Four key environmental bills from Maine’s 130th Legislature you probably don’t know about

Editor’s Observe: The next story first appeared in The Maine Monitor’s free environmental publication, Local weather Monitor, that’s delivered to inboxes totally free each Friday morning. Obtain the publication so you possibly can learn tales like this sooner by registering right here.

Sure, the legislative session ended awhile in the past, and maybe you’ve all moved on and are already looking forward to November elections and subsequent session.

We at The Monitor are nonetheless wading by means of the 969 payments (!!) that grew to become regulation final session, and thought this might be a superb time, now that the mud has settled, to focus on just a few you might have missed. (That determine doesn’t embrace the 27 payments that have been vetoed, by the way in which.)

As a result of my makes an attempt to plod by means of all 996 items of laws failed miserably (I by no means did grasp these velocity studying methods my dad tried to show me), I turned as a substitute to Kathleen Meil, director of coverage & partnerships at Maine Conservation Voters, to get her tackle a number of the laws they have been watching this yr.

There have been a variety of vital payments that handed, together with these geared toward limiting the unfold of PFAS and bettering grid planning. However these bought plenty of press, so I assumed I’d ask Meil about a number of the laws we didn’t hear as a lot about. Listed below are some highlights from what we mentioned:

LD 489: Decision, Proposing an Modification to the Structure of Maine To Set up a Proper to a Wholesome Setting

This invoice, which in the end didn’t go, was a proposal for a constitutional modification that will have enshrined a proper to a “clear and wholesome atmosphere and to the preservation of the pure, cultural and healthful qualities of the atmosphere.”

It required the state to “preserve, shield and keep the State’s pure sources, together with, however not restricted to, its air, water, land and ecosystems for the advantage of all of the individuals, together with generations but to come back.”

Though it did not garner the required 2/3 help from the Home, this invoice is value noting as a result of it’s emblematic of a rising motion all over the world in search of to codify the appropriate to a clear and wholesome atmosphere in regulation. A minimum of six states, together with New York, Montana, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Massachusetts and Hawaii, have such protections, and advocates say it’s doubtless this may return in Maine within the close to future.

Pennsylvania adopted a constitutional Environmental Rights Modification much like that being proposed in Maine method again in 1971. “They then used that constitutional proper as the idea for authorized motion when clear water, air, wholesome atmosphere was being violated,” mentioned Meil.

Many who opposed the Maine invoice, nonetheless, frightened a couple of cascade of unintended penalties, given the proposal’s broad language. Wouldn’t it forestall housing from being constructed? Wastewater infrastructure? Renewable vitality initiatives?

Commissioner Melanie Loyzim of the Maine Division of Environmental Safety known as the invoice’s language “excessive,” with “monumental” potential ramifications for state businesses.

Loyzim supplied a hypothetical: if the Division requires householders to deal with wastewater discharge at a stage of 99% management effectiveness for hormones earlier than permitting it to be discharged into groundwater (like a house septic system), one other resident utilizing that similar aquifer or bedrock fracture might declare the company violated their constitutional proper to wash groundwater by means of inaction.

How the courts would deal with claims like that is anybody’s guess, mentioned Loyzim, however they should be thought of.

Maine Conservation Voters’ 39 member organizations supported the invoice, however Meil acknowledged there have been plenty of unanswered questions.

“I do assume we now have a accountability to ask how might this be utilized in a method that’s counter to our objectives. There are a ton of tensions we’re going to be navigating for fairly a while about what a local weather resilient future appears to be like like,” she mentioned, including that that is doubtless not the final we’ll see of payments like this.

“There’ll proceed to be conflicts between conservation and clear vitality,” mentioned Meil. “It’s going to be a wild trip.”

LD 736: An Act To Improve the Ecological Reserve System

Talking of conservation: this invoice, which did go, was an try to permit the Bureau of Parks and Lands to accumulate further parcels as Ecological Reserves, a designation enabled by the Legislature in 2000. These reserves are public lands put aside to function benchmarks in opposition to which organic and environmental change may be measured.

The ultimate regulation raised the cap on whole land acreage that may be designated as Ecological Reserve from 100,000 to 115,000 acres, put in place guidelines for eradicating greater than 10 acres from the reserve designation, and added language permitting tribal members to collect supplies on Ecological Reserve land that will likely be used for cultural or conventional actions.

The Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands manages 96,000 acres of Ecological Reserves, ranging in dimension from 775 acres at Wassataquoik Stream in T3 R7 WELS to greater than 11,000 acres at Nahmakanta in Rainbow Township. Elements of the Cutler Coast are designated as reserves. That feels like loads, however Ecological Reserves cowl lower than 1% of the state.

They’re locations for scientific monitoring, schooling and analysis, in addition to some low-impact recreation, like mountain climbing, looking, fishing, cross-country snowboarding and primitive tenting. Timber harvesting isn’t allowed, giving timber an opportunity to develop huge and outdated, and giving us an opportunity to see what occurs once we don’t intervene with a panorama.

“A lot of the gaps [in conservation] are in southern Maine,” mentioned Meil. “There’s an ideal alternative to preserve extra land within the locations that the most individuals in Maine dwell.”

LD 1964: An Act To Replace Sure Water High quality Requirements and To Reclassify Sure Waters of the State

This upgraded the water classifications for greater than 800 miles of rivers and streams, acknowledged water our bodies throughout the Katahdin Woods and Waters Nationwide Monument as excellent nationwide useful resource waters, and up to date the pH vary for wholesome waters, which Jeff Reardon of Trout Limitless testified “responds to steering from the US [Environmental Protection Agency] and displays rising understanding of the lingering and ongoing impacts of acid rain in some Maine streams.” Advocates say it can additionally shield habitat necessary for the restoration of Atlantic salmon.

Maine’s water classification system is above and past the minimal fishable-swimmable requirements established within the federal Clear Water Act, which was signed into regulation 50 years in the past this October (championed by Maine’s personal Senator Edmund Muskie).

The system has eight classifications: 4 for freshwater rivers (AA, A, B, C), three for marine and estuarine waters (SA, SB, SC), and one for lakes and ponds (GPA). The Maine Division of Environmental Safety describes the system as “as a hierarchy of threat, multiple of use or high quality.”

The standard of the water is definitely not that a lot totally different between the water our bodies, in response to the Division. However decrease classification water our bodies are uncovered to extra threat, “the chance being the opportunity of a breakdown of the ecosystem and lack of use because of both pure or human-caused occasions.” Actions that might doubtlessly alter the ecosystem (damming, waste discharge) are allowed solely in decrease classification water our bodies. There may be little threat in school AA rivers, as an illustration, as a result of that classification doesn’t enable for these actions.

This regulation was the fruits of a three-year evaluate course of by the Division and now goes to the federal Environmental Safety Company for approval.

“It’s an acknowledgement that that physique of water is cleaner than it was three years in the past and should be protected,” mentioned Meil. Throughout testimony on the invoice, she added, a number of lawmakers recalled that many of those water our bodies have been as soon as so polluted “You couldn’t go to those rivers, you couldn’t fish in these rivers, you couldn’t swim in these rivers. That is the feel-good story of the session.”

LD 1979: An Act Relating to the Growth of Complete River Useful resource Administration Plans

Maine Conservation Voters’ 39 organizations didn’t help the early model of this invoice, mentioned Meil. The primary draft, which Meil mentioned was developed with intensive enter from Brookfield Renewable, a Canadian conglomerate that owns a variety of hydroelectric amenities in Maine, added language that will have required state businesses to think about “current makes use of” when growing complete river useful resource administration plans on watersheds which have a licensed hydropower challenge.

“The unique invoice was designed to privilege the pursuits of the dam house owners over to science and river restoration efforts,” mentioned Meil.

The regulation in the end didn’t embrace the “current makes use of” however did add language stating that complete river useful resource administration plans are a “main substantive rule,” which requires them to be introduced to the Legislature earlier than they will take impact. It additionally requires the Division “to take a look at how are we fascinated with river useful resource administration,” mentioned Meil. “Do we’d like a greater or totally different course of?”

We received’t get into the weeds on all the legal guidelines that handed this session, as a result of it’s doubtless you’ve heard fairly a bit about them at this level. However many have been vital, together with:

• a regulation that prohibits the spreading of sludge and sludge-based compost

• $60 million for farmers impacted by PFAS contamination

• a regulation implementing company suggestions associated to sea stage rise and local weather resilience

• a pilot program centered on local weather schooling in Maine colleges

• the institution of the Maine Local weather Corps

• a regulation closing a loophole permitting out-of-state waste into state-owned landfills

• a regulation that may change the way in which utility firms plan grid upgrades.

“We’ve actually been form of increasing and revisioning what it means to have a wholesome atmosphere,” mentioned Meil, including that the group additionally supported laws associated to environmental justice and entry to wash ingesting water for Passamaquoddy tribal members dwelling at Nice Level. “We’re actually fascinated with wholesome environments in a brand new method.”