Heat wave trips up power plants, prompting New England grid operator to issue warning

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • June 19, 2024

New England’s grid operator said Wednesday it declared a low-level emergency the previous evening as some power plants failed to generate electricity in the year’s first heat wave, potentially leaving the region short of electricity in reserve that could be tapped in an emergency. A Power Caution is an advisory that available electricity is insufficient to meet anticipated demand in addition to operating reserve requirements. It is not a request that people limit their electricity use.

Maine Coastal Program seeks projects for 2024 funding

ELLSWORTH AMERICAN • June 19, 2024

The Maine Coastal Program is seeking information from coastal restoration and conservation partners for the department’s upcoming application(s) for projects in habitat restoration planning, design, engineering, construction and land acquisition.

Waterville man rescued after hiking accident at Gulf Hagas

MORNING SENTINEL • June 19, 2024

Joshua Steele, 38, was hiking the Rim Trail with friends near the Jaws Waterfall in Gulf Hagas around 4:30 p.m. Sunday when he slipped on some rocks. Gulf Hagas is a deep river gorge with a network of trails that cross rugged terrain. Rescuers reached Steele after dark. He was taken to CA Dean Hospital in Greenville.

Bar Harbor finalizes cruise ship rules

MAINE PUBLIC • June 19, 2024

Town officials in Bar Harbor have approved new rules for the town's cruise ship ordinance. At a meeting Tuesday evening, councilors approved rules establishing a new permit process requiring disembarkation facilities to submit a daily count of the number of people entering town from cruise ships. The council also directed the planning board to prepare a new cruise ship ordinance proposal for a future town vote.

All about Lupine

NEWS CENTER MAINE • June 19, 2024

Mainers and tourists alike love the Lupines they see in fields and along the sides of the roads that run through the state. Photographers go into a frenzy when the blossoms are at their peak, but Maine's beloved flower is not native to Maine, making it controversial. "This Lupine showed up in the state in larger proportions around 1950," Emily Baisden, seed program director with Wild Seed Project, revealed. "The story of Miss Rumphius that a lot of us grew up reading as children, there actually was a person in kind of midcoast Maine that would spread Lupine seeds.” Behind the beauty are some ugly facts. “It’s shown to out-compete some of our important native plants for pollinators and things like the Monarch butterfly that requires the Milkweed and is now endangered,” Baisden explained.

All options open for Wiscasset sewer plant’s move; more funding eyed

WISCASSET NEWSPAPER • June 19, 2024

The further the next sewer plant is from the river, the more it would cost, Wiscasset Town Manager Dennis Simmons told selectmen June 18. He said town-owned and other sites, by a voluntary sale or one through eminent domain, are all possibilities. “Every option’s on the table.” The topic came up when Simmons mentioned U.S. Sen. Angus King, I – Maine, is trying for more funds to help with the move. If the $6 million King now seeks for it from Congressionally directed spending comes through, it would bring the amount raised to $11 million of the “roughly” $36 or $37 million needed, Simmons said. “We’re making progress here ...” He added, this is a multi-agency process that will take multiple funding sources. 

Letter: We must embrace climate urgency

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • June 19, 2024

Climate change is the biggest threat to our national security, and we should call out the Democrats and Republicans who make excuses for their climate inaction by trying to scare us (again) with China and Russia. The time to act was yesterday. Every day we delay is a day closer to irreversible damage. Calmly but unwaveringly, we must insist that from Maine to Washington, our approach to climate change needs major shifts — immediately. ~ Bill Beckett, Watertown, Mass.

Poisoned trees gave a wealthy couple a killer view — and united residents in outrage

ASSOCIATED PRESS • June 19, 2024

Suspicious deaths in an idyllic seaside community and detective work that points to poison sound like themes from a classic murder mystery. But the victims in this Maine whodunit were trees that stood in the way of a wealthy family's oceanfront view, allegedly felled by well-heeled killers who, while ostracized and publicly shamed, remain free. Wealth and hubris fuel the tale of a politically connected Missouri couple who allegedly poisoned their neighbor's trees to secure their million-dollar view of Camden Harbor. The incident that was unearthed by the victim herself — the philanthropic wife of L.L. Bean's late president — has united local residents in outrage.

Heat waves are not good for cold-water fish species

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • June 19, 2024

Tuesday is National Go Fishing Day, but Maine biologists are encouraging people to leave the cold-water species in their safe zone during the heatwave and seek warm water fish such as bass, perch or pickerel. Like a person trying to breathe in high humidity, a cold water fish swimming for any length of time in really warm surface water will struggle to get enough oxygen.

CMP bills to go up another $5 a month to subsidize solar projects

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • June 18, 2024

Monthly bills for Central Maine Power Co. customers will go up by another $5 after state regulators on Tuesday approved the utility’s second rate increase in a week. The rate hike is to cover a nearly 50% increase in the amount the utility pays solar developers. State law incentivizes utilities to subsidize certain solar projects to further Maine’s climate goals and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The higher rates, which take effect July 1 and extend through June of next year, follow a roughly $10-a-month increase that the Maine Public Utilities Commission authorized last Tuesday. That rate hike was to reimburse CMP for $220 million it spent to restore power after destructive storms..

Maine issues additional fish consumption limits for PFAS-tainted waters

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • June 18, 2024

The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention updated its fish consumption advisory list Tuesday, adding four freshwater sites containing so-called forever chemicals and expanding guidelines for other locations. Officials recently found evidence of PFAS at the following ponds, lakes, streams and rivers as a part of a yearslong testing effort that has identified more than a dozen contaminated sites:
• Belgrade and Oakland – McGrath Pond and Salmon Lake (consume no more than one meal per month of any fish species)
• Caribou – Aroostook River from the Aroostook River Reservoir to Haley Island in Fort Fairfield (consume no more than two meals per month of brook trout)
• Corinth to Bangor – Kenduskeag Stream from the Robyville covered bridge to the Penobscot River (consume no more than one meal per month of smallmouth bass)
• Monmouth and Winthrop – All of Annabessacook Lake (consume no more than 10 meals per year of black crappie)

Envirothon team from Jay wins state competition, gets OK to travel to international competition

LIVERMORE FALLS ADVERTISER • June 18, 2024

The green team, one of four teams and 24 students from Spruce Mountain High School in Jay this year, won the state competition and “earned the privilege of representing Maine at the National Conservation Foundation International Envirothon Championships from July 28 to Aug. 3 at Hobart William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York,” advisor Rob Taylor said. “Envirothon is the world’s largest environmental science competition and tests student understanding of wildlife ecology, soil science, forestry and aquatic ecosystems, as well as this year’s current issue, Renewable Energy for a Sustainable Future.”

State issues air quality advisory as heat wave hits Maine

MAINE PUBLIC • June 18, 2024

This week's heat wave is also bringing potentially unhealthy air to Maine. The Maine Department of Environmental Protection said Tuesday that the coastline from Kittery to Acadia National Park could see unhealthy levels of ozone on Wednesday for sensitive groups, such as children, the elderly and people with asthma and other respiratory or heart problems.

Portland won’t be spared as heat wave sweeps Maine

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • June 18, 2024

Portland could see some record-breaking high temperatures through Thursday as a heat wave moves into Maine for the first time in two years. Temperatures are expected to reach the mid-90s in Portland on Wednesday and Thursday after hitting the mid 80s on Tuesday, and humidity could make it feel up to 96 degrees in the city. Higher temperatures are often accompanied by poorer air quality and increased ozone levels, prompting health concerns for at-risk populations.

Solar eclipse in April boosted spending across Maine. Here are the numbers

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • June 18, 2024

The solar eclipse on April 8 delivered a powerful boost to Maine’s economy, increasing total spending by out-of-state visitors and in-state travelers more than 23% compared to the previous four weeks, the Maine Office of Tourism, Film and Outdoor Recreation announced Tuesday. Categories with the largest spending increases statewide were bars and nightlife, 79%; gas stations and convenience stores, 45%; outdoor recreation, 39%; pharmacies, 33%; and accommodations, 19%. Overall spending increased 99% in Aroostook County and 48% in Franklin County compared to the previous four weeks. On the day of the eclipse, about 80% of observed visitors were from outside Maine.

Storms have lasting impact on coastal forests

WORKING WATERFRONT • June 18, 2024

During the storms in January, hurricane-strength winds blew out of the southeast, directly at the Maine shoreline. The result appeared like a lot of mess and damage. While shocking to behold, such “windthrows” or “blowdowns” are among the major influences shaping the region’s forests. From an ecological perspective, wind is a disturbance not in the negative sense, but simply as an agent of change that resets forest growth. In Acadia, the National Park Service is repairing the Ocean Path but continues to evaluate impacts in other locations. At Seawall, crews removed some 700 fallen trees that blocked roads and created safety hazards in a popular picnic and camping area, but otherwise the blowdowns are being left in place. Similarly, Maine Island Trail Association’s standard practice is to leave downed trees unless they block a trail or campsite. Ecologists advise leaving downed wood because of its habitat value.

Where to cool off in Maine during the June heat wave

MAINE MORNING STAR • June 18, 2024

Temperatures in the upper 80s and 90s are expected to wash over Maine for several days starting Tuesday, bringing health concerns, particularly for the at least 2,700 unhoused residents in the state. The Maine Emergency Management Agency has a complete list, searchable by county and town, of the nearly 30 cooling centers across the state. 

Commentary: You don’t need a degree to understand climate change, just an insurance policy

CENTRAL MAINE • June 18, 2024

You don’t need to be a scientist to understand the harms of climate change. All you need is an insurance policy. And finding affordable insurance is getting harder in the places hit hardest by climate change. In 2023, 398 global natural disaster events created $380 billion in losses, the highest on record. Insurance companies have raised prices by nearly 40% in the last two years. Decades of denial and delay have proved to be an expensive distraction. Higher premiums are also just the tip of the iceberg of the financial risks of climate change. When state-run, last-resort insurance programs become overburdened, taxpayers end up footing the bill. Rate hikes will not discriminate between those who believe in the dangers of the climate crisis and those who choose not to. ~ Carly Fabian, Public Citizen’s Climate Program

Do ‘fishing, fowling, and navigation’ ring a ‘Bell’?

WORKING WATERFRONT • June 18, 2024

In the words of former Chief Justice Saufley, under current Maine law, a member of the public is “allowed to stroll along the wet sands of Maine’s intertidal zone holding a gun or a fishing rod, but not holding the hand of a child.” Why? Because in 1986, the Maine Supreme Court held, in Bell v. Town of Wells, that by virtue of the 1641-1647 Colonial Ordinance, title to intertidal lands is held by the upland owner, subject only to the public’s right to use the intertidal zone for fishing, fowling, and navigation. What if the long-abandoned Colonial Ordinance was only ever intended to preserve the public’s right to use the intertidal land in a way that balances the upland owners’ interests in accessing the sea with those same interests shared by the public? That is what we will be arguing at the Maine Supreme Court in the latest case in this long running saga. This case isn’t about fishing, fowling, and navigation; it’s about your rights to access and enjoy the intertidal lands.

The fight over public access to Moody Beach is heading to Maine’s highest court

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • June 17, 2024

A group of Mainers has filed an appeal to Maine’s highest court aimed at overturning an earlier ruling allowing property owners to deny the public access to Moody Beach in what has been a contentious battle over whether property owners can claim ownership of beaches down to the low-tide mark. The appeal pushes forward a decades-long effort to reclaim the right to recreate and walk on the Wells beach – and Maine’s coastline at large.