MAINE MONITOR • November 1, 2024
Northern and downeast Maine should be excluded from aspects of rules intended to protect large undeveloped tracts of land from the development of solar, wind and high-impact transmission lines, members of the Board of Environmental Protection recommended at a meeting earlier this month. The rules are part of new fee programs being developed by the Department of Environmental Protection and the Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry that would require certain large-scale energy projects to pay for impacts to high-value habitat or large swaths of undeveloped land in an effort to direct development away from those areas. In directing DEP staff to remove northern and downeast Maine from part of the proposal, board members also reasoned that the state already has mechanisms in place to compensate for impacts.