’t without its environmental challenges, a study of neighboring facilities found that after 25 years of operation, the plant would emit half the carbon emissions of a natural gas fueled equivalent. Simultaneously, the Natural Resources Council of Maine echoed the talking points that repeatedly failed in court, claiming the transmission line “would forever harm Maine’s woods, waters, & wildlife.” Despite over 300 pages of state and federal environmental analysis proving otherwise, the majority of Mainers were convinced the transmission line would destroy the environment and voted to stop it. 

On April 20, 2023, a unanimous jury ruled the ballot measure was unconstitutional. Construction resumed shortly thereafter, but 21 months of aimless legal delays increased the cost of the project by almost 50%. Now, the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities must figure out how the residents of Massachusetts will pay the almost $500 million bill.

This saga highlights a painful truth: NEPA lawsuits effectively grant veto power to any organization with the resources to mount a legal challenge, regardless of fact, science or reality. NEPA broadly serves an important role in environmental protection, but can be weaponized to undermine the very progress it seeks to ensure.

Stay tuned for future installments of NEPA Nightmares.

Timeline of Delay: 

• 8/28/2017: Permitting process initiated by Central Maine Power Company filing a Notice of Intent with the Maine Department of Environmental Protection

• 10/13/2017: Maine Land Use Planning Commission initiates review of development application 

• 3/28/2017: NECEC wins long term contract via Massachusetts Green Communities Act Section 83D RFP

• 6/13//2018: Central Maine Power Company files Transmission Service Agreement at FERC

• 5/3/2019: Maine Public Utilities Commission (MPUC) grants Central Maine Power Company’s (CMP) request for a certificate of public convenience and necessity (CPCN) 

• 5/11/2020: Maine Department of Environmental Protection approves state land use permits

• 7/2020: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issues Environmental Assessment and Finding of No Significant Impact

• 10/27/2020: Sierra Club, Natural resources Council of Maine and Appalachian Mountain Club file lawsuit challenging the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Environmental Assessment and requesting a preliminary injunction

• 11/6/2020: The U.S. Department of the Army issues Permit 

• 12/16/2020: U.S. District Court denies Sierra Club, Natural resources Council of Maine and Appalachian Mountain Clubs’ request for preliminary injunction

• 1/1/2021: Department of Energy issues a Presidential Permit allowing for the construction, operation, maintenance, and connection of the cross-border transmission line

• 1/14/2021: Department of Energy issues an Environmental Assessment and Finding of No Significant Impact

• 1/15/2021: The U.S. Court of Appeals grants a preliminary injunction while Sierra Club, Natural resources Council of Maine and Appalachian Mountain Clubs’ appealed case against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is heard

• 2/9/2021: Construction starts on segments 2 and 3

• 3/26/2021: Sierra Club, Natural resources Council of Maine and Appalachian Mountain Club file a second complaint, adding a challenge to the Department of Energy’s Environmental Assessment to their case against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

• 5/13/2021: U.S. Court of Appeals reverses the previously granted preliminary injunction 

• 11/2/2021: Mainers vote to halt construction of the transmission line

• 11/19/2021: Gov. Janet Mills releases a formal letter confirming election results and bringing a complete halt to construction of NECEC 

• 4/20/2023: Maine jury unanimously decides the 2021 ballot initiative was unconstitutional

• 8/21/2023: Construction restarts

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