The 2024 Legislature has begun with a flurry of activity, and the Natural Resources Council of Maine (NRCM) staff experts have been hard at work to identify our top priorities for protecting Maine’s climate, water, wildlife, and outdoors and solving other environmental problems.
There are a variety of environmental issues in Maine being discussed this year, as always. While we’re tracking and weighing in on more than 60 bills, we’re focused on five priority bills that we’re excited to engage our supporters and members on. Get more information about the bills below, as well as other bills we are working on in our 2024 Legislative Priorities newsletter.
NRCM’s 2024 Legislative Priorities
- Gas System Reform (LD 2077)
- Maine Trails Bond (LD 1156)
- Industrial Rockweed Harvesting (LD 2003)
- Tribal Sovereignty (LD 2007)
- Reusable Packaging (LD 2091)
Gas System Reform (LD 2077)
LD 2077 seeks to address the looming customer risks associated with utility gas infrastructure expansion, as well as the human health and climate risks that come along with the operation of the gas system.
Utility gas is mostly methane – a climate super-pollutant – and both combustion and leakage are major contributors to climate change and are linked to serious health impacts.
Expanding the gas system also has a big negative impact on Maine families and businesses, who are expected to pay for new expansions on top of paying for the existing expensive pipeline infrastructure managed by gas utilities in their energy bills.
This bill would:
- Remove taxpayer-funded subsidies and incentives for gas system expansion,
- Put reasonable limits on gas utilities incurring and passing along expenses to customers,
- Launch studies to look into health impacts of indoor fossil fuel use, alternatives like neighborhood geothermal networks, and how gas utilities can operate to protect ratepayers and be consistent with Maine’s climate goals.
Maine Trails Bond (LD 1156)
LD 1156 would establish the first-ever Maine Trails Bond, providing $30 million for the design, construction, and maintenance of trails, prioritizing accessibility and sustainable design standards. Maine’s trails are economic drivers, community connectors, and improve our quality of life, but they’re in desperate need of additional funding to meet demand.
Currently, Maine invests almost no funding in our trails, despite being a huge part of our outdoor recreation economy.
Trail organizations and towns need this funding now: to support maintenance of existing trails, many of which need massive repairs from recent flooding, and to design and construct new trails given record levels of use of trails statewide.
Industrial Rockweed Harvesting (LD 2003) – defeated!
LD 2003 would have allowed unlimited industrial harvesting of rockweed along the intertidal zone.
Rockweed is a keystone species: more than a hundred species of animals use rockweed forest habitat. It also is a carbon sink, storing eight times as much carbon as eel grass, which Maine does not allow the harvest of.
Industrial rockweed harvesters remove large quantities of rockweed for animal feed, chemicals, and fertilizer. They want to be able to do this harvesting without landowner permission, even from conservation lands that land trusts purchase expressly to protect rockweed beds.
UPDATE: This bill, that would have allowed for that unlimited harvesting, was pulled by bill sponsor Senator Troy Jackson, and is being recommended out of committee as “Ought Not To Pass.” An early victory!
Tribal Sovereignty (LD 2007)
LD 2007 will restore the rights of Wabanaki tribes to self-govern and self-determination. The tribes in Maine have been advocating for sovereignty for years, building a movement and coalition of allies that rivals any in the nation in terms of diversity, strength, and commitment.
The tribes in Maine are the ONLY federally recognized tribes in the nation that are not sovereign, treated more like municipalities than sovereign nations, and therefore do not have the ability to regulate and oversee their lands, community, and culture independently from the state. This prevents the tribes from establishing their own environmental regulations and accessing federal funding and programs designed for tribal entities.
Final language for this bill is still under discussion as negotiations continue between the tribes and legislators to ensure a two-thirds majority to pass this bill.
Reusable Packaging (LD 2091)
LD 2091 will amend an existing law to allow businesses to provide food in reusable containers and receive them back for sanitizing and reuse – something they’re currently not able to do.
This bill was filed after a local business owner asked the state for permission to use reusable packaging for her local meal kit service called Farm & Fish but was told the current laws would not allow it. Our local businesses in Maine would like to do their part to reduce and reuse, and we should let them!
To tackle the plastic pollution crisis, we not only need to find solutions to clean up the mess we’ve made, we also need to turn off the tap. Reuse policies like this one allow us to do that and reduce the amount of waste entering our environment in the first place.
Leave a Reply