| CLF in Maine
From the Great North Woods to the rocky coast, Maine’s natural resources define the state. Where salt and fresh waters mix, tidal estuaries become nurseries for aquatic species, from oysters to striped bass. Unspoiled beaches, spruce covered islands, and scenic villages attract people to the coast to live and to play.
But intense development pressure endangers our communities and our health. Sprawling development brings increased traffic and demands new water treatment plants. Stormwater runs off of roads and parking lots, carrying toxic substances into streams and rivers. Industries look to take advantage of Maine’s deepwater harbors to site facilities like liquefied natural gas terminals. The growing and changing demands on Maine’s coastal resources cause new conflicts and require collaborative resolutions.
Since 1966, CLF has been standing with Mainers to solve our region's greatest environmental challenges.
CLF's current Maine initiatives and cases include:
- Clean Car Standards: Partnering with Maine and other states to reduce emissions from cars and trucks, our region's fastest-growing source of global warming air pollution, through our Clean Cars Campaign.
- LNG Terminal Siting: Examining the impacts of proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) sites across New England, ensuring a full environmental review.
- Mercury Initiative: Reducing toxic mercury emissions by enforcing long ignored federally mandated mercury pollution control requirements.
- Rebuilding Groundfish: Ending the overfishing of cod and other groundfish species in New England through legislation and other methods.
- Maine Climate & Energy Planning Act: Working through a stakeholder process initiated by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to consider the appropriate design for a regulatory program that will address the energy and climate impacts of new development projects.
- Central Maine Power Transmission Expansion: Advocating for a solution that puts Maine on a fast track to achieving maximum energy efficiency and demand response.
Maine accomplishments and victories:
- Advanced renewable energy projects in Maine by intervening before the Land Use Regulation Commission (LURC) on hearings for a Redington Township wind farm project.
- Ensured environmental impacts were appropriately addressed and mitigated in the Searsburg, ME Wind Project.
- Prevented the construction of a coal gasification plant in the coastal town of Wiscasset, Maine and helped enact a new law that imposes a three-year moratorium on construction of new coal gasification plants and requires the Maine Department of Environmental Protection to set CO2 emission standards for coal gasification plants.
- Protected tens of thousands of acres of headwaters forested lands throughout the region by guiding negotiations around the re-licensing of large hydro-electric dams, helping to conserve fish habitat and protect tens of thousands of acres surrounding the rivers and dams throughout northern New England.
- Fought for tougher pollution control of Maine's Androscoggin River, aimed at safeguarding the river from paper and pulp mill discharges. In conjunction with these efforts, CLF filed ethics complaints against the Department of Environmental Protection and State Representative Thomas Saviello, exposing numerous ethics violations.
- Protected and restored tidal estuaries by persuading the Maine Department of Transportation to allow Sherman Lake in Edgecomb, Maine to return to its natural state as a tidal marsh.
- Opposed and prevented the construction of a deepwater cargo port on 940-acre Sears Island, Maine’s largest undeveloped island.
- Prevented the expansion of Maine’s destructive salmon farming industry from moving into sensitive ecological areas of the Passamaquoddy, Penobscot and Blue Hill Bays, and sparked adoption of the first comprehensive pollution prevention permits for the emerging industry.
- Led Maine's aquaculture reform and the discussion of siting improvements and environmental permitting that encourages an economically sustainable and environmentally sound future for the industry.
- Facilited, along with other key groups, an overhaul of Maine's marine resource management system, ensuring the development of forward-looking programs.
- Won an important victory for smart growth in Maine by contending that the town of Scarborough violated Maine's Growth Management Act by failing to adopt zoning laws that are consistent with its own comprehensive plan.
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