PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — A man connected to a homicide in New Hampshire was fatally shot by police on a bridge that connects the state to Maine. An 8-year-old child was found shot to death in the man’s car, the attorney general’s office said Thursday.

The Piscataqua River Bridge along Interstate 95 has been closed since about 3 a.m. and traffic was backed up on both sides as drivers were diverted to two other bridges. The Piscataqua bridge connects Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to Kittery, Maine.

The incident appears to have started with a man killing a woman at a home overnight in Troy, New Hampshire, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) away in the western part of the state, and then driving to the bridge, Attorney General John Formella said in a news release.

“Early this morning police engaged with the adult male on the bridge in an incident that ended with the male being fatally shot. The Maine Attorney General’s Office is now investigating that officer-involved shooting incident,” the news release said.

“Police on the bridge also found an 8-year-old child fatally shot” in the man’s vehicle, the news release said. “The exact circumstances surrounding this incident remain under active investigation.”

There was no threat to the public and the bridge remained closed in both directions because of the investigation, the news release said.

No names have been released.

Between 70,000 and 80,000 vehicles use the Piscataqua bridge each day, according to the Maine Department of Transportation.

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Associated Press reporters David Sharp in Portland, Maine, and Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire, contributed to this report.

On Wednesday a new set of rules for Maine’s Paid Family Medical Leave program that incorporates public comments received at a hearing earlier this summer was released. More than 15 clarifications and amendments that address everything from private family medical leave plans to self-employed workers is addressed in the second draft of rules.

Senator Mattie Daughtry, Assistant Senate Majority Leader, said with a program of this size a slow deliberative process was important.

“The first public comment had 1,000 comments from 300 people. You can see those comments were incorporated. So having this second comment period is important so that when it goes live in January that it is meeting the needs of what we need for this program in our state,” Daughtry said.

Maine’s Paid Family Medical Leave program would allow employees to take up to 12 weeks of leave to care for a newborn or adopted child or to deal with a serious health condition.

Luke Monohan, Director of the Maine Paid Family Medical Leave program, said feedback from a diverse group of businesses and public members lead to commonsense changes that will make the program better for workers in Maine.

“It’s a complex program. It’s a program that will affect almost all workers and businesses in Maine. The fact that we were able to integrate so much and come up with so many changes and make people feel heard in the process,” Monohan said.

In a statement the Maine State Chamber of Commerce said the new proposed rule allows employers to declare private plans at least 12 months earlier than the previous rule and revises the ability for businesses to assert a hardship for leave.

The revised proposed Rule:

• Clarifies the definition of family member.
• Clarifies the role of employee leasing companies.
• Determines employer liability based upon an employer’s established payroll in 20 or more calendar workweeks in the 12-month period preceding September 30th of each year by Federal Employer Identification Number (FEIN).
• Clarifies the circumstances under which volunteers are not covered by the law.
• Clarifies that an applicant must be employed on or before the day the approved leave will begin.
• Clarifies eligibility for leave that runs concurrently with the Federal Family Medical Leave Act in the year before benefits for the Paid Family and Medical Leave Program are taken.
• Amends provisions regarding notice and undue hardship.
• Clarifies that fraud means “willful” acts.
• Changes certain timelines.
• Explains and clarifies the role of the Maine Bureau of Insurance and the Maine Department of Labor regarding the review of fully-insured private plans.
• Clarifies the definition of income for self-employed individuals to elect coverage.
• Amends the reasons an employee or employer may seek an appeal and notification to parties for appeals.
• Amends the factors to determine minimum criteria for substitute plans.
• Amends the process for submitting applications for substitute plans beginning April 1, 2025. Amends the start of premium exemption and benefit coverage relative to private plan substitution approvals. 
• Establishes application fee for substitution of private plans.
• Adds a section establishing the process for requesting advisory rulings.

A public hearing on the new rules will be held September 17 in Augusta. Public comments will be taken until September 30.

The final rules must be established prior to January 1, 2025.

Get notified of announcements regarding the Maine Paid Family Medical Leave program.

Michael Flannery pilots an open top barge into the Bayou, a narrow dead end channel where the Songo River empties into Sebago Lake. As manager of the Lakes Environmental Association’s invasives program, he helped clear variable leaf milfoil from the waterway last summer.

“We left this last year looking pretty good, and now this year it is full of milfoil,” Flannery said.

Beneath and between boats crammed against the shore milfoil spreads in thick mats. It’s the most common, and problematic, aquatic invasive plant in Maine. Even a small fragment stuck on a boat hull or propeller could spread milfoil into another water body.

“We’ve been working already this year, we’ve removed a couple thousand pounds of milfoil already, but it is just starting,” Flannery said.

Left unaddressed, the milfoil will take over shorefronts and crowd out natives species of plants, fish and wildlife. Out of control infestations can ruin a lake for fishing, boating and swimming.

It’s also becoming harder to manage. Climate change driven by burning fossil fuels has warmed Maine lakes 5.5 degrees Fahrenheit on average since the 1980s, far faster than the annual air temperature increase. With warmer water and milder winters, lake ice doesn’t last as long.

That means a much longer growing season for plants than before.

“If the ice is gone in early march, the lake is going to warm up quicker, the stuff is going to start growing,” said Lakes Environmental Association executive director Colin Holme.

“We have milfoil growing earlier and it grows later into the season. There were reports of milfoil growing vibrantly into November last year,” Holme added.

To illustrate his point, Holme points to a patch of milfoil in the Bayou that’s already flowering above the water. That’s an indication of a robust plant with good prospects to reproduce.

“Most years it didn’t flower, and when it did flower it was a big thing, we’d go down, we’d photo document it. And now it is flowering most years, and this year it started flowering in June, which is unheard of. Usually its flowering is late July and August,” Holme said.

Once invasive plants are established, they’re nearly impossible to fully eradicate and expensive to contain.

John McPhedran, from the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, said the state is lucky to have an active network of volunteers and nonprofit organizations addressing invasives. Groups survey lakes, set up boat inspections at public launches, and do removal work.

“We’re fortunate to have that interest, that capacity,” McPhedran said. “And while the threats that come with a longer growing season are a real challenge, I think we’re in good stead to try and manage those as best we can.”

Only about 40 lakes and ponds in Maine have recorded invasive plants. That makes it an outlier compared to other states.

“We still have a lot to protect in Maine,” McPhedran said. “Other states have, I think, a much higher percentage of their waterbodies that have an aquatic invasive species.”

But advocates worry the bulwark against the spread of unwanted species is starting to buckle.

Courtesy boat inspectors are the first line of defense against invasive spread, by helping vessel owners check to see they’re not transmitting plants and educating the public about the problem.

But just like the growing season, the boating season is lasting longer too. And those launches are starting to go unattended.

“The boat launches are very, very busy in the fall, that’s when there’s a lot of bass tournaments, and just a lot of a lot of people enjoying leaf peeping season and all those things,” said Sharon Mann, director of the invasives program at Seven Lakes Alliance in Belgrade.

Public funding for courtesy inspectors is miniscule to begin with, Mann said. And after high school and college students hired to monitor the public launches leave around labor day, the group struggles to find replacements.

“We have ads posted year round for courtesy boat inspectors, but there just isn’t anyone to hire outside of Memorial Day to Labor Day,” Mann said. “And it really scares me how many boats are going uninspected in and out of these launches.”

Back on the Songo, Colin Holmes from the Lakes Environmental Association shows off a long section of river that has been mostly cleared of milfoil after years of effort.

The Songo is the busiest inland waterway in the state, increasing its infestation risk, he said.

The association used divers to hand-harvest milfoil and underwater barriers to keep it from growing. Even though the river is in better shape than it was, it takes annual suppression efforts to keep invasives at bay. In early July, two dive teams from Lakes Environmental Association were still searching the Songo for milfoil and pulling it where they could.

“It’s a success story in my mind and we are so lucky we started when we did,” Holme said. “I think if we started now, the water is so warm I don’t think we could get a handle on it.”

Success doesn’t come cheap. His group budgets about two hundred thousand dollars a year for invasive work. A state grant pays for a quarter, fundraising has to cover the rest.

“It’s expensive work, there’s a lot of liability, there’s a lot of training. It’s just not easy and people don’t understand how much it costs,” Holme said.

Lawmakers recently increased the price of “milfoil stickers” that owners get when they register boats with the state. That’s expected to raise funding for the invasive program to $3 million next year, a 60 percent boost.

The money should help, Holme said. But he also hopes people start paying attention and doing more to prevent further infestations, before it is too late.