PORTLAND, Maine — Emera and neighbors of a proposed substation on Woodbury Road in Bar Harbor have settled complaints with state regulators and in court with a plan to move the project to a site on Prospect Avenue.
The Maine Public Utilities Commission voted Tuesday to dismiss the complaint at the request of attorney and lead complainant Arthur Greif, who wrote that the benefits of the new location and construction outweigh the expected higher cost of construction.
“It was decided early in the process that a large open air substation was particularly ill-suited for the initially chosen location on Woodbury Road,” Greif wrote to state utility regulators last week. “Woodbury Road is within a quarter of a mile of Acadia National Park, and the open air substation, as designed, would have been visible from any number of scenic points within Acadia National Park.”
A local committee and Emera agreed earlier this year to move the substation to the new location, after neighbors filed formal complaints with state regulators and in Hancock County Superior Court in July 2014.
Greif wrote that the company settled a court appeal with the Maine Supreme Judicial Court by giving up its building permit for the Woodbury Road site. He urged the PUC to approve the new location as well, which will come up in separate ratemaking hearings for the utility.
Greif argued the new location would have less of an impact on the surrounding neighborhood, would be closer to the projected area of load growth and would avoid the likelihood of subjecting the utility to future court battles over the project.
PUC Chairman Mark Vannoy said Tuesday he recommended dismissal as the cause of the complaint — the Woodbury Road location — is no longer in play.
The company estimated that building at Prospect Road would cost about $8.5 million, which is $1 million more than the estimate of a similarly designed substation at the Woodbury site.
The company had originally proposed an open-air design that it estimated would have cost about $5 million, according to filings with the PUC.