Last October, the City of Bath passed a resolution in support of LD 1870 — for the state to establish a Climate Superfund and make big fossil fuel companies pay for the climate impacts we are experiencing in Maine. The City of Rockland and the Town of Yarmouth passed similar resolutions. Other municipalities around the state are considering doing the same.
I can’t speak on behalf of the entire Bath City Council, but I can talk a little bit about why I, as a City Councilor, voted to support this call for polluters to pay, and why it makes sense for municipalities to support the creation of a Climate Superfund.
To put it frankly: It’s time for polluters to pay because our municipalities are already paying.
Kennebec River as viewed from Bath, Maine. (BComeau/NRCM)
After significant flooding in 2022, the City of Bath conducted a flood vulnerability assessment. As a result, Bath is upgrading two of its four most vulnerable pump stations. A pump station is the vital infrastructure that makes sure all kinds of water from all kinds of places goes where it needs to go and doesn’t overflow into our streets, back up into our houses, or dump pollution into our rivers. A pump station is a practically invisible piece of infrastructure that we don’t think about until something goes wrong. These systems are getting overwhelmed by intense rainfall, especially when paired with snow melt and ever-rising tides.
Upgrading only two of Bath’s most vulnerable pump stations costs $21 million. Our dedicated and hard-working city staff tapped into four different grant programs, some state and some federal, to cover about 40% of that expense.
Still, our current residents—and our future residents—will be covering the remaining 60%: millions of dollars more.
One of Bath’s next priorities is elevating a road that isolates 60 homes when it floods, jeopardizing not only access by emergency vehicles, but also the safety of first responders themselves. This flooding is becoming more extreme with more extreme weather events. It’s a problem we need to address now, for approximately $1.5 million.
And Bath is only one city. There are more than 450 municipalities like us facing imminent infrastructure needs due to extreme weather events all over the state.
It’s time for polluters to pay because we, as a state, are already paying.
The State is already doing what it can to help. Two years ago, $60 million for storm recovery was added to the 2024-2025 supplemental budget. Last year, through LD 1, the State allocated $39 million to infrastructure resilience. The state has invested nearly $100 million to help us adapt to climate change.
We are already paid at the state and local levels. And it’s not enough. Because the impacts of climate change will be felt for years to come.
The Maine Bureau of Insurance reports that between 2022 and 2025, nine disasters or emergencies were declared in the state. That’s an average of three per year. In comparison, from 1982 to 2022, the 40 years prior, there was an average of one disaster or emergency declared per year. Maine is experiencing a three-fold increase in three years.
And municipalities will need to continue to adapt. According to Bath’s flooding assessment, by 2050 another road in Bath will be vulnerable to extreme flooding conditions due to rising sea levels, isolating more than 150 homes and putting more people and property at risk.
We are already paying.
Enough is enough.
It’s time for polluters to pay because the people of Maine are already paying.
We are already paying with our flooded downtowns. We are already paying with our washed-out working waterfronts. We are already paying to elevate submerged roads and upsize culverts.
We are already paying.
The truth is that all of us played a part in this. We all used fossil fuels. But some are more responsible than others.
We sat at our kitchen tables, staring at our heating bill and utility bills, sometimes with dread, sometimes with disbelief, and did all we could to decrease our use of fossil fuels.
Others, outside of our state, enjoyed billion-dollar profits by deliberately maintaining the status quo.
It’s time for the big oil and natural gas companies to step up. It’s time for our legislators to step up and vote yes on LD 1870. It’s time for Maine to create a Climate Superfund. It’s time for the polluters to pay.
Because we are already paying.
—By Jean Guzzetti, Bath City Councilor
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