ENERGY NEWS NETWORK • July 13, 2021
Maine’s government has about eight months to come up with a definition of environmental justice that will guide new legislation in the state. That task comes on the direction of a law passed in the Maine Legislature last month. With that law, Maine joins a growing group of states enacting similar legislation to reduce pollution and climate change impacts on vulnerable communities. But Maine and other states are finding that while it’s easy to agree environmental justice is important, it’s much harder to actually come up with a specific legal definition, much less to enact policies that make that definition meaningful.