A new national monument honors the woman who gave Americans the weekend

TIME OUT • August 14, 2025

Opened in July, the Frances Perkins National Monument is one of the country’s newest national monuments, and it would be very fitting to visit it on Labor Day, since Perkins herself was a labor activist. Get yourself to Newcastle, Maine—about an hour north of Portland—to honor the woman who made our lives significantly better. A brand-new welcome center at the Frances Perkins National Monument opened for visitors this June after the December 2024 designation as a national monument. Previously, Perkins's home and its acreage were a National Historic Landmark, designated in 2014. The Frances Perkins Center (a nonprofit dedicated to sharing her achievements and relating them to American life today) bought the property from the Perkins family in 2020 and donated it to the National Park Service. The center continues on as the official interpretive and philanthropic partner with the NPS to staff the site and its programs. 

Acorn Engineering, Inc. donates critical services to Mosher Hill Falls Project

DAILY BULLDOG • August 14, 2025

High Peaks Alliance has announced an in-kind sponsorship from Acorn Engineering, Inc. of Kingfield, Maine, in support of the Mosher Hill Falls project. Through a generous donation of professional engineering services, Acorn Engineering has played a pivotal role in advancing this important community initiative. The Mosher Hill Falls project ensures the long-term protection of 200+ acres for public access. Located just minutes from downtown Farmington, the property features a 45-foot-tall waterfall that cascades through a dramatic, steep-sided gorge and a meandering, informal trail. To safeguard the sensitive environment surrounding the falls, erosion and the absence of sustainable trails are being addressed through innovative, forward-thinking trail design and restoration.

Bacteria warnings dropped for 5 southern Maine beaches

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • August 14, 2025

Elevated bacteria advisories for five southern Maine beaches that had prompted warnings from officials were all dropped by Thursday evening: Little Beach and Riverside Beach in Ogunquit, Goose Rocks Beach in Kennebunkport, Higgins Beach in Scarborough and Laite Beach in Camden,

125 Miles of Pure Coastal Maine Magic: The Bold Coast is One of America's Best

WBLM • August 14, 2025

Maine is filled with beautiful roads, unique byways, and historic drives. One of these drives has been gaining considerable national attention. The popular Afar Magazine recently compiled a list of some of the most beautiful drives in America, highlighting seven amazing routes to showcase the stunning beauty of this country. According to Afar, that incredible beauty can be found in Maine's own Bold Coast Scenic Byway. Stretching from Milbridge to Lubec and circling up to Eastport, this 125-mile route showcases the pure beauty of coastal Maine. The road offers drivers a unique view of working waterfronts, lighthouses, coastal villages, state parks, stunning scenery—and perhaps even a few wildlife encounters. It truly is Downeast Maine at its finest.

Flash drought fueled by dry weather, extreme heat now affecting over 1 million Mainers

SUN JOURNAL • August 14, 2025

More than a third of Maine is now in moderate drought thanks in part to weeks of dry weather and extreme heat, according to new data released Thursday by the U.S. Drought Monitor, with much of the rest of the state facing conditions just shy of an official drought. The flash drought conditions developed in a matter of weeks and are likely to spread and worsen through the end of the month, said Sarah Jamison, service hydrologist with the National Weather Service office in Gray. More than 1 million people live in the drought area, which encompasses much of southern, central and Down East Maine. Another 43.6% of the state — including the western mountains, highlands and eastern interior — is experiencing abnormally dry conditions, one step below an official drought. Only the far northern reaches of Maine are still considered to have normal conditions.

Living alone on an island in Casco Bay, he’s found a whole new world

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • August 14, 2025

Scott Kern lives on Sand Island in Casco Bay during the summer months. He calls it Planet Sand. It’s all part of his plan to save Planet Sand, both the land itself and the world he’s created around it, complete with its own gods, laws and units of measurement (“too much or not enough”), as well as a website and merch meant to help fund the work needed to protect it from very real-world environmental threats. Sober for more than six years, Kern started coming out for camping trips that got longer each year until he was spending most of the summer on the island — a purchase that his parents, who both worked as corporate real estate paralegals, and another couple made in the early ’90s. Magical thinking is part of his diagnosis, schizotypal personality disorder, but his fears about the environmental threat to Planet Sand are far from imaginary.

As Canada wildfires choke US with smoke, Republicans demand action. But not on climate change

ASSOCIATED PRESS • August 14, 2025

Republican U.S. lawmakers say Canada has done too little to contain wildfires and smoke that have fouled the air in several states this summer. They’ve demanded more forest thinning, prescribed burns and other measures to prevent fires from starting. They’ve warned the smoke is hurting relations between the countries and suggested the U.S. could make it an issue in tariff talks. But what they haven’t done is acknowledge the role of climate change — a glaring and shortsighted omission, according to climate scientists. It also ignores the outsized U.S. contribution to heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels like coal and gas that cause more intense heat waves and droughts, which in turn set the stage for more destructive wildfires, scientists say.

Here's how Maine's emergency managers are preparing for dangerous heat — now and in the future

MAINE PUBLIC • August 14, 2025

Nuka Research and Planning Group is a company contracted by state to help local emergency leaders establish plans to keep people safe from harmful heat and cold. Heat waves are the deadliest form of extreme weather, killing more people in the U.S. every year than hurricanes, floods, or winter storms according to the National Weather Service. Extremely dangerous heat that's still unusual in Maine. But emergency officials across the state are already planning for a future where they’re responding to temperature spikes as silent natural disasters.

New book details how Maine’s North Woods was protected

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • August 14, 2025

During the 20th century, a dozen or so corporations and family businesses owned roughly 12 million acres of northern Maine. It was a vast industrial woodlot. Then private owners began selling off their land. From 1990 to 2015 four million acres were entered into some kind of conservation. “Loving the North Woods” introduces the issues, participants and processes behind this transformation, then describes seven conservation agreements that protected some two and a quarter million acres. But the account, told entirely from the point of view of protection groups, glosses over limitations to what was actually achieved. The biggest issue is that the majority of these lands are protected by conservation easements rather than fee ownership. The easements prevent development. But they allow landowners to continue logging. And most of the big agreements involved payments of millions of dollars. A new paradigm may be emerging. In 2016 President Obama created the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument. ~ John Alden

Opinion: On Wabanaki priorities, the Maine Legislature gets an incomplete grade

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • August 14, 2025

The first legislative session of the 132nd Legislature has wrapped up, leaving the Wabanaki Alliance with mixed results and uncertainty. We successfully defeated two legislative proposals that would have been detrimental to Wabanaki Nations’ interests. However, many of our proactive legislative efforts, aimed at advancing self-determination and economic opportunity, are still in various stages of progression. If we were to grade this session, “incomplete” would be the most accurate assessment. Many of our initiatives are still in limbo. ~ Osihkiyol Crofton-Macdonald and Maulian Bryant, Wabanki Alliance

Developer proposes 200 units of condos near downtown Belfast

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • August 13, 2025

A proposed condo development in Belfast would be one of the largest new housing projects in the region. It would bring 200 condominium units in duplex and quadplex buildings, according to information presented to the Planning Board on Wednesday. The developer, Benjamin Hooper, aims to build on 35 acres off Priscilla Lane, with additional access from Elementary Avenue. The site is located at the end of the lane and borders the Route 1 bypass, about a mile south of downtown.

Portland Land Bank Commission backs bid for North Deering land once eyed for condos

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • August 13, 2025

A large piece of land near the Presumpscot River Preserve has sat empty for years. Save for a couple of trails, the parcel is green and untouched. Members of the Portland Land Bank Commission are hoping it will stay that way. On Wednesday, the commission unanimously recommended spending up to $400,000 to help the nonprofit Trust for Public Land make an offer on the 13.3-acre parcel off Hope Avenue. The land is being auctioned after a plan to build 54 housing units fell through.

Acadia National Park sets all-time record for monthly visits

BANGOR DAILY NEWS • August 13, 2025

Though fewer international visitors are coming to Maine and the numbers of cruise ship passengers in Bar Harbor have dropped off sharply this summer, Acadia National Park had its busiest month ever in July. The reason, according to tourism industry officials, could be the dry weather Maine had last month. While visitation to the park has been historically high since the COVID pandemic, the record traffic through Acadia National Park comes at a time when economic and cultural factors such as threats of tariffs from the Trump administration and resulting soured relationships with traditional American allies have created economic uncertainty and slowed traffic across the border from Canada. The total estimated number of visits to the park in July was 797,000.

Wildfires are burning across Maine as dry spell adds to increasing danger

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • August 13, 2025

Amid a run of dry weather, the fire danger has grown across much of Maine as crews battle several wildfires, including a 30-acre blaze near the Canadian border and a stubborn underground fire in a wooded area of Biddeford. Fire officials are warning people to be extra careful because the dangerous conditions are unlikely to improve in the short term. There is no significant rainfall expected in the next week, and more than 35% of the state is considered to be abnormally dry. There have been 508 wildfires in Maine this year as of Wednesday, burning about 393 acres.

Rescue crews save man after fall at Screw Auger Falls

SUN JOURNAL • August 13, 2025

Maine game wardens and first responders from multiple agencies rescued a man who was seriously injured when he fell from a ledge in the area of Screw Auger Falls in Grafton Township Wednesday afternoon. Brexton Getchell, 21, of Unity, fell 25-30 feet and landed in the water, sustaining serious injuries.

Next Sustainable Brunswick lecture discusses the fight to save brook trout

TIMES RECORD • August 13, 2025

Join speakers from the Merrymeeting Bay Chapter of Trout Unlimited as they present “Pollution, Practices, Policy and Fighting to Save Brunswick’s Brook Trout” as part of the Sustainable Brunswick lecture series from 6-7:30 p.m. at the Curtis Memorial Library, 23 Pleasant St.

A fox in Waterville tested positive for rabies. Here’s how to stay safe.

CENTRAL MAINE • August 13, 2025

Officials are reminding people to take precautions around animals after a recent confirmed case of rabies in Waterville. On Tuesday, a letter from the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention said a gray fox in the city recently tested positive for the viral disease. The fox was found at the Quarry Road Trails, a year-round recreational area. State officials also warned in recent weeks that bats, a common carrier of rabies, are most active in Maine from the middle of the summer through early September. So far this year, 21 animals in Maine tested positive for rabies in 12 counties. Fourteen raccoons, three foxes, three skunks and one bat account for the cases. In the last 20 years, Maine has had anywhere from 28 to 127 rabies cases a year.

Maine farmers, lawmakers share PFAS lessons as Massachusetts eyes stricter regulations

MAINE PUBLIC • August 13, 2025

A group of Massachusetts lawmakers traveled to Maine on Tuesday to learn about the state's efforts to address PFAS pollution and to discuss possible regional collaboration on regulating the "forever chemicals." Maine has passed some of the most aggressive laws in the nation regulating PFAS ever since the industrial chemicals began showing up in tests of farm fields, wells and public drinking water systems across the state. As concern grows about contamination in Massachusetts, state lawmakers said Tuesday that they are looking to Maine for guidance when crafting their own regulations on the use of human sludge, or "biosolids," as fertilizer and phasing out PFAS in products.

Dixfield board hears plan for $1 billion ‘water battery’ in Oxford County

SUN JOURNAL • August 13, 2025

Representatives from a company developing a $1 billion pumped storage hydropower project in Oxford County met Monday with the Dixfield Select Board. “This is a long process…about four or five years. It’s going to be regulated by FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission),” said Tom Brennan, public affairs director with Western Maine Energy Storage, a company established in May 2024 and operating out of Cianbro Corp.’s Pittsfield headquarters. The project would be the first of its kind in Maine and among the largest in the Northeast, capable of generating about 500 megawatts of on-demand power. The project would use two 100-acre artificial reservoirs to store and release water for electricity generation during peak demand. The developer estimates annual energy output at 1 million megawatt hours; Maine uses a little more than 11 million megawatt hours of electricity a year.

Fires at Sappi’s Skowhegan paper mill blamed on dry, hot weather

PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • August 13, 2025

It is not uncommon for firefighters to be called to Sappi’s Somerset Mill in Skowhegan a few times per year. The paper mill is a massive, industrial facility, with no shortage of combustible material on site. But a stretch of dry, hot weather has led to a recent uptick in fires at the mill on Waterville Road, according to company and fire officials, drawing in emergency resources from around the region to battle each blaze. In a typical year, the Skowhegan Fire Department is called to about three to five fires at the facility, Deputy Chief Ryan Johnston said. This year, the department has responded to nine or ten fires — with six or seven those in June, July and the first half of this month. “I attribute maybe 80% of it to the high heat and the lack of rain.”