I like to think our Hydro electricity is the best solution to clean renewable energy, heck I live within a couple KMs of one, but the sad reality is it still had a huge negative impact on the environment when the damns were built.
One such study explaining the release of CO2 trapped in the ground being released:
https://www.nrcm.org/news/hydro-quebec-offers-misleading-claims-powers-climate-impact/
Then there was the mercury that was also released from the soil which subsequently was eaten/absorbed by the fish, which in turn were eaten by the native Americans in the region who started suffering from heavy metal poisoning.
Speaking of fish, the dams prevent them from migrating and using the rivers, newer dam installations have fish ladders, but most of the early Quebec dams did not, likely still do not.
Mind you I still prefer the idea compared to having an equivalent coal burning station.
I'm afraid that the story you posted is completely false. Now, nrcm.org is blocked on my work pc so I googled it and found out that it's the Natural Resources Council of Maine, an NGO. Sounds legit and the Wikipedia page looks good too. In order to find out what the article you posted said, I did what I usually do when something is blocked on my work pc, I took the headline and googled it. The Portland Press Herald did have the story but
nobody else did. Something like this, if legit, would have been covered by more than a local newspaper in Portland, Maine.
This story would have been big enough to have been picked up by the CBC, CTV, Global, CityTV, ABC, NBC and CBS. It would have most likely also found its way into the pages of the Montreal Gazette, National Post, USA Today, etc. Something like this is something that people latch on to, but it didn't catch on. Not only that, nothing like it has been published in the two-and-a-half YEARS since. I was wondering why this was the case, at least, I was wondering why until I actually read the article, then I understood completely.
Passages like:
"Here’s an example of their own best available science that Hydro-Quebec did not provide to the Press Herald: About a decade ago, Hydro-Quebec built dams to divert the Rupert River to the Eastmain hydro facility, flooding 175 square miles of virgin forest and wetlands. As a result, the first year after flooding, as much CO2 was released as would have been released by a coal-fired power plant generating the same amount of electricity!"
This is, of course, quite literally, impossible. Large news organisations and science journals read this and said "WTF?!". I honestly wondered why the article would say something so clearly insane and then I found the REAL reason which was, of course, political. This is what tipped me off about why someone would spread such false propaganda and the answer is, of course, money:
"How can we make the best of this situation? To reduce total regional emissions, Hydro-Quebec should export its somewhat-dirty hydropower to neighboring New Brunswick, displacing the much dirtier power produced there from burning coal while Maine and Massachusetts pursue truly carbon-free sources. That would result in a meaningful decrease in overall greenhouse-gas emissions."
You see, a huge chunk of the US Eastern Seaboard imports electricity from Quebec because Hydro-Quebec, while being a provincial government institution, is the largest producer of hydroelectricity in the Western Hemisphere. Maine is one of the states that is powered by Hydro-Quebec and there appears to be both a nationalistic and a corporate interest in producing their own electricity.
There is an ulterior motive here, a hidden agenda that you somehow didn't pick up, but, since my major in university was Political Science, I saw it immediately. This is especially true with the insane attempt to equate New Brunswick with Maine and Massachusetts.
What the article is banking on is the natural American ignorance about anything outside of their own borders. You're probably unaware of the fact that New Brunswick only has 776,827 people, less than most single cities. This article gives the impression that New Brunswick is completely powered by coal when that isn't even CLOSE to being true:
New Brunswick is primarily powered by nuclear and hydro already. Only 30% of the province is powered by coal and gas which equates to about 233,000 people (a relatively tiny amount). Somehow that's equivalent to the populations of Maine and Massachusetts COMBINED? I'm not looking up those numbers, I don't have to. Boston alone is more populous than ALL of New Brunswick, let alone the rest of the state combined with the population of Maine.
This article's purpose is to gain the public's favour for the idea of stopping their importation of electricity from Quebec and having a local interest provide it. It's clear to me (and to anyone who knows how to read between the lines) that there is a rich and powerful interest behind this article.
The reason that no other media outlet picked this up is because it's clearly a misleading propaganda piece written by someone with credentials who should have known better.
Holy crap really? That seems way ambitious considering there are only something like 160,000 gas stations.
www.caranddriver.com
www.gem.wiki
www.theguardian.com
grist.org
