Maine regulators deny Versant’s request to flag high energy use for police

Maine regulators rejected Tuesday a proposal from Versant Power that would allow the utility company to notify police of homes with high energy usage as part of an effort to identify illegal marijuana growing operations springing up in rural areas.

The three-member Maine Public Utilities Commission unanimously rejected Versant’s controversial proposal while adopting unrelated consumer protection standards for utilities.

The debate came months after a leaked government memo said up to 270 large-scale illegal marijuana operations in Maine are connected to Chinese organized crime. Since the memo came to light last summer, police in Maine and other states have conducted dozens of raids and made a handful of arrests.

Though the state’s second-largest utility framed the rule as allowing to not only identify potential criminal activity but also keep customers, employees and first responders safe, privacy advocates argued Versant’s proposal would be unconstitutional and potentially affect homeowners who have lawful, legitimate reasons behind spikes in energy use.

The debate also featured disagreement between Versant and the state’s largest utility, Central Maine Power, which said it does not believe utilities should report customers to police because of high energy usage.

Though Versant had not specified the amount of usage it would flag for police, a Versant spokesperson previously said the utility would work with regulators on a threshold and mentioned homes with one day’s worth of usage equaling an average user’s month.

“Customers may have other legitimate reasons for high usage, and using such broad criteria would likely result in the privacy of many innocent customers being violated,” Phil Bartlett, the commission chair, said Tuesday.

Versant attorney Arrian Myrick Stockdell had said officers would still need to obtain evidence for a search warrant, as a report from the utility is not enough to justify a raid. If police determined a property had legitimate purposes for higher electricity use, investigators would drop the case.

Versant has received subpoenas for more than 50 locations suspected of housing illegal marijuana growing operations, the Bangor Daily News reported this month. Central Maine Power declined to share how many subpoenas it has received, but court records show it has been subpoenaed in four of the five public federal cases so far.

“After the discussion and today’s ruling, we have clear direction from the commission, and we will remain vigilant in protecting customers’ private information while continuing to work as mandated with law enforcement,” Versant spokesperson Judy Long said Tuesday.