Maine adds new fees for building solar projects on farmland

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • April 21, 2025

Developers who want to build large solar projects on valuable Maine farmland will now have to apply for a permit and pay additional fees. The rules went into effect on Sunday after months of development and public feedback. They follow a 2023 law directing the department to develop a program to protect soil and wildlife habitat from energy development, including solar and wind power projects. It’s another step to regulate the solar farms that have multiplied in Maine since a 2019 law removed barriers to them. Ground-based solar projects are being met with increasing resistance in towns around the state for a number of reasons, including fears of removing farmland from production. Maine lost 82,567 acres of farmland between 2017 and 2022.

A conservation group will buy site of failed Belfast fish farm

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • April 21, 2025

A local conservation group that opposed the effort to build a salmon farm in Belfast has entered a contract to purchase 54 acres along the Little River where the project would have been located. Nordic Aquafarms first announced its plans for the $500 million fish farm in 2018 and abandoned the project in January after years of opposition and lawsuits from Belfast-area residents. It then put its land up for sale for $2 million. Upstream Watch, one of the groups that went to court to fight Nordic over the project, announced Monday morning that it had entered the contract to buy the property on Route 1. The group is now working to keep the land permanently conserved.

Opinion: Trump’s attack on public lands is an attack on public health

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • April 21, 2025

U.S. national parks have long been called “America’s best idea.” President Trump‘s attacks on them threaten our health. The administration has fired about 1,000 National Park Service (NPS) employees. Over 34 NPS leases, including visitor centers and museums, are set to be terminated. Budget cuts and privatization are also on the table. Research shows that nature is one of the best things for your health and well-being. To benefit future generations, the NPS was established in 1916. Since then all presidents except Trump have protected more land than they removed. The Trump administration is also pushing toward privatization. This raises big concerns about the impact on visitors’ health and the accessibility of these public spaces. Privatization could drive up prices and make parks inaccessible for low-income families and older adults. ~ Kristina Carvalho, senior policy analyst, Boston University School of Public Health, and volunteer with Sierra Club Maine

Canoeists take on Kenduskeag for 58th annual spring race

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • April 19, 2025

Trevor MacLean of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, racing bib No. 76, posted a time of 2 hours, 16 minutes and 21 seconds in a Kevlar kayak that he and a friend built just last week. By 2 p.m. on Saturday, no other finishers had beaten his time in the Kenduskeag Stream Canoe Race. If he wins the overall race this year, it will be the 19th time. Last year, he posted a time of 2:20:00, his 18th win.

As Ellsworth embraces development, nearby towns push back

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • April 21, 2025

The largest municipality in Hancock County, which has seen some of the most significant population increases in Maine over recent decades, continues to embrace development, even as some of its neighbors are guarding against it. The growth of middle-income housing in Ellsworth has been hot in recent years, as the costs of real estate and housing in Maine have increased dramatically. But, just as new retail dominated the city’s growth in the 1990s and 2000s, the local development landscape continues to evolve. Some of Ellsworth’s neighbors have been pushing back against large-scale growth. In the past year, Bar Harbor has put a temporary halt on all new transient lodging development, Lamoine has banned resorts and glampgrounds, and Blue Hill has rejected a proposal to subdivide a 38-acre blueberry barren into high-end house lots.

Future of Maine’s electric vehicle charging network in limbo as federal changes loom

MAINE MONITOR • April 20, 2025

If you’re driving an electric vehicle up I-95 or 295 these days, particularly in York or Cumberland counties, odds are you won’t have to travel far before hitting a public charging station. But head north and the stations taper off. Until recently, $5 billion in federal funding was set to change that, with a nationwide goal to build a network of public EV chargers along every 50 miles of designated roadway from Maine to California. The National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program was brought to a halt by the Trump administration in February.

Facing new spruce budworm outbreak, Maine foresters look to history as a guide

MAINE MONITOR • April 19, 2025

Forty-five years ago a voracious insect called the spruce budworm was ravaging Maine’s North Woods, killing mountainsides of balsam fir and red spruce. Maine’s landowners rushed to harvest still-healthy trees. Thousands of acres of the North Woods were clear-cut and sprayed with herbicides to knock back brush and hardwood trees that would crowd out commercially valuable species. Dense forests were replaced with stripped tracts of land. Today, foresters and landowners are nervously tracking a renewed spruce budworm presence in the North Woods. The insects have already stripped hundreds of thousands of forest acres in Quebec and Ontario. Questions abound over how the state’s forests will fare in a world beset by climate change. Today, stands of late-stage and old-growth forest are few and scattered valuable trees are being cut by high-grading. Many of Maine’s woodlands hold a predominance of small trees with little commercial value, especially since the decline of the state’s paper and pulp industries. The forests are less resilient to disruptions and disease. The degradation of the timberlands has been exacerbated by widespread ownership changes. The best defense is to cultivate woodlands with a diversity of trees and reduce the concentration of fir and spruce, the budworms’ main target.

Farmers, seasonal businesses worry as immigration crackdown ramps up

MAINE MONITOR • April 19, 2025

Agricultural farmers, as well as wreath factories, restaurants, hotels, fisheries, and other Maine businesses have come to rely on the largely Latino migrant and year-round immigrant communities. As federal immigration officials ratchet up surveillance, advocates say many immigrants — even those who are documented — fear deportation, with more of them choosing to lay low, avoiding school or work. The Trump administration is considering eliminating, scaling back, or revoking some visas that employers have relied on to augment their work teams for decades. Trump has also revoked the visas of hundreds of international students and detained roughly a dozen others from college campuses across the US, often without any warning or recourse for appeals. The authors of Project 2025 have the H-2B non-agricultural temporary visa program in their sights, calling for the elimination of the visas that a host of industries depend on, from tourism and hospitality to restaurants and services at some national parks.

Gulf of Maine scallop fishery set to reopen Monday

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • April 18, 2025

A federal agency has passed the ruling needed to reopen federal scallop fishing in the Gulf of Maine, just under a week after it was forced to close because of delays in finalizing annual catch limits. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Friday afternoon that fishermen will be allowed to resume scalloping on Monday through the remainder of the season — which ends once a certain amount is caught. NOAA temporarily closed the regional fishery on April 12, the first midseason closure since regulations were put in place 16 years ago. It impacted those who fish for scallops in federal waters, 3 miles offshore in the northern Gulf of Maine region.

Sale of Dragon Products Completed

MIDCOAST VILLAGER • April 18, 2025

Heidelberg Materials North America has completed the acquisition of Giant Cement Holding Inc. and its subsidiaries that includes the Dragon cement plant in Thomaston. Dragon is Thomaston’s largest property taxpayer, paying more than $1 million to the town annually.

Burgum launches broad Interior reorganization

E&E NEWS • April 18, 2025

The Interior Department is moving forward with sweeping reorganization and consolidation efforts that will be overseen by a former member of the Elon Musk-led workforce reduction team. The plan would include consolidating communications, financial management, contracting, human resources, grants, civil rights and interactive technology. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum signed a secretarial order Thursday that confirmed most of those details. A conservation watchdog accused Burgum of handing over too much power and control for the reorganization to Hassen and DOGE. “If Doug Burgum doesn’t want this job, he should quit now,” said Jennifer Rokala, executive director of the Center for Western Priorities. “This order shows what it looks like when leaders abdicate their jobs and let unqualified outsiders fire thousands of civil servants who are working on behalf of all Americans and their public lands.”

Gov. Mills highlights importance of Canadian tourists in Maine

MAINE PUBLIC • April 19, 2025

The number of travelers crossing the Canadian border into Maine declined in March by 26% compared to the same month last year, furthering a dip that began with President Donald Trump's tariffs and threats of annexation. The data on border crossings into Maine comes from monthly U.S. Customs and Border Protection reports. In February, when the president first announced his tariffs against Canada and goals of annexing the country, there was a 15% decline from the previous year. The March data show an even steeper drop-off — about 60,000 fewer people coming through Maine border crossings. The figure is part of an overall drop at all northern border crossings of 900,000 travelers nationwide. State officials have warned that Canadian visitors are an important part of the state's tourism economy.

Judge pauses Maine lobster defamation suit pending appeal

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • April 15, 2025

A federal judge on Tuesday paused proceedings in a defamation lawsuit Maine lobstering groups brought against a California aquarium, staying the case until broad questions about how to interpret Maine libel law are answered by an appeals court. U.S. District Judge John Woodcock had ruled in February that the suit — brought by the Maine Lobstermen’s Association, the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association and a handful of lobstering businesses — could proceed after nearly two years in legal limbo. The groups sued the Monterey Bay Aquarium Foundation “for making false and defamatory statements about Maine lobster fishing practices and for misleading consumers and commercial lobster buyers about the integrity of the Maine lobster harvest” after the aquarium’s Seafood Watch program downgraded its rating for Maine lobster.

Proposed bill would restructure Brunswick Landing leadership, require environmental stewardship

TIMES RECORD • April 25, 2025

A bill introduced Friday would reshape the leadership of the Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority, the organization responsible for Brunswick Landing. If passed, the bill would amend the goals of the authority to require it to engage in “environmental stewardship.” It would also restructure the authority’s board of trustees, an 11-member body appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Legislature. Brunswick Landing is the site of an August 2024 firefighting foam spill that released 51,450 gallons of foam laced with toxic forever chemicals.

Orrington trash plant won’t reopen for more than a year

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • April 15, 2025

The Orrington trash incinerator is 15 to 18 months away from reopening. The plant was shuttered in 2023 after longtime owner Penobscot Energy Recovery Co. was foreclosed on. The timeline shared Tuesday is the latest update on the incinerator’s future, and is more than a year and a half later than the facility’s newest owners had proposed reopening when they purchased it last year.

Brunswick Landing removes toxic foam from airport hangar

TIMES RECORD • April 15, 2025

The authority in charge of Brunswick Landing has removed firefighting foam containing forever chemicals from one of its airport hangars. Hangar 6 held 975 gallons of aqueous film-forming foam concentrate, or AFFF, containing a toxic PFAS chemical compound known as PFOS. A malfunction at Brunswick Executive Airport’s Hangar 4, which is owned by the Navy but operated by Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority, dumped 1,450 gallons of AFFF concentrate mixed with 50,000 gallons of water last summer. The spill prompted ongoing cleanup and monitoring efforts as well as a push to get rid of the foam at the airport in Brunswick and across the state.

Celebrate the outdoors on the big screen in Brunswick this Earth Day

TIMES RECORD • April 15, 2025

EveningStar Cinema in Brunswick will celebrate Earth Day with screenings of “A Peace of Forest,” a new nature documentary made by Maine filmmakers about the state’s wildlife. The movie theater will screen the film in the days following Earth Day, which is on April 22. There will be showings on April 25-27 and May 1. Husband-and-wife team Lee Ann and Thomas Mark Szelog shot the entire film within 70 acres of forest in Whitefield, where they live. “‘A Peace of Forest’ is a compelling, feature-length film, celebrating the beauty and intimacy of wildlife in Maine,” according to a theater news release. “This one-of-a-kind cinematic adventure showcases surprising, tender and exquisite interactions of wildlife during peaceful moments in Maine’s natural world.”

Opinion: What Republicans won’t tell you about the US trade deficit with Canada

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • April 15, 2025

For years, the United States has actively assisted Canada in growing its oil production because U.S. presidents saw an opportunity to shift oil acquisition away from OPEC countries to our more secure and trustworthy partner to the north. Donald Trump’s trade war with Canada under a tortured idea that Canada is treating us unfairly doesn’t acknowledge the enormous benefit we set up for both countries by giving Canada the assistance needed to expand its oil production. Engaging in a trade war will cost both countries dearly but also force the United States away from secure Canadian oil, back into the arms of OPEC and its Middle Eastern billionaire-supported terror networks. Far from making America great again, Donald Trump is destroying beneficial relationships with allies, enabling unfriendly regimes and driving costs up for everything: a lose, lose, lose proposition. ~ Stephen Demetriou, Waldoboro

Maine lawmakers pitch a new way around forever chemicals

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • April 14, 2025

A proposed bill to be heard by the Maine Legislature’s energy committee on Monday aims to get a one-time, $10 million payment from the state to extend Fairfield’s public water supply to residents with private wells that have high levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS. To date, state regulators have dealt with the high readings in Fairfield by providing free filtration systems to residents. So far, 149 homes have the systems, and another 111 are approved for them. But money for the $25 million filtration program will run out in a few years.