Maine Climate Council: state meeting near-term targets, but transportation fix a challenge

Under Gov. Janet Mills, Maine has committed to a range of relatively tough climate goals: reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent (vis a vis 1990 levels) by 2030; becoming carbon neutral by 2045; and reducing GHGs by 80 percent vs 1990, the world's baseline metric since the days of the original Kyoto conference. But how to accomplish that?

The Maine Climate Council, a statutory body with gubernatorial appointees, is tasked with figuring that out, and they had their second full meeting this past week. I reported on the proceedings in the Portland Press Herald.

The highlights: (1) the state calculates we're on target to meet our 2020 target of a 10 percent reduction in 1990-level GHGs, but keeping on course for the 2030 and 2050 targets will be a challenge; (2) a calculation of our carbon budget suggests that ongoing forest growth and the manufacture of durable forest products are offsetting 75 percent of our current emissions, which means our biggest-in-the-nation forest cover almost ensures that we'll be carbon neutral if and when we meet our GHG targets and; (3) reducing transportation GHGs -- 54 percent of the total and rising all the time -- is going to be the biggest challenge.

I last reported on the climate council on the occasion of their first meeting, and also wrote on what it will likely take to be carbon neutral here, and on Gov. Mills' original carbon neutrality announcement before the UN here.

Fun fact: the Gulf of Maine is the second fastest warming part of the entire world ocean, which has already had a whole range of effects discussed in this Press Herald series from 2015, which was a finalist for a Pulitzer, meaning you really ought to read it if you're interested in this topic!

Maine's governor wants the state carbon-neutral by 2045. What will that take?

At the United Nations, Governor Janet Mills pledged to make Maine carbon-neutral by 2045, tasking the new Maine Climate Council to come up with a plan to do so via an executive order.

So what does being "carbon neutral" mean, and what would Maine likely have to do to achieve such a status -- something no other state and only one foreign country has thus far achieved? I explored this in the current edition of the Maine Sunday Telegram, which published last Sunday.

In short: Bhutan, the only country that's already carbon-neutral, is 71% forested and has about 50 people per square mile. Maine is 90% forested and has just over 40 per square mile -- a carbon sink with not that many people and a huge structural advantage right out of the starting block. It's still going to require massive changes in how energy is produced and the types of vehicles and heating devices we use to consume it. Details in the story.

Coalition of pro-offshore oil governors is run by oil lobbying firm

Earlier this year, Maine Governor Paul LePage made a stir when he -- alone among Atlantic seaboard governors and in opposition to coastal New England's entire Congressional delegation -- supported the Trump administration's draft plan to open most federal and New England waters to oil and gas exploration.

At the time, I reported how he'd actually called for exactly this policy several months earlier, as chair of the Outer Continental Shelf Governors Coalition, a group of pro-drilling governors whose other members area all from states where offshore oil is already extracted. I also put in a public records request for the governor's correspondence with and for the group, which was finally fulfilled this month.

In this week's Maine Sunday Telegram, I have a story on what that request revealed: that the coalition is staffed and administered by employees of a Texas energy lobbying and consulting firm. Details in the story.

The lobbying firm was also active -- via the industry-funded non-profit advocacy groups it runs -- in the debate over solar power incentives in Maine and New Hampshire, and over loosening protections for New England's marine national monument.

Gov. LePage's support for offshore drilling at odds with every New England member of Congress

This month, when the Trump administration unveiled its plan to open virtually all areas of U.S. federal waters to oil and gas exploration, most of New England's elected leaders expressed outrage. Every member of the US Senate and US House from the five coastal New England states signed onto a bipartisan bill to ban drilling in the region, while every governor from Massachusetts to Florida announced their intention to seek an exemption. Florida's governor even got one.

The one exception: Maine's Gov. Paul LePage, who not only didn't join the chorus, he'd written a letter in August asking Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to do just what he did.

In this week's Maine Sunday Telegram I report on the controversy and how LePage's stance on drilling may complicate Maine's effort to get a Florida-like exemption.

I previously reported on oil and gas drilling in our region in late 2015, when Canada leased areas on their side of the border, at the entrance to the Gulf of Maine.

Maine: Dam owner wants to walk away, alarming lakeside residents

In Saturday's Portland Press Herald, I have a story from the eastern borderlands of Maine and the United States, where a pulp and paper company has announced it wishes to surrender ownership of two dams, a process that normally would result in their gates being left open, permanently lowering the water level of the lakes they impound.

This, as you'll read, is an alarming prospect to the communities around East Grand Lake -- Maine's eighth largest -- which could fall by six feet, turning waterfront property into interior lots and playing havoc with the local tax base, tourism economy, and ecosystem. Canada's not happy either, and they own half the lake bed and the land under one half of the most prominent of the dams. More, as always, in the story.

I previously wrote about Eastern Maine dams when the state Department of Environmental Protection messed up during the federal relicensing process (again) and also during a debate about allowing the passage of (native) alewives up the river system, and its possible effects on (non-native) smallmouth bass.

How will Trump's budget affect Maine? Let us count the ways.

In today's Portland Press Herald, seven reporters and I put together a mammoth breaking news story on the effects of President Trump's proposed budget in Maine. With the president proposing to eliminate low income heating assistance, Meals on Wheels, and federal funding for public broadcasting, Pine Tree Legal Assistance, the University of Maine Sea Grant program, the Wells Reserve at Laudholm, and other programs and institutions, it's sobering reading.

The good news: if you're a veteran, work for a military contractor, or would like the nuclear waste stockpiled in Wiscasset to go someplace far away, you'll find some.

There's also this sidebar on how Maine's congressional delegation has reacted. Short answer: badly.

Dig in, and thanks to colleagues Randy Billings, Mary Pols, Eric Russell, Bob Keyes, Ray Routhier, Noel Gallagher, and Jason Pafundi for helping pull this beast together.

As Trump Age dawns, a dispatch from the city Sanders built

At Politico Magazine, the subjects for the What Works series are picked months in advance, so it's by coincidence that, days after Donald Trump's upset victory in the U.S. presidential election, the series visit Bernie Sanders' hometown. I did field research for this story a couple weeks before election day; now it reads like a dispatch from an alternate universe, where a town with few meaningful fissures is creating a sustainable economy under the guidance of their municipal government, itself run for much of the past four decades by social democrats.

In any case, the new story is on Burlington, Vermont's 37-year drive to build a sustainable city, protected from international fossil fuel markets and the whims of distant corporate boards. The result: the first city able to power itself entirely from renewable energy -- it owns its own grid and generating capacity and could theoretically cut itself off from the outside world without interrupting power -- and one that is now working to become net zero in transportation and thermal energy use as well. It also grows a lot of its own food.

This is my ninth full-length "What Works" piece this year. The others were on how Des Moines went from dull to cool; how Manchester, New Hampshire turned its vast 19th century millyard to spinning high-tech gold; on how Denver built its game-changing light rail system, only to discover its most powerful effects were not what they'd expected; how Cincinnati transformed "America's most dangerous neighborhood"; how Philadelphia repurposed a 1200 acre former naval base;  how Milwaukee breathed life back into a legacy industrial district, creating the manufacturing park of the future; how Roanoke, Virginia went from a train city to a brain city; and how Winston-Salem, North Carolina pivoted from tobacco manufacturing to high-tech innovation. In addition -- on the occasion of the Republican National Convention -- I had this shorter story on how Cleveland revamped its long-neglected Public Square.

Where's next? Hint: They filmed Breaking Bad there.

Maine PUC declares documents at center of bias allegations to be "trade secrets"

To kick off your New Year, I have an update on an ongoing controversy at Maine's Public Utilities Commission, where an outgoing commissioner months ago charged that pricing forecasts are being manipulated to kill projects unloved by Governor Paul LePage and to boost those he likes.

That commissioner, holdover Gov. Baldacci appointee David Littell, said in dissenting opinions last winter that some of those forecasts should be made available to the public immediately to maintain accountability, transparency and the reputation of the PUC. The LePage appointees on the three-member commission overruled him, saying the data was still in active use, but could be released when this was no longer the case.

Faced with a public records request from yours truly, the PUC has, however, changed its mind on the last point. The forecasts in question -- now more than a year old and not in active use -- are now said to be "trade secrets" that will perhaps never be released.

My story in today's Maine Sunday Telegram lays out the situation, including comment from current PUC chair Mark Vannoy, the public advocate, and attorneys representing conservation groups.

I wrote about the PUC regularly in 2013, when the body was involved in a conflict of interest controversy involving Nestle Waters North America.

Canada approves oil exploration next to Georges Bank, entrance to Gulf of Maine

Canadian officials have granted Statoil an oil and gas exploration lease for a parcel immediately bordering on the Georges Bank exclusion zone and located at the mouth of the Northeast Channel, the primary oceanographic intake point for the Gulf of Maine.

As I reported in yesterday's Portland Press Herald, in a related development Shell Canada has begun actual drilling in its leases just to the east. BP Canada, which holds a lease for the next set of parcels, has applied to begin its own drilling.

For more background on the Gulf of Maine, its currents, and environmental challenges, consider reading the first part of "Mayday", our October 2015 series on these issues.

Maine: judge blasts DEP Commissioner Patricia Aho

Regular readers likely remember Patricia Aho, Maine's industrial lobbyist turned the commissioner of environmental protection, who was the focus of my five-part, three-day series last June in the Maine Sunday Telegram and Portland Press Herald, as well as follow-up stories on the department's subsequent failures in regards to dam relicensing here and here.

In tomorrow's Press Herald, I write on a new development: Aho being blasted in a court decision made public yesterday, both for arbitrary decision making on behalf of a client of her former lobbying form, and for transgressing on acceptable behavior in regards to conflict of interests of this nature. The judge had some choice words for Aho, of which this is a taste:

“While this case might not present the ‘extraordinary circumstances’ which must exist for a Court to find ‘bias’ as that term has been defined by the Law Court, Commissioner Aho’s continuing participation in deciding upon operational and complaint protocols could be viewed as antithetical to the common notions of impartiality which Maine citizens understandably expect from decision makers in Maine agencies.”

There's more in the article and additional material in the opinion itself, which is posted with the article. Also in the completed version to post soon, find the latest on the (Democratic-controlled) legislature's efforts to increase oversight of the department, first outlined here.

Maine lawmakers seek oversight of troubled DEP dam relicensing

One story I've been closely covering is the Maine Department of Environmental Protection's handling of dam relicensing. Under Gov. Paul LePage, the department has managed to miss a key deadline for each of three separate dam projects -- and came within hours of missing a fourth -- the effect of which was to irrevocably waive the state's authority over the terms of the new 25-30 year license, including having a say over water levels, fish passage, and recreational opportunities. Prior to this administration, the state has never missed such a deadline.

The first failure -- at Flagstaff Lake -- is hard to understand, though many think the fact that DEP commissioner Patricia Aho worked for the law firm that has represented the respective dam owners in each of the four proceedings may be relevant. The immediate cause of the later failures -- which I first reported in the Portland Press Herald this summer -- appear to be the result of nearly a year of confusion and disarray at the DEP.

In tomorrow's Press Herald, I report on a new development: a move by leading Democratic legislators to force accountability by introducing a bill that would force the department to report to legislators as each dam deadline approaches. I also spoke to key DEP officials recently, who offer additional details and explanations for their administrative failures, but say they have taken steps to ensure a fourth repeat does not occur.

The next dam deadline: Feb. 13 at Brassua Lake, west of Moosehead.

Maine DEP dam relicensing in disarray

Since former industry lobbyist Patricia Aho took over the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, Maine has missed critical deadlines related to the once-in-a-quarter-century federal re-licensing of three separate dam projects.  By dropping the ball -- and, thus, removing Maine from the court of play -- Aho's DEP allowed the owners of the Flagstaff, West Branch, and Forest City dam projects to make easy layups, avoiding possible concessions on water levels, recreation, fish habitat protection and other issues. Maine has never before missed such a deadline.

In today's Maine Sunday Telegram, I report on the results of a public records request we submitted in an effort to figure out what's been going on. Amazingly, the DEP came within hours of missing a fourth deadline -- for the Brassua dam in western Maine -- which would have been a boon to Florida Power and Light, which was closing the sale of it and the Flagstaff dam to another company. Emails and other documents show the department relicensing effort in disarray.

The department's failure at Flagstaff featured prominently in my five-part, three-day series on the Aho's DEP.

DEP officials have been unavailable for comment on this issue since Oct. 9, a day after I reviewed the public records request. We'll try again Tuesday.

Maine DEP misses two more dam licensing deadlines

Regular readers probably recall my recent five-part, three-day series on the Maine Department of Environmental Protection under former corporate lobbyist Patricia Aho. The Maine Sunday Telegram investigation led with a story about how the department came to miss a critical deadline related to the once-in-a-quarter-century federal re-licensing of the Flagstaff dam. By dropping the ball -- and, thus, removing Maine from the court of play -- Aho's DEP allowed the dam owner to make an easy layup, avoiding possible concessions on water levels.

Amazingly, the DEP has since missed two more such deadlines, waiving the state's authority in the licensing of four dams and two dikes in the St. Croix basin of Washington County. Details on the front page of today's Portland Press Herald (or, for readers in the state capital, page B5 of the Kennebec Journal.)

[Update: 9/2/2013: The Sun-Journal's Sept. 1 editorial on this subject takes Aho to task.]

Tidal power comes of age, in Maine of all places

For the better part of a decade now, I've been covering the development of a new form of renewable energy here in the Gulf of Maine / Bay of Fundy region, home to the world's highest tides.

Tides -- which run about 10 feet here in Portland, and over 50 feet at the head of the Bay of Fundy -- pack an enormous amount of energy, a fact that led early 20th century engineers to propose damming entire bays in eastern Maine as part of Hoover Dam-scale energy projects. The ecological effect would have been enormous, of course, so it's probably a good thing these projects were never completed. (Parts were built under F.D.R., including the causeway linking Eastport (a.k.a Moose Island) to the mainland.)

But the new iteration of tidal power requires no dams and, indeed, appears to have little if any adverse effect on the environment. After years of development, it's finally going commercial on this continent, starting next month in Cobscook Bay, between the two easternmost towns in the United States, Eastport and Lubec, Maine, where the tides run 20 feet.

My front page piece in yesterday's Maine Sunday Telegram tells the story of how a Maine start-up company has managed to take the lead in an industry that's attracted the likes of Siemens and Lockheed Martin, and the opportunities and challenges ahead for them and their competitors as they seek to expand in the region.

New England senators reject GOP mercury emissions cuts

A bit of regionalism in action at the U.S. Senate yesterday. Every New England member -- including Republicans Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins (Maine), Scott Brown (Mass.) and Kelly Ayotte (N.H.) voted against a measure to nix tighter emissions standards for mercury and other toxic metals from coal-fired power plants. A number of southern and western Democrats voted for it.

More in my story in today's Portland Press Herald.

Sen. Collins absence allows Pentagon biofuels ban to advance

The US Defense Department is in the midst of a series of pilot projects to reduce the military's fossil fuel needs. Under the Operational Energy Strategy program, the Pentagon has been installing solar panels at remote bases in war zones and experimenting with the substitution of various biofuels in aircraft and the escort vessels of aircraft carrier groups.

The biofuels programs are under fire from Congressional Republicans on account of their additional upfront cost. The GOP-controlled House passed measures to effectively kill them earlier this year, but it is expected to have trouble in the U.S. Senate, which is controlled by Democrats.

Nonetheless, similar measures passed a key Senate committee by a single vote on May 24. Which brings us to today's story.

Earlier this week, Politico's Morning Defense flagged a perplexing development: according to roll call votes, the measures passed the Armed Services Committee because of the sudden and unexplained absence of Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) who has said she supports the biofuels effort. What happened? Read what I was able to learn in today's Portland Press Herald or the (front page of the) Kennebec Journal.

Talking tidal power on PRI's Living on Earth

I've been covering the infant tidal power industry -- which happens to be taking shape here in the Gulf of Maine region -- for several years now. Last month, perhaps the world leader in the field -- Ocean Renewable Power Co. of Portland -- towed their prototype turbine down from Eastport to show off to the public and the media.

Public Radio International's Living On Earth covered the event, and interviewed me thereafter for some of the context. The segment is airing week on public radio stations nationwide and is up online at PRI's website.

For some of my previous coverage of the tidal industry, start with my Christian Science Monitor and Down East features.

Europe:managing offshore wind conflicts with fisheries

The 2011 edition of Island Journal is out, including my feature on how various European countries have negotiated (or failed to negotiate) the inevitable conflicts between offshore wind farms and fishermen. It has particular valence for the Gulf of Maine region, where numerous offshore projects are in the works.

In short, the European experience points to the need to plan ahead and for potential developers to engage the fishing community early on, well before they start thinking about where they want to put their turbine arrays. Countries that haven't done this -- Germany among them -- have regretted it, while those that have (Denmark jumps to mind) have managed conflicts reasonably well.

The article isn't available online, but New Englanders can find Island Journal at better bookstores, or can order a copy from the Island Institute, which publishes it, as well as the monthly newspaper Working Waterfront, where my Parallel 44 column runs.

As an aside, I've covered wind energy for fifteen years now, filing stories from Denmark and Prince Edward Island along the way.

Maine Yankee nuclear waste - an update

For those who followed my stories on the storage of high level nuclear waste at the former Maine Yankee nuclear power plant site in Wiscasset, I've got an update in this week's Portland Phoenix.

While reporting this story for Down East, I noticed that the monthly nuclear safety reports issued by the state nuclear safety inspector had stopped being posted back in September 2010. Now some of those reports have posted at the state's website but, as this week's news brief notes, there are some items that call into question the utility of issuing these reports at all.

Eastern Maine: the Kitty Hawk of Tidal Power

The Bay of Fundy has the world's highest tides, so perhaps it's not surprising that a new and more promising generation of tidal energy generating devices is being tested there. But within the moon-wracked estuary -- most of which is in Canada -- it's a company in eastern Maine that's become the apparent front-runner, beating out older, larger European competitors.

My story in the new weekly print edition of The Christian Science Monitor has the details on the Ocean Renewable Power Company, their tests to date, and what the Fundy tides did to their competition. It's also just come up online, for the cellulose averse among you.