Environmentalists Offer State a "Trail Map"

AUGUSTA -- Environmental groups want the candidates running for governor and the Legislature to pay attention to land preservation, wind power projects and water quality standards.

The Environmental Priorities Coalition, which includes 25 groups, outlined their ideas for a prosperous Maine Thursday, saying they represent more than 100,000 Mainers who are members of their respective organizations.

"Regardless of who is elected to the Blaine House or the Legislature, we must choose a path that allows our environmental policy making to be fair, our environmental laws to be enforced and our environmental programs to be adequately funded," said Maureen Drouin, executive director of the Maine Conservation Voters Education Fund.

At news conferences in Portland and Augusta, they unveiled what they called a "Trail Map to Prosperity" -- essentially a five-year plan that focuses on healthy people, clean energy, new jobs, livable communities and the protection of land, air, water and wildlife.

Jenn Gray, an attorney with Maine Audubon, said the state needs to buy more land by putting $20 million a year for five years into the Land for Maine's Future program.

"We need to significantly increase our publicly owned land, our forest acreage that is harvested sustainably, and our acreage in permanently protected wild lands and ecological reserves," she said.

Similarly, Heather Spalding of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardener's Association said farmland needs to be protected, too, and that chemicals need to be phased out of products and farming.

"In the next five years, we need to get the worst of the worst toxic chemicals out of consumer products, workplaces and community environments," she said.

On the energy-efficiency front, Dylan Voorhees of the Natural Resources Council of Maine said Maine exported more than $5 billion to pay for gas and oil in 2008. To reduce that dependency on fossil fuel, the state should push to weatherize homes and businesses, and pursue wind power and improved transportation.

"We need more and better car-pooling and public transportation opportunities, and investments in water and train freight routes," he said.

In her prepared remarks, Drouin wrote that state agencies that deal with environmental issues and conservation "have been stretched to the breaking point." She also made reference to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to emphasize the importance of funding these agencies.

"We are indeed at a crossroads -- a pivotal point in our history -- in which we must choose a path to the future in which our children and the generations to follow can experience good health, clean energy, pristine natural resources, and livable communities that support a vibrant Maine economy," she said at the Augusta news conference.