Aroostook Renewable Gateway GIS

The Aroostook Renewable Gateway

 a project of LS Power 

Any discrepancies in the proposed Gateway route data result from LS Power's unwillingness to disclose its GIS layers

Proposed Gateway route data created by Protect Maine Farmland

GIS spatial data provided by the Maine Geolibrary

GIS analysis and this Story Map by College of the Atlantic

LS Power Proposed Gateway Map

Proposed Gateway GIS Map

The corridor as depicted is 150 feet wide. Towers were generated 1800 feet apart. The tower height is 125 feet.

This map is interactive

This map is interactive

This map is interactive

• Considerations not included on the LSPower Constraints or GIS maps
  • Places of Cultural and Historic significance
  • Homes, businesses, and other structures (but can be seen on the aerial imagery)
  • Rare plant communities
  • Geological resources
  • Floodplains
  • Steep slopes
  • Other infrastructure
  • Recreation

LS Power Constraints Maps

 The full set of LS Power constraints maps are available here 

The proposed LS Power transmission corridor impacts many natural resources. 

According to State resource maps, almost a quarter (23%) of the southeast proposed corridor would directly impact farmland. This proposed section of the corridor alone would include 620 acres of either prime farmland soils and/or soils of statewide importance.

This part of the proposed corridor would also impact significant amounts of wildlife habitat and biodiversity: 5% of its length would be over wetlands (138 acres including 4 acres of river crossings) as well as 4 acres of designated waterfowl habitat. 

In terms of its wider effect on wetlands (particularly regarding the spread of herbicidal sprays, water temperature, etc) a full 38% of its length would intersect wetland habitats. 210 acres (8%) would specifically impact known deer wintering areas. Most significantly, 3% of the corridor would impact the known habitat of listed species of special concern (constituting ~87 acres of their habitat). 

This part of the proposed corridor would also threaten to modify existing aquifers by drilling its pylons across 92 acres of aquifers, including in known PFAS-affected townships.

 These statistics show the impacts for just one of the two possible southern corridor pathways and do not even include the enormous northern section. They were calculated using ArcGIS to directly compare the pathway of the proposed Southeast transmission corridor with State natural resource maps. However, they underrepresent the impacts as many of our resources remain unmapped by the State. 

The acreage affected was calculated including a conservative "buffer" of  225 feet on each side of the 150-foot pylon pathway (so a 600-foot corridor effect, amounting to 2,760 acres) but this is also likely an underestimation as the effects of the cleared transmission corridor will no doubt extend beyond this. 

These statistics do not include the visual impact of the corridor and its towers on the landscape.

 Video Tutorial 

GIS Layers shown above were acquired from the Maine Geolibrary by downloading them

• In addition to those shown above, other Map Layers include
  • Town Boundaries
  • County Boundaries
  • Parcels for organized and unorganized territories
  • Roads-E911, Railroads
  • Schools, Airports, Boat Launches
  • Watersheds, HUC 12

Data was organized, processed, and analyzed using ArcGIS from

ArcGIS tools used to process the data include

• Buffer was used to
  • Create a 150 ft wide buffer polygon based on the Gateway route line
• Extract by Attributes was used to
  • Select only the towns the Gateway passes through
• Clip was used to
  • Extract and limit the data layers from state-wide data to data within 2 miles of the Gateway
• Dissolve was used to
  • Agragate some of the more complex layers such as Wetlands and Prime Farmland
  • (for the purposes of cartography and labeling)
• Georeference
  • The process used by Protect Maine Farmland to get the LSPower map images into GIS
• Edit-Digitize
  • The process used by Protect Maine Farmland to trace the route from the georeferenced map images