Renewable energy has a growing positive impact on Maine’s economy and environment

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • December 13, 2024

Recent concerns about rising utility bills overlook and misconstrue the proven benefits solar policies deliver to Maine’s economy and environment. Multiple independent studies of Maine’s solar net metering policy have found that the benefits of solar to ratepayers significantly outweigh the costs, while increasing the state’s energy independence and resilience. Maine’s renewable energy industry contributed more than $2.3 billion of Maine’s total gross state product in 2022. With more than 15,000 workers statewide, our clean energy industry is a significant job creator, and we have the fastest-growing clean energy economy. ~ Phil Coupe, co-founder, ReVision Energy

Opinion: Maine Legislature needs to strengthen mining regulations

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • December 13, 2024

Callahan in Brooksville and Kerramerican in Blue Hill are industrial scale metallic mineral mines operated for a few years and closed half a century ago. Hundreds of smaller failed metal mines in Maine closed in the 19th century. Maine’s Legislature continues to repeatedly respond with ineffective mining regulations. The state is responsible for 10%of the partial remediation costs at the Callahan EPA Superfund site, and is paying those taxpayer-funded costs at the rate of $740,000 per year. The Kerramerican tailings pond leachate is contaminating Carlton Stream to a level of toxic heavy metals 30 times greater than the maximum allowable. Who, other than the public, will pay to remediate this site? Maine’s legislature has not embraced the need for a harm-prevention regulatory structure and has instead relied on the ever-changing, industry-driven, ineffective harm-punishment regulatory structure. Maine’s DEP has no scientific experts in mining on staff and limited funds to hire any as consultants. ~ Ralph Chapman, applied physics research scientist, educator and former state legislator, Bucksport

Column: 10 common bird-feeding mistakes to avoid

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • December 13, 2024

Here it comes again: my top 10 bird-feeding mistakes, slightly updated.
10. Placing feeders too far from bushes and trees
9. Placing feeders an improper distance from windows
8. Placing feeders near shrubs and dense plantings where cats can lurk
7. Cleaning feeders too infrequently
6. Storing seed improperly
5. Offering too little food variety
4. Offering too much food variety
3. Making life too easy for ants and bees
2. Making life too easy for bears
1. Making life too easy for squirrels

A midcoast town is still trying to clean up its giant toxic carpet pile

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • December 13, 2024

The town of Warren has applied again for federal funding to clean up a large pile of toxic carpet waste on the side of Route 90, after it was denied an earlier request for $2 million to pay for the work. This time, the town is seeking double that amount. The 300,000 cubic yards of carpet have littered a local property since the late 1990s, when Chester Randall Dunican and his wife, Kathleen, began dumping the material there after claiming it could serve as berms for a proposed rifle range. Much of the highly flammable carpet remains there, steadily leaking PFAS into the topsoil. It would be enough material to fill 90 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

Opinion: Replace fossil fuel subsidies with investments in clean energy

TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY • December 13, 2024

Why in the world should the public provide giant subsidies to the giant corporations that are rushing us to climate catastrophe? Showered with tens of millions of dollars in oil and gas campaign contributions, President-elect Donald Trump is poised to pay back the favor likely thousands of times over — at public expense. Trump and his pro-fossil fuel corporate cronies seem ready to put their thumb on the scale for Big Oil, bolstering their already robust subsidies — billions of dollars that perpetuate a system of environmental degradation and economic injustice. Doug Burgum, Trump’s pick for the Interior Department, which leases onshore land and offshore water for oil and gas production, has spent years promoting a scheme allowing his state’s fossil fuel industry to keep drilling. For the sake of our economy, our environment, and future generations, it’s time to leave fossil fuel subsidies in the past. ~ Robert Weissman, Public Citizen

Questions linger around forever chemicals at Brunswick airport’s Hangar 6

TIMES RECORD • December 12, 2024

Hangar 6 became a big point of discussion in town meetings and other public events after Hangar 4 released 1,450 gallons of firefighting foam concentrate mixed with 50,000 gallons of water this summer. As Brunswick works to clear up the fallout from an August toxic firefighting foam spill at the airport’s Hangar 4, many anxieties persist around another hangar on the property that some argue still poses the potential for another devastating spill. Friends of Merrymeeting Bay has been testing water sources around the base and elsewhere in town for PFAS for a couple years, according to organizer Ed Friedman and the Brunswick Sewer District General Manager Rob Pontau, who uses this data for basic insight of PFAS in the system.

Struggling to adapt

MAINE MORNING STAR • December 12, 2024

More than 90 percent of Maine’s fire departments are staffed mostly or entirely by volunteers, and these departments face added challenges reducing PFAS exposure to firefighters. Many departments cannot follow the ‘best practice’ guidance to keep turnout gear and other known sources of PFAS like stored firefighting foam out of commonly used areas. Research demonstrates the advisability of storing gear in separate locker rooms, to minimize inhalation of PFAS-laden dust, but fewer than a quarter of Maine’s departments have that option. Acquiring even a single set of fluorine-free gear for all of the state’s roughly 7,200 firefighters could cost more than $30 million, not counting disposal costs for the old gear.

Letter: Well-told story recalls different time

CENTRAL MAINE • December 12, 2024

Bravo for the outstanding and thoughtful column by Ron Joseph (“When my high school ate moose meat,” Dec. 5). Joseph tells the story of hunting season back in 1965 at high school in Oakland. Back then, guns were used prolifically, including by students, to hunt. What a long, strange trip it’s been since young boys toted firearms to school freely to today’s gun massacres, school shootings and fear and loathing among students, their parents and teachers. To me, this column was one of the most beautiful and thoughtful pieces of writing I have seen in 55 years of reading the Kennebec Journal. ~ John Hale, North Monmouth 

Acadia National Park Is a Lab for Climate Change Mitigation Efforts

SIERRA • December 11, 2024

Mount Desert Island is a rare place on the Atlantic coast where mountains rise directly above the ocean. Its principal town, Bar Harbor, was originally named Eden. It’s no wonder that Mount Desert Island hosts the Northeast’s sole national park: Acadia. In January 2024, a pair of nor’easters detonated Acadia’s aura of untouchable remoteness when they battered the island with hurricane-force winds. The combination of Acadia’s vulnerability to the rising sea and its rank among the most visited national parks in the country have made it a laboratory for a policy that the National Park Service adopted in 2021 to confront the climate crisis on federally managed lands nationwide. The Resist-Accept-Direct (RAD) framework is named for the three broad strategies that resource managers are being encouraged to use to either rehabilitate damaged park facilities or prepare them for anticipated changes brought on by spiking temperatures, ecosystem destabilization, and coastal erosion.

Column: Beauty products draw from the bounty of Maine’s seas

TIMES RECORD • December 11, 2024

While Maine isn’t usually on the cutting edge of the latest trend, when it comes to skin care, there are some neat products out there that are pretty innovative, and they take advantage of the variety of sea life available in Maine. The biggest category are those that include seaweed. There are a number of local companies making everything from creams and oils to soaps and scrubs with a variety of locally grown and harvested seaweed types. Others utilize lobster blood as an ingredient. Marin Skincare works with Luke’s Lobster to utilize a byproduct from their processing facility in Saco. They are able to extract glycoprotein, which occurs in the lobster’s circulatory fluid, to use in their creams and lip balms. ~ Susan Olcott

$17 million awarded to promote forest sustainability, carbon storage in Maine

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • December 11, 2024

The U.S. Forest Service awarded $17 million Wednesday to help private and tribal landowners in Maine protect their forests from climate change by promoting practices that increase the forestland’s capacity to store heat-trapping carbon emissions. The grants are part of $335 million in Inflation Reduction Act funds set aside Wednesday to incentivize private forest conservation and sustainability projects. the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry, which will get $5 million to subsidize forest stewardship practices with 400 landowners. The New England Forestry Foundation and Climate Common will receive $4.3 million to work with landowners to help protect Maine’s oldest forests by deferring timber harvesting for up to 10 years.

Auburn officials asked to support Casco Bay rail trail project

SUN JOURNAL • December 11, 2024

City officials are expected to take up a resolution next week in support of using the inactive St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad between Auburn and Portland as part of a proposed 72-mile Casco Bay Trail. During a council workshop earlier this month, city councilors and Mayor Jeff Harmon appeared on board with a proposal to turn the line into an “interim trail,” meaning the tracks and ties would be removed and turned into a multiuse trail, while the corridor would remain available for possible future rail use. However, rail advocates sitting on the Portland to Auburn Rail Use Advisory Council have argued for a “rail with trail” approach, where a trail would be built alongside the tracks in order to preserve both uses.

Forestry experts urge action to counter spruce budworm outbreak

MAINE PUBLIC • December 11, 2024

An outbreak of spruce budworm, one of the most damaging forest insects, is threatening hundreds of thousands of acres of forest in northern Maine. About 250,000 acres on the northeast border are at risk from an infestation triggered by moths blown in from huge outbreaks in Quebec and Ontario, according to Alex Ingraham with Pingree Associates one of the biggest landowners in the state. If left unaddressed, the outbreak could quickly spread, he said. State foresters and landowners are anxious to confront the problem early and hopefully avoid a widespread epidemic such as the one that defoliated millions of acres across state and crippled forestry businesses in the 1970s and 1980s.

Regulators plan to roll out new rules for short-term rentals in Maine's unorganized territories

MAINE PUBLIC • December 11, 2024

State regulators are planning to gradually roll out new rules for short term rentals in Maine's unorganized territories. Short term rental owners would first be required to register their properties with the Land Use Planning Commission. Eventually, property owners will have to comply with a set of parking, wastewater disposal and other standards, which state regulators said they plan to address with a second round of rulemaking. Some residents had expressed concerns about noise and trash disposal. A two-year-old study found there were nearly 600 short-term rentals in Maine's unorganized territories, but regulators say that the registration will give them a more accurate count.

$4.3 Million Federal Grant to Help Maine’s Oldest Forests Store More Carbon

NEW ENGLAND FORESTRY FOUNDATION • December 11, 2024

The U.S. Forest Service has awarded $4.3 million to the New England Forestry Foundation (NEFF) and its partners to help Maine forest landowners protect Maine’s oldest forests and implement practices on nearby lands that will help store carbon, and protect ecosystem health and biodiversity. NEFF will partner with landowners to defer timber harvesting in forests that are at least 150 years old, known as late successional old growth stands.

Letter: Fishing impacts from offshore wind pale in comparison to climate change

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • December 11, 2024

It strikes me as odd that there is such concern over the potential (but limited) impacts of offshore wind on the fishing industry in Maine, but little concern about the potential and much more widespread impacts of unmitigated climate change on the industry. Offshore wind may have an impact to be sure, but that impact would be very limited in scope and would be much less impactful than the climate change it could help to prevent. ~ Rowan Smith, Orono

Mainers could play role in preserving monarchs even though state population is stable

MAINE PUBLIC • December 11, 2024

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced this week that it wants to list monarch butterflies as threatened. The agency said populations have declined by more than 95% in the west and 80% in the east. In Maine, monarchs are already listed as a species of special concern. Phillip deMaynadier of the state department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife says that concern is largely due to habitat pressure outside of Maine. He said their population in the state is fairly stable.

Letter: U.S. needs a high-speed railway system

SUN JOURNAL • December 11, 2024

I recently read where Vietnam approved $67 billion for a high-speed railway system. We had good roads under President Eisenhower, but since then not much has been done to improve transportation. Maybe President-elect Donald Trump will have a high-speed system by next Christmas to get our population from place to place faster. It’s time for the highly-paid patriots, who own or are CEOs of companies and who have too many freebies, to help in this regard for the good of our USA. ~ George Doiron, Jay

Gift ideas for the Maine homesteader or gardener in your life

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • December 11, 2024

Gift ideas for homesteaders and gardeners generally fall into two categories: creating more work (a surprise cow, a beehive) or making less work (an efficient tool, a nice cart). If you aren’t sure that they want to take on something new, lean toward the less-work side. A gift card to a hardware store, online supplier, feed mill or seed company is a safe bet. A bundle of books or a year’s subscription to a magazine like Backwoods Home. A pair of wool socks, headlamp, good knife, heavy-duty hand cream, warm sweater, dehydrator, pocket chainsaw, handheld scythe, kerosene lamp, “chicken swing” or poultry picnic table, garden apron. Sourdough and kombucha starters are gifts for newer homesteaders that can literally keep giving forever.

Column: This secluded hike in western Maine offers spectacular views of the White Mountains

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • December 11, 2024

Albany Mountain is located in Albany Township, a mountainous area between West Bethel and Stoneham and part of the eastern sector of White Mountain National Forest. Unlike many hiking destinations in the area, it doesn’t get much foot traffic. The peak autumn foliage had passed and most of the leaves on the deciduous trees had fallen. Still the downed leaves and dark green conifer trees provided a brilliant array of colors. Since bird hunting season was underway, we wore a combination of hunter’s orange vests and bright yellow tops. At the summit an unremarkable path led to an impressive west facing overlook with spectacular views of the White Mountains. ~ Ron Chase