Workers clean up a Chemical spill at Brunswick Executive Airport on August 19. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer
This editorial board published a preliminary response to the spill of toxic firefighting foam concentrate in Brunswick on Aug. 25 (“Our View: Response to Brunswick foam spill a multifaceted failure”). At that time, there were more questions than there were answers.
Even then, however, the scope and severity of the damage to our state was clear. This past week, some of our questions were answered. And those answers were very unsettling.
Staying on the story, the Press Herald’s Penelope Overton reported galling context Thursday. The fire suppression system in question at Brunswick Executive Airport was deemed “deficient” in the months before the leak.
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Worse than that, the inspector’s report declared the potential for “accidental foam discharge” as – and this is a big word – “tremendous.”
Nothing was done to mitigate this formally established risk; no sprinkler repair person was called. Why? The airport’s owner, Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority, reportedly couldn’t find anybody to do it. The account given is extremely murky and maddening.
The executive director of the authority, Kristine Logan, put it this way. “We went back and forth with them until September,” Logan said of the company that conducted the inspection. “So then, when we couldn’t get them back in, we started calling around to other places to say ‘Hey, would you guys come out and do that?’ But nobody wants to do anything with PFAS anymore.”
Nobody wants to do anything with PFAS anymore.
Hey, guess what? PFAS – the toxic forever chemicals contained in some life-saving and some decidedly less life-saving products – are a hard, painful fact of life where we live. The damage wrought by sludge contamination has already ruined many lives and livelihoods in Maine. The efforts to contain and filter out these disease-causing chemicals are worthwhile, if very arduous and uncertain. They fall to the state, to our municipal bodies and to private business and individuals.
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If it really was the case that there are no willing or able professionals on offer to the authority, some official intervention must be explored. Certainly, inspection and maintenance of this significance – with these harrowing downsides, where neglected or avoided – is not optional. It is not something that can fall foul of the whims of the market.
Now, the Brunswick story appears to be wending its way into an unseemly legal battle between the Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority and the business that conducted the inspection – the business that warned Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority that “next steps,” steps to mitigate the risk, would necessarily run to tens of thousands of dollars.
No kidding. That’s what dealing with these substances costs. As we wrote in this space back in June, we’ve got to wrap our heads around the rising costs of solving this problem – they are only going to rise.
Attention to the crisis of PFAS contamination at the state level has been well above average; Maine has invested more than $100 million in its response to PFAS in the past two years and spent about $15 million to help those materially affected. Even then, we are only getting started down this extremely long and difficult road.
Private enterprise is likely to pay as much attention to the crisis as laws, rules and effective enforcement commands it to. If the Brunswick fiasco is anything to go by, the attitude toward the responsible management of material that poses an inordinate threat to public health if irresponsibly managed is … lacking, if not cavalier. It is a sorry state of affairs when it takes a catastrophe like this one to sharpen the focus of our regulatory bodies and our codes. Our treasured local environment is not a testing ground. We know more than enough about what needs to be done and insisted on when it comes to curtailing toxic chemical contamination.
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Knowing what we know, prevention is non-negotiable. Accountability and liability need to be crystal clear; the buck has to stop somewhere. And the consequences, where it doesn’t stop, need to be grave enough to be effective.
ORONO, Maine (AP) — Derek Robertson threw four touchdown passes, including a 94-yarder to Josh Derry, and Monmouth flew past Maine 51-22 on Saturday for the Hawks’ first win of the season.
Robertson had 390 yards on 22-of-36 passing. He threw two touchdowns to Derry, and one each to Jack Neri and Marcus Middleton.
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Derry had 227 yards on seven receptions for an average of 32.4 yards per catch.
Monmouth scored 20 points in the first quarter and led 27-8 at halftime. The Hawks extended their lead to 41-13 when Rodney Nelson scored on a 24-yard run with 3 1/2 minutes left in the third quarter.
After Maine got within 41-20 early in the fourth, the Hawks took possession at their own 6-yard line following a misplay on the kickoff. On first down, Derry took off down the left side, hauled in a pass from Robertson and outran his defender for a 94-yard touchdown.
Monmouth outgained Maine 632-286 in total yards. Nelson led the Hawks (1-2, 1-0 Coastal Athletic Association) on the ground with 91 yards among their total of 242.
Carter Peevy completed 16 of 26 passes for 159 yards for the Black Bears (1-2, 0-1).
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A man convicted of assaulting a child tried to flee a courthouse in Maine but two jurors and a detective quickly foiled the escape attempt.
Nicholas Carter, 31, on Wednesday ran out of the courthouse in Skowhegan while handcuffed. He had been found guilty of aggravated assault against a 14-month-old child, according to the Portland Press Herald.
A series of videos shows Carter racing down a hallway in the courthouse while still in handcuffs and dodging an individual who attempted to block him. He can then be seen fleeing the courthouse, chased by several other individuals.
Additional video shows Carter running across a parking lot and eventually appearing to trip and fall in a yard where two jurors and a detective apprehend him.
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Carter had been found guilty after a three-day trial at the Somerset County Superior Courthouse.
A sentencing hearing for the aggravated assault conviction is expected in the coming weeks.
Workers from Horizon Homes install heat pumps at Homestead Village in Westbrook on Aug. 8. Derek Davis/Staff Photographer
FREEPORT — Maine’s quasi-state agency that promotes energy efficiency says the state is on track to reach its goals in electrifying buildings to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
But a business owner at Efficiency Maine Trust’s annual event Thursday questioned a shift in a rebate program to incentivize electric pumps that heat an entire house, rather than a few rooms.
“We’ve been on a pretty good streak lately,” Executive Director Michael Stoddard told heating and cooling business owners and employees.
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Heat pumps are “becoming a bigger and bigger part of the programs that we are operating at Efficiency Maine and a bigger and bigger part of what policymakers want to prioritize,” he said.
In July 2023, Maine surpassed its goal of installing 100,000 new heat pumps two years early. Gov. Janet Mills set a new target of installing another 175,000 heat pumps in Maine by 2027. Maine will receive between $45 million and $72 million from Washington to install heat pumps for home heating and cooling and hot water heaters.
Residential electric heat pumps benefit from Efficiency Maine rebates up to $8,000, depending on income, and federal tax credits of up to $2,600.
The Maine Climate Council has set a goal of 487,000 homes – 90% of single-family homes in Maine – that will meet their entire heating load with electric heat pumps in retrofits and new construction. “We are on that trajectory and the policymakers have told us we want you to keep going until you get this done,” Stoddard said.
The state’s Climate Action Plan has established an interim target of 115,000 homes entirely heated by heat pumps by 2030; about 20,000 homes are currently heated entirely with electric pumps.
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Michele Putko, chief executive officer and founder of Clean Flame Thermal Solutions, a Cape Neddick business that combines heat pump technology with a fireplace, asked Efficiency Maine officials if whole-home heat pumps would be a harder sell. She cited higher costs and electricity outages that would entirely darken houses that depend on whole-home heat pumps.
“Many of us have concerns about power outages, the expense, all-or-nothing,” she said.
Stoddard said momentum for whole-home heat pumps, indicated by rebates, is not slowing but will require more marketing and education.
“It was a significant shift. It took a little while for people to get comfortable with it,” Stoddard said.
Efficiency Maine’s shift is at least partly intended to make electricity the primary home heat source and discourage a secondary use of oil or gas.
