Off the coast of Maine, puffins are rebounding and feasting on a new snack

The 50th anniversary of Project Puffin has just ended, with researchers fully realizing how their quest has morphed from saving one bird to playing a part in saving the planet.

Its purpose in 1973 was simply to return puffins to islands off the coast of Maine, where hunters had killed them off by the late 1800s. Led by Steve Kress, then an Audubon camp bird instructor in his late 20s, the project moved puffin chicks here from Newfoundland. 

The effort became the world’s first successful seabird restoration of its kind. There are now more than 1,300 breeding pairs of puffins across several Maine islands. The irony is that a bird that gives us a sense of the watery riches of Maine in the 19^th century today warns us how we are impoverishing our oceans. 

The warning zoomed past me while I sat in bird blinds. 

It was early July on Eastern Egg Rock, a seven-acre island six miles off Pemaquid Point and the original site of the project. Puffins began breeding anew here in 1981, and the population reached a record high of 188 breeding pairs in 2019. 

Early July is the time of summer when scores of puffin chicks hatch in burrows under the boulders of the island, triggering one of nature’s most amazing sights. At dawn, parents pop out of the dark of burrow openings one by one, surveying their surroundings in the yawning manner of humans rubbing their eyes as they rise from bed. They then take off and fly out of sight over the Gulf of Maine. 

About 45 minutes later, an aerial parade of parents return with glistening, silver beak loads of fish in their mouths. Some zip over the boulders from the right, others from the left. Some come straight at me to burrow directly in front of my blind. Some arrivals are so simultaneous, I can’t keep track. They all plunge back into burrows with breakfast for chicks.

The parade was among the most memorable in the project’s history because of the species of fish that nearly every puffin parent and many terns brought back:

Sand lance. 

Small in size and obscure in direct value to humans, you will not see this fish on ice at the seafood counter. But many of the fish we prize in the pan or sizzle on the grill are there because of sand lance.

They are eel-like, which makes them as easy to swallow as spaghetti, 4 to 8 inches long as adults, and high in fats. That makes sand lance royalty in the realm of “forage fish,” a banquet for much larger creatures.  

According to a 2020 study by two dozen government, university and marine institute scientists, 72 animal species eat sand lance in Atlantic waters from North Carolina to Greenland.

The fish include cod, bluefin tuna, haddock, flounder, striped bass, herring and bluefish. The mammals include whales and seals, and the seabirds include gannets, endangered roseate terns and yes, puffins.

Sand lance is not normally the top food for puffins in the Gulf of Maine; it historically is a supplement to other cold-water fish. In the early decades of Project Puffin, hake and herring were the top choices.

Hake became the dominant fish as herring declined from multiple impacts. Herring is also overfished, and a major 2021 study said its decline is also consistent with climate disruptions in the marine food web.

In more recent years, haddock has sometimes been a major supplement, as species rebounded with federal and state management. Citing 2017 data, the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries website says, “haddock are currently experiencing a record abundance in the Gulf of Maine and on Georges Bank.”

(But in yet another example of how humans so quickly alter the oceans, a 2022 federal stock assessment says there is new evidence that haddock in the Gulf of Maine are suffering from a new round of overfishing).   

Add in the altered weather patterns brought by human-made climate change and puffins no longer know from year to year what they can find.

The Gulf of Maine is one of the fastest-warming swaths of ocean in the world, with frequent marine heat waves that drive cold-water species too deep or too far out to sea for puffins to catch. Often taking their place are more southerly fish too oval for small chicks to eat, such as butterfish. 

But just when you think this chaos is all bad news for the seabirds, the new mélange of ocean conditions for the second straight year delivered jaw-dropping feasts to puffins.

Last year, puffin parents flew onto the islands with unprecedented levels of elongated Atlantic saury, dramatically dangling a half foot or more from their beaks to feed chicks.

No one knows why this forage fish appeared. Saury are highly mobile, with little data connecting its movements to climate change. 

This year it was sand lance. The only other year over the last quarter-century that sand lance was so abundant was 2015. It is not clear why because not only is it a cold-water species, but its presence is highly tied to what it eats, the zooplankton Calanus finmarchicus, which itself is projected to dramatically decline with warming waters. But in that blind on Eastern Egg Rock, in early July, I observed 61 feedings in a morning, 60 of them sand lance.

There were similar sights elsewhere in the Gulf of Maine. On Seal Island, 32 miles to the east, one researcher wrote in the island journal, “I tried to keep up with the astonishing number of puffins circling the blind, bills heavy with sand lance. I got more feedings than I ever have before, and about twice as many as in a normal stint!”

Then, in mid-July, as if a switch flipped in the ocean, the sand lance disappeared. For the most part, the puffins did not miss a beat. On some islands, puffins swapped it out for mostly haddock. On others, parents switched to more of a smorgasbord of haddock, hake and redfish.

By July 22, when I stayed on Seal Island, the feedings were vastly of haddock, with some hake. This also amazed Don Lyons, director of conservation science for Project Puffin, formerly known as National Audubon’s Seabird Institute. 

“I can’t offhand recall such a seamless transition from one fish to another,” Lyons said. “It tells you a lot about the resourcefulness of puffins and at the same time, it’s a reminder of how much we still don’t know of when and where food is for seabirds, and how fast that all can change.” 

For Tracey Faber, the supervisor of Matinicus Rock and a longtime Project Puffin research assistant, both the sand lance and sudden shift to haddock was cause for nuanced celebration. She said while it was important that haddock helped puffins fledge chicks through later July, haddock also are significantly less fatty than sand lance, hake or herring, providing less nutrition. 

She said she worries about puffins hitting a threshold, because of climate change, of being able to change their foraging habits from “boom and bust” fish such as saury and sand lance to other species.

Arctic terns, for instance, had much more trouble finding food on Matinicus Rock and Seal Island when the sand lance disappeared, sadly settling for tiny crustaceans.

On Seal Island, the crew, supervised by Faber’s sister Coco, noted how several terns that fledged with some of the highest weights recorded in recent years, came back to plots to die. 

“Without consistently available species that can be provisioned throughout the entire chick-rearing process, productivity in any given year will be far more dependent on these unpredictable fish species,” Tracey Faber said. 

That makes you wonder what the summer would have been like without sand lance at all, because it was otherwise difficult for seabirds in the Gulf of Maine. Two years ago, record water warmth and record rain resulted in catastrophic nesting failure. Last year, with calmer weather, seabirds rebounded beautifully. 

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This year was marked with more above-average heavy rains and more continuous days of soaking fog than veteran researchers could remember. Tern nests were flooded to the point where eggs floated in them, and a significant number of hatched chicks soaked to death. 

Puffins on Seal Island and Matinicus Rock were hit hard. Seal Island had the lowest puffin egg hatching rates in five years and chick survival rates just above the disastrous levels of 2021. Matinicus Rock had the lowest puffin hatch success in a decade. Petit Manan also lost puffin nests due to storms. 

For puffins that did hatch, many chicks grew to nice weights on some islands, fortified by the sand lance. On Petit Manan, the early banquet of sand lance might have given chicks critical sustenance; two heat waves in July drove away supplemental prey to the extent that the chicks rapidly dropped weight. Cooler waters mercifully returned, and the chicks started gaining weight again.

Tasha Gownaris, a Gettysburg College environmental studies professor whose lab conducts research on Petit Manan, said the heat waves “likely exceeded the thermal tolerance limit of herring and hake. Scary stuff.” 

The fog and rain also sometimes made it impossible for researchers to locate and deal with predators. Several islands were plagued with mink, owls, peregrine falcons or black crowned night herons that tore through tern colonies. On Eastern Egg Rock, some voracious gulls used the fog as cover to prey on tern chicks. 

Matinicus Rock had to contend with clever ravens that last year killed nearly 50 puffins, and a ruddy turnstone that this summer wiped out at least 50 Arctic and common tern nests. Petit Manan saw a significant amount of tern nest abandonment, probably because a peregrine falcon took advantage of the fog to terrorize the colonies.   

“Even when you knew a predator was out there, the fog made it so you couldn’t even leave the cabin,” said Meg Getzinger, an Eastern Egg Rock research assistant. “It was sometimes so wet, you didn’t want to walk out there and kick up the tern colony, because the parents were working so hard to cover up their chicks. If we stirred them up, that would expose the chicks to yet more water.”

This summer also brought more sobering evidence of what the whole world is exposing seabirds to, when the whole world is their ecosystem. Keenan Yakola, a 10-year veteran of Project Puffin and a doctoral student at Oregon State, noted how many Arctic terns arrived to Gulf of Maine islands with poor weight; possibly their winter food supply in the Antarctic was disrupted by the same record low levels of sea ice that is causing total nesting failures for emperor penguins.

On Petit Manan, Gownaris and Linda Welch, biologist for the Maine Coastal Islands National Wildlife Refuge, also noted how Arctic terns arrived this spring lighter in weight. 

Yakola and partners such as Welch are making other connections with modern technology to remind people of the vital importance of waters far from where Maine’s summer tourists might see a puffin.

For instance, GPS tagging on Matinicus Rock of another species, Leach’s storm petrels, have shown for two straight years that the bird flies down to the latitude of Philadelphia to forage for chicks in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Marine Monument. Puffins also feed in the monument during the winter.

Other joint tracking projects between the Maine Coastal Islands refuge and Project Puffin have detailed the incredible migration of Arctic terns. Some Gulf of Maine terns wind all the way around South Africa into the Indian Ocean before wintering along the Antarctic ice pack.

“There are so many greater connections that we don’t pay attention to,” said Yakola, who hopes that research leads to a broader public concept of what an “ecosystem” is, and informs efforts in other nations to protect migrating birds wherever they are vulnerable. “It’s important to keep talking about how the Gulf of Maine is heating up,” Yakola said. “But the birds leave the Gulf for seven or eight months, most of the year. We must keep making connections.”

Tens of thousands of seabirds did successfully fledge chicks in the Gulf of Maine this summer. Overall bird populations on many islands remained strong. In mid-August, at the season-ending conference of the Gulf of Maine Seabird Working Group, several islands in the Cape Cod region reported increases in various tern populations. 

The White and Seavey Islands off New Hampshire reported a record number of nests for the federally endangered roseate tern. Pond Island had a record number of common tern nests. Among islands managed by the Maine Coastal Islands refuge, terns on Metinic and Ship did well while making a successful transition from sand lance to herring or hake. 

The longevity of seabirds also cheered researchers. On Eastern Egg Rock, the crew welcomed back a 28-year-old puffin. On Matinicus Rock, research assistant Ali Ballard led me to a burrow and joyfully pulled out the chick of a 34-year-old puffin, tying the record for the oldest bird ever reared in Project Puffin.

The senior bird is one of the last surviving from Kress’ original project. It was brought down as a chick from Newfoundland in 1989 and raised on Seal Island. The oldest known puffin was a Norwegian bird that made it to 41. 

The bird is older than nearly all the researchers, reminding them of all the ocean changes it must have seen. It also makes them more determined to demand we stop putting puffins through so much with climate change.

“I tell people what I do and many of them say, ‘You’re saving the birds,’ ” said Coco Faber. “I say, no, we’re not saving them. Mostly they’re saving themselves from us.” 

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After nearly nine months and eight meetings, Maine Recovery Council hasn’t spent any of the millions available from opioid settlement cases

In a brightly lit conference room on the first floor of the Department of Health and Human Services in Augusta on Thursday, the Maine Recovery Council met for the eighth time in as many months and, perhaps for the first time, discussed how it should spend nearly $118 million in settlement funds from companies accused of fueling the opioid epidemic.

The 15-member council is charged with overseeing distribution of half of Maine’s $235 million share in settlement funds. With bankruptcy proceedings pending for two drug manufacturers — Purdue Pharma and Endo International – there may be even more money on the way.

The council already has $17 million in payments but has yet to spend any of it. Instead it has spent 8 1/2 months working through administrative and bureaucratic details, such as establishing bylaws and creating subcommittees. Some of that work is ongoing. Early allotments from the half of the settlements that isn’t controlled by the recovery council have begun to be distributed.

Meanwhile, an average of 12 Mainers weekly died of a drug overdose in the first six months of this year, according to the June monthly overdose report. More than 4,700 nonfatal overdoses were reported in the same period.

At Thursday’s meeting, some members expressed frustration at the slow pace of their work. Gordon Smith, Gov. Janet Mills’ director of opioid response, put it bluntly: “I don’t think any of us want to be here in November on the first anniversary date of receiving this money and say that we haven’t spent any of it.

“Pretty soon people are going to look at Maine and say they’re falling behind.”

Council chair Pat Kimball said Friday that “although I think you could sense some frustration, I think it was a meeting that needed to take place in regards to people really, really (starting) to ask those questions, and where are we and how do we do this.”

Asked why administrative items, like a conflict of interest policy — which is still not finalized — weren’t completed sooner, Kimball said “it’s growing pains.”

The council wants to get the money out there, she said, but also needs to do it responsibly. 

“We know it’s not going to be perfect.”

Courtney Gary-Allen, the organizing director for the Maine Recovery Advocacy Project, said Friday she feels the urgency for the council to ramp up its work.

“I think that as a person who spends a lot of time on the front lines of the addiction crisis, and watching my friends and family die, often I am frustrated with the amount of time that it takes us to get money out the door and choose the people that need most.”

At the same time, “I think that the decisions of this first council are going to be some of the most impactful decisions for the next 18 years,” she said.

Likewise, Chastity Tuell said Friday she believes “everybody wants to get the money out to where it needs to go as quick as possible. But we also want to do it right.”

As frustrating as it might be, “I feel really confident that we’re covering all of our bases to do it right,” she said.

Gary-Allen, Tuell and others said Thursday that the council was still missing critical input from the public and other stakeholders.

“I just don’t feel like I can make those decisions without also not just hearing from the state about what they say we need, but also hearing from communities and making sure that we have a public process for applications,” Gary-Allen said.

The council has not had a public listening session, said Liz Blackwell-Moore, the public health director for Cumberland County.

Blackwell-Moore volunteered to take the lead on writing and distributing a public survey. Kimball said she hopes it will go out next month so the council can discuss the results at its October meeting.

That will “help us decide on priorities,” she said.

In the meantime, the finance committee is working on an annual budget, she said, and the programs and grants committee should meet for the first time soon.

Kimball said she remains hopeful that the council can award its first tranche of money by the end of the year.

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Third town opposes national wildlife refuge, another puts off a commitment

A third Franklin County town signed on this week to a letter to Maine’s congressional delegation opposing a national wildlife refuge in the western Maine mountains, while a separate town abstained from a commitment.

The Wilton Board of Selectpersons unanimously approved the letter Tuesday and the Carrabassett Valley Select Board decided not to take a stance after a discussion with a federal official and an opposition member.

The two approaches — one town voicing objection, the other adopting a wait-and-see outlook — reflect broader trends by local officials, residents and recreationists in the area.

Those staunchly against the refuge have said state and local conservation efforts in the area are sufficient. They are wary of federal oversight, which they say could limit hunting and recreation access; others say it’s too soon to decide either way.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service this spring began exploring the creation of a roughly 200,000-acre refuge straddling the Appalachian Trail in the High Peaks region. 

Ultimately the area would likely be pared down to between 5,000 and 15,000 acres, according to Nancy Perlson, a local conservation consultant working with the Fish and Wildlife Service.

The High Peaks region encompasses some of the highest mountains in Maine and one of the state’s largest roadless expanses. 

Paul Casey, a Fish and Wildlife official managing the process, has said the refuge would provide more opportunity for conservation and protection of local wildlife than the state currently offers.

Over the past few months, the agency has held a series of “scoping sessions” in Rangeley, Farmington and Carrabassett Valley to hear public input. 

A formal proposal is expected by this fall and would be followed by a 45-day public comment period. 

Along with Wilton, other Franklin County officials have begun voicing opposition to the proposal. 

In May, the Eustis Select Board voted unanimously to oppose it and was followed in June by the Franklin County Commission, which voted 2-0-1 in opposition, with one abstention.

Both the town and county went on to sign the opposition letter, which Franklin County Commissioner Bob Carlton said was written by a coalition of citizens who oppose the refuge.

The town of Avon’s select board also signed the letter, a town official said Friday.

Carlton and Tom Saviello, a former state representative and Wilton selectperson, attended Wilton’s meeting Tuesday to lay out their arguments against the proposal and present the letter. 

“We all want to protect the High Peaks, there’s no question about it,” Carlton said. “We want to keep what’s there, we want to keep it open for all the things we like to do,” like hunting, fishing, ATVing and snowmobiling.

Carlton said ATVs wouldn’t be allowed on the refuge, and certain hunting methods would be restricted — including bear hunting with bait and using lead ammunition on small birds and game.

“All of a sudden we have a piece of land … that we can do what we want and we follow the state of Maine laws and regulations,” Carlton said. “Now we’re saying, ‘Come here, but these are the rules you have to follow,’ so it’s restricted right off the bat.”

Saviello, who said he supported an earlier USFWS refuge proposal in 2013, emphasized that the current proposal would pull control from local residents and center it in Washington as opposed to Augusta.

“If there’s a problem in the refuge, with access and so forth, where do you have to go? Washington D.C.,” Saviello said. “If there’s a problem on public lands today, you go to Augusta, you go to your legislator, you have a voice that’s very strong if it’s managed by the state.”

Casey, the USFWS official managing the process, is based in New Hampshire, where he is the manager of the Umbagog National Wildlife Refuge, which includes parts of western Maine.

Selectperson Mike Wells agreed with Saviello, saying the refuge would dilute local input.

“The closer it is to home, the more of a voice we have,” Wells said.

The Carrabassett Valley Select Board took no action following a similar conversation with Carlton, as well as Casey and Perlson. 

Though two select board members said they were apprehensive of the proposal, another expressed being uncomfortable with voting in opposition that night, adding that he thinks the community wants to know more, according to the Daily Bulldog.

That sentiment is reflected in a recent editorial by Will Lund, editor of The Maine Sportsman magazine. 

Lund wrote in the August edition that fellow recreationists should hear out the USFWS and not jump to conclusions while the refuge proposal is in such early planning days.

“The easiest position to take on such proposals is an automatic ‘No,’ since many of us have a healthy distrust of the federal government in any form,” Lund wrote. “However, in our view it does not make sense to shut down the conversation.”

Lund went on to refute claims that the refuge would outlaw hunting, fishing, general public access and the rights of current private landowners.

In regard to snowmobile and ATV use, Lund wrote that the USFWS knows no proposal would be supported unless it called for continuation of snowmobile and other motorized travel.

He also asks outdoorspeople to consider whether private landowners will commit to public access in the future, rounding the editorial out with a contemplative approach to what the USFWS is proposing.

“To be clear, we are not supporting establishment of a refuge. How could we?” Lund wrote. 

“There has been no written, detailed plan put forth that draws the boundary on a map, or that takes into consideration the input the Service has received,” and other questions need addressing, he added.

“However, it’s important to keep talking. It’s challenging to think in the long terms that are required to ensure access to land for our children and our children’s children. However, when land is developed, it’s gone forever. Let’s hear the feds out on this one.”

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A remarkable discovery in Maine’s wilderness sparks a debate over the risks and rewards of mining

The world’s richest known lithium deposit lies deep in the woods of western Maine, in a yawning, sparkling mouth of white and brown rocks that looks like a landslide carved into the side of Plumbago Mountain. 

Mary Freeman and her husband Gary found the deposit five years ago while hunting for tourmaline, a striking, multi-colored gemstone found in the region.

The Freemans make their living selling lab supplies through the Florida-based company they founded 40 years ago, Awareness Technology. But their true love is digging for gemstones, which has brought them for years to Mary’s home state of Maine, the site of some of the best tourmaline hunting in the world. 

Since the early 1990s, they’ve been buying up property parcels, studying core samples and old geological maps to determine where to try digging next, then spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on blasting and equipment. The couple has dug more than a mile of tunnels in pursuit of beautiful stones, and many of their finds — like blue elbaite and rich multi-colored tourmaline — have wound up on display at the Maine Mineral & Gem Museum in nearby Bethel.

Now, the Freemans want to expand this pit, near the town of Newry, Maine, so they can mine spodumene, crystals that contain the lithium the U.S. needs for the clean energy transition. The timing of their discovery, in what has been named Plumbago North, is remarkable; the Freemans have stumbled across one of the only hard-rock sources of lithium in the U.S. at a time when the material is desperately needed for the clean energy transition.

By 2040, the world will need at least 1.1 million metric tons of lithium annually, more than ten times what it currently produces, according to projections by the International Energy Agency.

Should the Maine deposit be mined, it could be worth as much as $1.5 billion, a huge windfall for the Freemans and a boon to the Biden Administration’s efforts to jumpstart more domestic mining, processing, and recycling of critical minerals such as lithium, cobalt, and rare earth elements to reduce the U.S.’ dependence on China. This is one of the few lithium deposits in the U.S. currently found in hard rock, which means it is higher-quality and faster to process than lithium mined from brine. 

“I consider myself an environmentalist,” says Mary, who on a recent rainy visit to the test quarry, was wearing jeans, a sweater, and hiking boots, her white hair pulled into a low ponytail. Most of the country’s critical minerals are mined elsewhere and processed in China, she adds. “I think (the U.S.) should try to be a little bit more self-sufficient.” 

But like just about everywhere in the U.S. where new mines have been proposed, there is strong opposition here. Maine has some of the strictest mining and water quality standards in the country, and prohibits digging for metals in open pits larger than three acres. There have not been any active metal mines in the state for decades, and no company has applied for a permit since a particularly strict law passed in 2017.

As more companies begin prospecting in Maine and searching for sizable nickel, copper, and silver deposits, towns are beginning to pass their own bans on industrial mining. 

“This is a story that has been played out in Maine for generations,” says Bill Pluecker, a member of the state’s House of Representatives, whose hometown of Warren — a 45-minute drive from the capital city of Augusta — recently voted overwhelmingly in favor of a temporary ban on industrial metal mining after a Canadian company came looking for minerals near a beloved local pond. “We build industries based on the needs of populations not living here and then the bottom drops out, leaving us struggling again to pick up the pieces.” 

Mainers often invoke the Callahan Mine in the coastal town of Brooksville as a warning. Tailings from the mine, which operated for several years in the late 1960s, were disposed of in a pile next to a salt marsh and creek. The former mine is now a Superfund site, and a 2013 study by researchers at Dartmouth College found widespread evidence of toxic metals in nearby sediment, water and fish. Cleanup costs, borne by taxpayers, are estimated between $23 million and $45 million.

“Our gold rush mentality regarding oil has fueled the climate crisis,” says State Rep. Margaret O’Neil, who presented a bill last session that would have halted lithium mining for five years while the state worked out rules (the legislation ultimately failed). “As we facilitate our transition away from fossil fuels, we must examine the risks of lithium mining and consider whether the benefits of mining here in Maine justify the harms.”

The Freemans point out that they plan to dig for the spodumene, then ship it out of state for processing, so there would be no chemical ponds or tailings piles. They liken the excavation of the minerals to quarrying for granite or limestone, which enjoys a long, rich history in Maine.

Advocates for mining in the U.S. argue that, since the country outsources most of its mining to places with less strict environmental and labor regulations, those harms are currently being born by foreign residents, while putting U.S. manufacturers in the precarious position of depending on faraway sources for the minerals they need. Though there are more than 12,000 active mines in the U.S., the bulk of them are for stone, coal, sand, and gravel. 

There is only one operational lithium mine in the U.S., in Nevada, and one operational rare earth element mine, in Mountain Pass, Calif., meaning that the U.S. is dependent on other countries for the materials essential for clean energy technologies like batteries, wind turbines, and solar panels. Even after they’re mined, those materials currently have to be shipped to China for processing since the U.S. does not have any processing facilities.

“If we’re talking about critical metals and materials, we’re so far behind that it’s crazy,” says Corby Anderson, a professor at the Colorado School of Mines. “It’s the dichotomy of the current administration — they have incentives for electric vehicles and all these things, but they need materials like graphite, manganese, nickel, cobalt, lithium, and copper. The only one we mine and refine in this country is copper.” 

The COVID-19 pandemic laid bare the problems of faraway supply chains; as U.S. consumers shopped online in their homes, the goods they bought, mostly from Asia, experienced lengthy delays at clogged ports. What’s more, diplomatic tensions with China motivated the U.S. government to seek other potential sources for mining, material processing, and recycling. 

That’s why, in the pandemic’s aftermath, the Biden Administration launched an initiative to secure a Made in America supply chain for critical minerals. It included billions in funding for companies trying to mine and process critical minerals domestically. 

The rocks in Plumbago North would seem to help provide a domestic supply chain for critical minerals; they are thought to be among the largest specimens of spodumene ever found, with crystals of such high quality that in addition to batteries, they could be used to make scientific glassware or computer screens, where the lithium metal would help lower the melting temperature. 

The Freemans are just two of the hundreds of people prospecting for critical materials across the country as the U.S. tries to strengthen the domestic supply chain.

According to an analysis by Patrick Donnelly, the Great Basin Director for the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit environmental organization, more than 100 companies have staked claims for lithium deposits in the American West. Companies also have applied for permits to mine cobalt in Idaho, nickel and copper in Minnesota, and lithium in North Carolina. 

Geologists say there’s also likely a lot more lithium in spodumene deposits across New England. Communities that haven’t had working mines in years may soon find themselves a key source for lithium and other minerals needed for car batteries, solar panels, and many of the objects people will need more of to transition themselves off polluting fossil fuels. 

There are good reasons for U.S. communities to have healthy skepticism about mining projects; there is no shortage of examples of a company coming into a community, mining until doing so becomes too expensive, then leaving a polluted site for someone else to clean up. There are more than 50,000 abandoned mines in the western United States alone, 80% of which still need to be remediated. Passage of landmark environmental laws like the Clean Air Act of 1970 and the Clean Water Act of 1972 hasn’t made mining safe enough, environmentalists say.

“All mines pollute in one way or another, and mines are really bad at predicting how much they’re going to pollute,” says Jan Morrill, who studies mining at the environmental group Earthworks, which recently found that 76% of mining companies in the U.S. polluted groundwater after saying they wouldn’t. 

One of the most problematic parts of mines is the tailings, or waste, Morrill says: Companies extract the minerals they need, then are left with a giant pile of rock, liquid, and chemicals that they store in ponds or behind dams that sometimes prove unstable. These tailings have caused landslides, excessive dust, and water pollution; more than 300 mine tailing dams have failed worldwide over the last century, according to Christopher Sergeant, a research scientist at the University of Montana.

It is not uncommon for tailings to leak into water, in fact, there is a permit that mine owners can get in case they find their projections were wrong and they need to discharge into U.S. waters. 

Even “modern mines” that adhere to the latest U.S. standards — which are among the strictest in the world — still pollute, Earthworks has found. Though there are, theoretically, non-polluting ways to store mine tailings, doing so is much more expensive and mine operators have largely not paid to do so, Morrill says. That’s because, says Aimee Boulanger, executive director of the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance, “laws and markets have not fully incentivized companies to do that.” 

Indeed, the Biden initiative to increase domestic mining includes, for example, a $700 million loan for Ioneer, a company planning a lithium mine on Rhyolite Ridge in Nevada, where environmental groups say the mine, as proposed, would cause the extinction of an endangered species called Tiehm’s buckwheat. The Administration is also spending $115 million to help Talon Nickel build a battery minerals processing facility in North Dakota, but the potential mine they would source from, in Minnesota, is opposed by Indigenous groups and environmentalists who fear it could contaminate wells in the area.

Still, the U.S. has a more rigorous regulatory environment than many other countries, she says, and there are domestic mines that even some environmentalists support, like the Stillwater Mine in Montana. Community organizations there signed a Good Neighbor Agreement in 2000 with the Sibanye-Stillwater Mining Company allowing the firm to extract platinum and palladium — while also establishing clear and enforceable water standards, restrictions to minimize local traffic, and third-party auditors to ensure the mine adheres to the standards it set out. The mine is now one of the top employers and private-sector income generators in Montana.

Environmental concerns aren’t the only problem with mining, Morrill says. The history of mining in the U.S. is linked to colonialism; Christopher Columbus was looking for gold when he stumbled across North America, and as Europeans expanded into the continent, they took land from Indigenous people to mine for gold, silver, and other metals. 

Today, mining in the U.S. often encroaches on Indigenous land. Under mining laws in the U.S. that date to 1872, anyone can stake a claim on federal public lands and apply for permits to start mining if they find “valuable” mineral deposits there. Most lithium, cobalt, and nickel mines are within 35 miles of a Native American reservation, Morrill says, largely because in the aftermath of the 1849 gold rush, the U.S. military removed tribes to reservations not far from mineral deposits in the West. In one particularly controversial project, the mining company Rio Tinto wants to build a copper mine on Oak Flat, Ariz., a desert area adjacent to an Apache reservation that Indigenous groups have used for centuries to conduct cultural ceremonies.

Yet fears about the effects of climate change are escalating the pressure on local communities to get out of the way of mines, says Thea Riofrancos, an associate professor of political science at Providence College who studies mining and the green energy transition. She and other scholars have questioned whether projections that the world will face lithium shortages by 2025 are accurate; recycling more batteries and transitioning away from private vehicles to more public transportation, for example, could reduce our long-term need for lithium-ion energy storage. 

“We should think about what is driving this demand, why does this rush feel so intensive, why is there not a version where we are going to try and do this transition with the least amount of mining possible?” Riofrancos says. 

Most environmentalists agree that the 1872 mining law needs to be updated and there are several bills in Congress that would do so. The Clean Energy Minerals Reform Act of 2023, for example, introduced by Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) in May, would require more tribal consultation and change how mining is approved on federal lands. 

Finding a way to mine in the U.S. could help address a moral quandary, that we consume these materials but ask other countries to bear the brunt of their extraction, says Boulanger, with IRMA. 

“There’s an argument to be made that if we’re going to use these materials, and we live in the most consumptive country in the world, we shouldn’t be making other countries be the bank account of our natural resources,” she says.

If lawmakers and regulators can’t agree on how to mine on U.S. soil, it could leave the U.S. susceptible to essentially outsourcing its mining problems to less-regulated countries. For example, last October, the Department of Energy used the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to give a $141.7 million grant to Piedmont Lithium, which is building a plant in Tennessee to expand U.S. supply of lithium hydroxide, used in long-range batteries for electric vehicles.

In March, Blue Orca Capital, a hedge fund, said it was “shorting,” or betting against the stock of Piedmont Lithium, alleging that the spodumene the firm plans to refine into lithium at its Tennessee facility was guaranteed by bribes to the son of a high-level politician in Ghana — ”because of corruption,” those raw materials are likely to never come to fruition, the hedge fund says. Piedmont denies the allegations and says in a statement provided to TIME that the Minerals Income Investment Fund of Ghana told the company that it has valid licenses and permits for all its current activities. 

Most of the proposed critical materials mines in the U.S. are not near a big population center — or economic activity, and some communities are in favor of a mine for the jobs it would create. But the proposed locations could instead lead to situations where sparsely populated communities don’t learn about a planned mine until it’s too late to stop it. “It can feel really fast — all of a sudden an enormous project is being proposed next door to you, it took years for the company to prospect but you didn’t hear about it ‘til now,” says Riofrancos. 

The Freemans’ mine is not one of these projects. Though it is five miles from the nearest town, Maine is going through an extensive review process to decide whether to let the couple keep digging. Earlier in 2023, there were seven bills in the legislature regarding the potential of mining lithium in Maine.

Lawmakers ultimately settled on legislation that may open the door to extracting the Freemans’ lithium by allowing larger open pit metal mines, so long as developers can prove they won’t pollute groundwater and the local environment. But the new law will require changing the state’s mining regulations, which may mean it could be years before the couple is able to start digging in earnest.

The Freemans say their mine would not pollute the surrounding land and water, as the chemical composition of the crystals and the rocks around them is such that they would not dissolve into dangerous acid when exposed to air and water. Geologists that TIME/Maine Monitor spoke with agree with that assessment. Further, the crystals, says Mary, would be shipped out of state in large chunks for processing, so there would be no chemical ponds or tailings. 

Many geologists agree that the Freemans’ proposal would not be as disruptive as other proposed mines across the country. Other metals (like nickel, silver, and zinc) typically occur in bands of rock deep below the surface that contain iron sulfides, which create sulfuric acid when exposed to air and water, polluting waterways for decades, a phenomenon known as acid mine drainage. Some spodumene crystals at Plumbago North, by contrast, have been naturally exposed to air and water for hundreds of millions of years and not broken down. 

On a visit to the test quarry this spring, Gary Freeman pointed out one large piece of spodumene lying at the bottom of a nearby brook, the water over it rushing fast and clear, not the rusty orange of an acid-contaminated stream. (The waterway is known, fittingly, as Spodumene Brook.) “The water is so good Poland Spring wants to bottle it and sell it,” says Mary. 

Still, Morrill, of Earthworks, says there’s just not enough research about the effects of hard rock spodumene mining to say for sure that the mine wouldn’t harm the environment. Since so many people in Maine depend on recreation and tourism for their livelihoods, she says, it makes the most sense to keep protective regulations in place. 

Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection has rejected the Freemans’ request to consider the land a quarry, and is instead classifying spodumene as a metallic mineral. As the law stands, the Freemans will have to apply for permits under Maine’s 2017 Metallic Mineral Mining Act, a costly process (the application processing fee alone is $500,000) that would take years. 

Meanwhile, the local community is divided. After all, in Maine it’s not difficult to find people still living with the long-term damage of older mines. On the other hand, many Mainers are pragmatic and understand the state has long, dark winters, and will need battery storage for any renewable energy it generates on sunny or windy days. The alternative is to continue relying on fossil fuels, which would exacerbate climate change.

Myles Felch, curator at the Maine Mineral and Gem Museum, is one of these practical Mainers. He was raised in Union, where a groundswell of opposition has formed to resist a proposal by Canada-based Exiro Minerals to look for nickel near a beloved local pond. Felch isn’t thrilled with the prospect, but also knows we can’t continue to be so detached from the minerals we use in our daily life.

“I love the place where I grew up and I wouldn’t want anything to ever happen to it,” said Felch. But “You need mineral resources,” said Felch. “Most people were probably texting ‘stop the mine’ with a nickel cobalt battery in their phones.”

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Maine homeschooling numbers remain high following a pandemic spike

In the fall of 2016, Jessica Coakley became increasingly concerned that her son, Braden, was falling behind in school. The fourth grader had an Individualized Education Program, requiring certain services for students like him with different learning needs.

But his mother worried it was not enough. 

“I was feeling like the teachers and the principals and the people weren’t listening to me,” said Coakley, who lives in Bradley, just north of Bangor. “I would go to these IEP meetings and I’d be crying when I’d leave because I just felt so frustrated.”

When her son’s state test scores came back, they showed he was testing at a first-grade level — three years behind where he should have been, Coakley said. His self-esteem was suffering.

Left with dwindling options, Coakley, who had gone to school herself for a year and a half to become a teacher, decided to teach him at home. Although she was skeptical and scared, she remembers thinking to herself, “All right, well, I can’t do any worse.” 

Thousands of families are making the same choice in Maine and around the country, leading to a sharp increase in homeschooling that skyrocketed during the pandemic and has remained a popular option.

In the 2019-20 school year, just under 6,800 students were homeschooled in Maine. The following year, that number almost doubled to 12,048.

While the population of homeschooled students has declined year-over-year since then, state records show that this past school year there were still about 10,100 students learning from home — a 50% increase from 2019-20. Because of a shift in the way this information is tracked, accurate data from before that year is not available.

In just under a quarter of districts across the state, there are now more students being homeschooled than there were in the 2020-21 year, during the height of the pandemic-era increase.

Experts, parents and advocates cite a number of reasons for the dramatic increase. Like the Coakleys, some families have pulled their kids with disabilities because they worry their needs aren’t being met. Others have religious or moral objections to material taught in public schools.

Maine’s rural landscape means that for some students, there isn’t a lot of choice: It’s the local public school or homeschool. For still others, in-person schooling feels untenable because of bullying or social anxiety. 

State officials hope more students return to the classroom.

“Public schools are critical to our democracy,” said Marcus Mrowka, Director of Communications at the Maine DOE, “and a way that kids can come together and learn the skills that they need to thrive. So we would hope that more parents would choose to send their kids back to public schools in the years ahead, and we are providing those supports to schools and to educators in order to make Maine public schools the best places they can be for schools.”

Experts say for at least some families, the pandemic showed them for the first time that they could homeschool. 

“In the nearer term, what we see are families who maybe never considered homeschooling in the past,” said Heath Brown, associate professor of public policy at City University of New York, John Jay College, and the CUNY Graduate Center, and author of Homeschooling the Right: How Conservative Education Activism Erodes the State. But, “because of the pandemic they were compelled to experience it, and some felt like it was an approach to education they preferred.”

Brown pointed to shifts in technology, such as the availability of online curriculum, that made homeschooling more accessible, academically and financially. Thus, today’s homeschooling population is far more diverse racially, ethnically, and along class lines than it was historically. He also noted changes in state laws that made it easier for families to pursue this option.

“Homeschooling organizations have been very effective, especially at the state level, for pushing for more lenient laws, laws that make it easier to homeschool,” he said. “As a result, homeschooling has become quite attractive to many families.”

He categorized Maine homeschooling laws as “middle of the pack,” neither the most lenient nor the most restrictive in the country. 

Here’s how it works: Within 10 calendar days of beginning home instruction, Maine parents or guardians must provide the school system with a written notice of intent. They pledge to provide at least 175 days of instruction in specific subject areas, including English, social studies and library skills. And at the end of each school year, they choose from a list of assessments to demonstrate their child’s academic progress. 

Jay Robinson, superintendent of MSAD 72, based in Fryeburg, said the vast majority of homeschooling parents in his district opt to have a certified teacher review a portfolio of their child’s work when the school year wraps up.

Before the pandemic, Robinson said, about 75 students of the approximately 1,500 in his district were turning to home instruction. Once the pandemic hit, that almost doubled to about 130, where it’s hovered since.

As his district shifted back to in-person learning, Robinson heard from parents worried their kids would bring the virus home to at-risk family members. He believes this drove most of the homeschooling spike, although the numbers still haven’t returned to pre-pandemic levels. He also wonders if the rise of the culture wars and book bans might be playing a role in a parent’s choice to homeschool, although he had not heard that in his own district.

Angela Grimberg, executive director of Coalition for Responsible Home Education, said her organization has incorporated Maine’s annual review process into its model legislation, arguing that all states should have a similar one. Nationwide, she’s concerned there is not enough accountability surrounding homeschooling. 

“We’re seeing that across the states, they are still trying to deregulate homeschooling,” Grimberg said, “even as prior policies weren’t enough to protect these children.”

The most severe cases, she said, can lead to severe abuse and neglect, and deregulation can also lead to an inadequate education. She noted this is not typical of most homeschool parents, but hopes to “protect what’s valuable about homeschooling while mitigating the risks for severe outcomes.” 

When homeschooling is done responsibly, Grimberg said, it can be immensely beneficial, especially for students with disabilities and those facing discrimination.

Maine law dictates that home instruction students are eligible to receive special education and related services at their local public school. They may also enroll in and audit some public school classes as well as extracurricular activities. School districts are then eligible for funding to support students receiving on-site instruction.

Robinson, the superintendent, said educators in his district maintain relationships with families who don’t want to partake in the whole school program but still want their kids present for extracurricular activities and upper-level academic classes.

Trish Hutchins, regional representative for Homeschoolers of Maine, a statewide, ministry-based organization, said access to these supports varies by district. Largely it is “welcomed and encouraged.” 

During the pandemic, Hutchins said, parents of students with special needs found themselves implementing their kids’ IEPs at home. While schools can be limited by staff and funding, she said, at home these students may receive closer attention and custom-designed curriculum.

Jake Langlais, the superintendent of Lewiston Public Schools, worries that academic needs are not always met in this context. He is concerned that there are a number of students being homeschooled who are “getting no education whatsoever.” 

In the 2021-22 school year, there were 5,182 students in Lewiston public schools. That same year, around 220 students received home instruction, more than double the number in the 2019-20 year. By this past school year, about 170 students continued to learn from home. 

While recognizing there’s “fantastic” homeschooling across the state, he also noted, “there are so many benefits — so, so many benefits — to public school (that you) can’t fabricate in a homeschool.” He pointed to unique skills and socialization students receive in a school building.

“There’s a lot of ways you can build up resiliency and routine in a school that are harder to create outside of school,” he said.

A rise in homeschooling can also impact school funding. 

“If my enrollment is down 100 students — because of homeschooling or private schooling — that has serious impacts,” he said, especially in smaller districts. 

The Covid Surge

When Jessica Coakley, the mom from Bradley, decided to shift her son to homeschooling in 2016, she scoured the internet for resources. She quickly realized they were spread out and challenging to aggregate. So she created a Facebook page, “Homeschooling in ME,” to help other parents and guardians.

“I started the page with the hope that we could start this small community,” Coakley said.

The group grew slowly to about 300 members. Coakley liked the sense of community it provided. Parents traded tips about science curriculum, the best resources from Khan Academy, which creates online educational tools, and where to locate textbooks on Ebay. 

When the pandemic hit, the small community quickly grew. Coakley saw another uptick after the implementation of vaccine mandates. Now the page is home to over 3,000 members. 

Hutchins, the Homeschoolers of Maine representative, saw a similar spike. Occasionally before the pandemic, she would receive calls from families in crisis who needed to abruptly shift to homeschooling. But when 2020 hit, she said, suddenly that was happening all the time. She was in constant crisis management.

Coakley said today she hears from a whole range of parents who decided to homeschool their kids. A sizable minority of the posts she sees in her group are from parents of kids with special needs or facing discrimination. 

“There are thousands of reasons why people homeschool in Maine,” Coakley said. “It’s incredible. I think that’s the craziest thing about this community is that we all homeschool our kids, but we all do it for entirely different reasons.”

She said the increase in homeschooling generally has helped shatter preconceived notions about who homeschools and why. Many of these stereotypes initially made her hesitant as well. “When I was mulling over my decision,” she said, “I was scared I was going to ruin his life.”

But instead, the time at home gave Coakley’s son an opportunity to catch up academically and build his confidence. He learned math skills through cooking classes and took piano lessons. It was a challenging first year, but by his fourth year at home he was doing well.

Before eighth grade, Coakley told his mother that he was ready to return to the traditional classroom. She was nervous but agreed. His initial transition back was an adjustment because he learned to take all of his classes on the computer. But his teachers were supportive and he loved being back in the classroom.

This fall, Coakley will enter his sophomore year of high school. Ultimately, his mother said, being at home and learning in a small environment gave him the tools to return and thrive.

“I’m super proud,” she said. “Look what we did. We did this together.”

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Legislature shores up finances of emergency medical service providers around the state

As part of a larger budget deal, state legislators have approved $31 million in funding that will provide breathing room for the roughly 275 emergency medical services (EMS) statewide, some on the verge of collapse. The aid will be distributed in two batches, 40% possibly by October for emergency relief and 60% thereafter in the form of grants. 

Renée Gray, the newly appointed Washington County manager and also the ambulance chief for Moosabec Ambulance Service in Jonesport-Beals, said the relief cannot come soon enough. One Washington County ambulance service closed earlier this year and others have merged due to low staffing and depleted revenues.

“The people that work in this field are problem solvers, and they’ll kill themselves trying to fix this problem. That’s basically what’s happened – EMS has finally revealed its holes,” Gray said.

The long-negotiated funding — EMS officials originally requested $70 million — got caught up in a legislative battle over a proposed budget addition to the governor’s $9.9 billion, two-year budget that was approved in March. 

A blue-ribbon commission, formed last year to study the issue, made recommendations to the legislature. Rick Petrie, the interim executive director for Atlantic Partnership EMS, a statewide EMS collaborative, was a leading advocate in the effort to secure state funding.

“It’s not what we would have hoped because the blue-ribbon commission was pretty clear that EMS providers needed $70 million,’’ Petrie said. “OK, so we compromised, but now let’s turn this (money) out really quickly with very little red tape.”

How much red tape there might be is unknown because no further details about the allocations were announced. Also, the budget measure did not pass by a two-thirds majority that would have allowed it to go into effect immediately. The budget addition, which still needs the governor’s signature, passed 80-58 on Thursday in the House and by a 22-9 vote in the Senate.  

Still, Petrie said approval of the funding indicates that lawmakers recognize providers are struggling and seem to understand that $31 million is merely a down payment toward building a better system.

Another promising sign, he said, is that the commission will reconvene, possibly this summer, to further assess EMS needs statewide.

House Speaker Rachel Talbot Ross in a statement agreed that access to emergency medical response services across Maine is an essential part of the state’s healthcare system that must be funded, although she did not say if that will be with continued state support.

“In some cases, it’s quite literally a life-or-death situation,” said Talbot Ross. “The funding in this budget will be a major step forward to help services stay open, attract new providers to the field and start the process of redefining what emergency medical services look like in Maine.”

The Maine Bureau of EMS, which operates within the Department of Public Safety, will be key in determining how the money is divided, according to Petrie. Maine EMS had urged lawmakers to support not only the emergency funding, but additional funds to assist EMS and ambulance services as they shift into new funding and operational models. 

With few exceptions, EMS providers across all 16 counties have been largely, but inadequately, self-funded by low insurance reimbursements and small taxpayer contributions from individual cities and towns.

They are often staffed with underpaid EMTs, paramedics or volunteers.

Sam Hurley, the Maine EMS director, said that model is no longer sustainable. Although optimistic, Hurley agrees the devil is in the details.

“Maine EMS is excited that the governor’s office and Maine Legislature have identified the needs of the EMS system in Maine as a funding priority. That said, we too are anxiously awaiting the final action of the Legislature as to the specific language surrounding any funding introduced to the system,” Hurley said.

In May, Maine EMS released its 2035 EMS Vision & Plan, outlining what it sees as the steps needed to achieve true sustainability over the next 12 years for the state’s roughly 275 EMS providers that are operating at a loss or barely breaking even.

Many EMS providers are struggling due to a host of factors, including lagging reimbursement rates, recruitment and retention challenges, training, and an aging and rural population.

As a result, some services are routinely “out of service” when an ambulance can’t be fully staffed. Some other providers, such as Petit Manan in Washington County, which served Milbridge and Steuben, have ceased operations.

But it’s not only rural EMS providers that are suffering.

A University of Southern Maine national study released in May by the Maine Rural Health Research Center revealed that 15 of the 16 Maine counties have so-called ambulance deserts, where people are located more than 25 minutes from an ambulance station. In the Northeast, Maine was ranked as the second-worst ambulance desert state, behind only Vermont, where every county contains at least one. 

Only Androscoggin County has an adequate number of ambulance stations to provide reliable, fast responses. Even higher-density counties such as Cumberland, encompassing Portland and its environs, and Penobscot, which includes Bangor, have pockets that lack adequate ambulance response times, according to the MRHRC geographic disparities study. 

Petrie said he got a call this past week from the service chief for “a fairly large metropolitan department in the state,” saying they were drowning in overtime expenses trying to cover the increasing number of calls and mutual aid requests. Petrie said the money would be allocated to any EMS department providing 911 response that shows it needs help — even metropolitan departments. 

He said that the situation in rural communities is even more dire. Petrie said he knows that in places like Washington County and Aroostook County — virtually anywhere north of Augusta — EMS departments are “barely there” and doing everything they can to hold on.  

“This money will be a lifeline to them while we work out the longer term,” Petrie said.

He and other EMS officials said the solution is multi-pronged, requiring state assistance, better insurance reimbursements, realistic financial contributions from municipalities being served and a more regional approach, with fewer, more robust, strategically located providers. 

That assessment was echoed by Yvonne Jonk, associate research professor at the University of Southern Maine and deputy director of the Maine Rural Health Research Center. Jonk, the lead researcher for the ambulance deserts study, said the data proves that regionalized services are needed, particularly in rural areas with large geographic footprints and low populations.

“With regionalization you’re able to triage and determine the optimal location of an ambulance service, and to have each other’s backs instead of all this ad hoc community goodwill,” Jonk said.

Slowly, EMS providers and municipalities are heeding that warning, organizing and financially supporting regional services such as the new Bold Coast EMS department in Washington County, pressed into a regional model out of necessity after the closure of Petit Manan and regular staffing shortages in the Cherryfield ambulance department.  

Bold Coast EMS opened June 12 with an inter-local agreement between the towns of Cherryfield, Milbridge and Steuben, each paying an equal share of the roughly half million-dollar annual operating budget. The smaller outlying towns of Beddington and Dubois kick in a donation for their coverage.  

Mariah Curtis, the former Cherryfield service chief who is also a full-time nurse, is service chief for the new consolidated ambulance department. She said they are entirely taxpayer funded and didn’t bank on getting any state support.

“We built it to be self-sufficient, just with our community supporting us, and they’re very receptive to that,” Curtis said. “We will be open and appreciate anything we can get that makes the burden less on our taxpayers, but we don’t need it to bail us out.”

Bold Coast employs four full-time people during the day and uses part-time, on-call EMTs at night. The pay is $20 an hour for an EMT with 100% employer-paid health insurance and a zero deductible policy, all of which Curtis said keeps morale high.

The regional service is the second of its kind in Washington County; the first was Downeast EMS, which serviced the far eastern half of the county, with nine ambulances out of bases in Baileyville, Lubec and Eastport. Answering about 1,900 calls last year, Downeast EMS has operated in the black for the past decade.

Regionalism advocates say the local examples show there is strength in numbers. Data presented to the blue ribbon commission showed that of ambulance services performing less than 1,800 calls per year, most run less than 500, losing roughly $2,000 per call, largely due to poor insurance reimbursements.

Seventy percent of all ambulance runs in Maine are paid for by Medicare or Mainecare. Those services only reimburse 85 percent of the cost. 

But there also is a glimmer of hope on that front coming out of the Legislature. Private insurers will begin paying higher reimbursements, according to Petrie. He’s hopeful that the next session and the blue-ribbon commission will make changes to the government reimbursement rates as well. He said that is critical, especially in places like Washington County.

“I believe that the blue-ribbon commission coming together again will start to attack those issues, or start down that pathway,” Petrie said. “They are going to have to come up with a fairly significant, radical way to deliver EMS up there — and the hospitals need to be involved as well.”

Sign up for the Downeast Monitor, a free newsletter produced by The Maine Monitor, to stay informed of what’s happening in Washington County.

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Machias reaching a “critical mass” for growth, boosters say

If you ask Bill Kitchen what’s going well in Machias, you’ll need to sit back because you’ll be listening for a while.

Kitchen is a passionate booster for the shire town of Washington County. In fact, five years ago, during his campaign for a seat on board of selectmen, Kitchen penned an op-ed titled, “What’s Right with Machias.”

He won in a landslide, and he hasn’t changed his position yet.

“I knew it had become fashionable to say how downtrodden and poor we are in Machias, and once you slip into that, it’s very hard to get out of,” said Kitchen, who for two years has served as Machias town manager. “The point of that letter was to say, look, most of the pieces are already in place.”

Those pieces include what Kitchen calls the town’s “signature assets,” like the Machias Dike, where vendors set up impromptu flea markets along Route 1, and Bad Little Falls Park, which wraps around twin waterfalls in the center of town, and the Machias Wild Blueberry Festival, now in its 46th year and set for Aug. 18-20.

They also include key infrastructure, like the expanding Machias airport, where planning is underway to construct a longer runway, as well as Down East Community Hospital, and the University of Maine at Machias, standing high on College Hill since 1909.

Even with these assets, Kitchen acknowledges that by another measure, Machias is a poor town. In fact, according to the latest five-year data from American Community Survey, it’s the poorest town in Maine, with an average median income hovering just above $20,000 a year, compared to almost $65,000 statewide. At least in part, Machias’ low number is explained by the concentration of low-income housing units located near the services it offers.

But no matter the reason, it’s a number that motivates Kitchen. Working in his office just a stone’s throw from the Middle and Machias rivers, he waves his arm across a map of Machias, the smallest town in Washington County, and lays out the question he’s always working to answer —how can he create a more vibrant Machias without raising taxes?

“Here we are, the service center of this county that is bigger than some states, and yet we’ve only got 14.8 square miles to work with. And a lot of that is already in use by entities that pay little or no taxes,” Kitchen said. “There are very limited amounts of space in which to build, assuming you have people that want to build here.”

Chris Meroff wants to build in Machias. He fell in love with the area in the late 1990s while visiting with his grandparents. For years now, he’s made his home here for five months of the year, spending the rest of his time in Austin, Texas, running his 30-plus businesses and venture capital firm.

But one day, Meroff and his wife would like to retire to Machias. Before they can, he says, he has some investments to make, and his end goal is nothing short of “flipping Machias.”

“I love the people, I love the land, and I love the scenery, and we want to put our money to work here,” said Meroff. “I have flipped homes, I have flipped businesses, and now for me, it’s time to flip Main Street.”

The Meroffs’ investments in Machias are already almost too numerous to count and still growing.

Four years ago, they started work on a 65-acre farm in the rural Kennebec District, where today they operate the Coffee + Crisp Cafe at West Branch Farm, overlooking West Branch Little Kennebec Bay and acres of blueberry barrens. Below it sprawls a large white tent, which will host multiple weddings this summer, until it is replaced by a two-story event venue modeled on a 1925 chicken barn.

A you-pick apple orchard is planted, an enormous catering kitchen is under construction now, mini-cattle and ducks are en route for the petting zoo, and a master organic gardener has been retained to oversee next year’s gardens, which will supply all of it, including a mercantile for shoppers, with food.

To say nothing of Meroff’s near-term plans for a drive-through coffee shop, a large Machias lumber mill, or the creation of a global lifestyle brand, Maine Woods Outfitters, planned for another retail location in Machias and, quite possibly, to be the subject of a reality TV show.

“Machias’s downtown is why I’m doing this,” said Meroff. “We’ve seen this work in rural towns in Texas that have the same isolation issues, but they don’t have bones like Machias.”

Valdine Atwood, widely acknowledged as the unofficial town historian of Machias, knows everything about its good bones.

Fittingly, her home stands downtown near Machias’ best-known historic site, the Burnham Tavern, where in 1775 local patriots hatched plans to capture a British warship and its crew. They succeeded, and the Battle of the Margaretta is now celebrated as the first naval battle of the American Revolution. Every June, the Machias Historical Society sponsors the Margaretta Days Festival and Craft Fair, complete with reenactments of the famous battle.

When she and her family moved to Machias in 1962, Atwood recalls large numbers of retail shops lining Main Street, including two dress shops and two shoe stores, plus the local bureau of the Bangor Daily News, where she and six others reported the news from Washington County.

“You did not have to leave Machias at all to get what you needed,” Atwood recalled. “At one time, there were five car dealerships in Machias.”

David Whitney agrees that, like almost everywhere, today there is less retail on Main Street, but says there is also growth happening here. And Whitney has a lengthy perspective. His family moved Downeast in the 1700s, and his grandparents and his father operated one of the car dealerships at the base of College Hill.

Today he runs Whitney’s Tri-Town Marine in the same location, selling boats and, more recently, lots of ATVs, including the Argo line, which features a popular amphibious model.

“We’ve added this Argo dealership, and we are hovering between fourth and fifth in volume across North America out of 300 dealerships,” Whitney said. “And we’ve been at it for less than a year.”

Some of those sales are to locals, but many are not. That’s a model Whitney and many other local business owners aim for because it brings in outside money and employ local people.

“Most of the revenues that we generate in all of my companies come from outside Washington County,” said Whitney, who also owns Machias Glassworks, Downeast Packaging Solutions, and Whitney Wreath, a large balsam wreath company which enabled him to move home from Boston for good, in his early 20s.

“And since that time, I have struggled happily. And the struggles are real, and they are continual, and they are many,” said Whitney. “But first and foremost, my entrepreneurial attitude has always been one of optimism. I’ve listened to local pessimistic viewpoints, and I’ll have nothing of it.”

Whitney’s optimistic outlook and diversified business strategy are shared by many investing time and money in Machias today, like Sandi Malagara and her husband Ryan, who moved here from Connecticut almost 20 years ago.

They run multiple businesses from Crows Nest Shops on Dublin Street, including a gift shop, Expressions Floral, a gourmet bakery, an electronics store, a shipping outlet, and the headquarters for Ryan’s drone videography business, Drones Eye View, in steady demand by Maine realtors.

“Right from the beginning, we’ve looked around to see what was missing. We asked, ‘What can’t we get here?’” Sandi recalled. “And then we would fill that need. Then once we’d gotten that piece established, we’d say, ‘What else?’”

This year, the Malagaras have added ATV rental to their business list, including an Argo they purchased from Whitney’s Tri-Town. They join another new business, Downeast Adventures, which this spring opened an ATV rental company to cater to a growing sector interested in the Downeast Sunrise Trail, an 87-mile multi-use offroad trail that carries walkers, bikers, and ATV riders from Ellsworth to Calais, by way of downtown Machias. The trail was at the center of June’s Machias ATV Jamboree.

Diversification was also on Ben Edwards’ mind when, in 2019, he decided to start a business on his family’s 200-year-old Machias farm, Schoppee Farm. Visiting from England, where he worked, Edwards met and fell in love with his now-wife, Allison, and knew he wanted to make his living in Machias in a way that might help the region, too.

“I’ve always been concerned about Machias’s primary revenue-generating industries, like blueberries and lobsters. We have no control over pricing, no manufacturing, and we take the smallest piece of the pie,” said Edwards. “I knew I wanted to form a primary industry that generated revenue from outside Downeast Maine, and the farm seemed like my platform to do that.”

Today the Edwards have diversified Machias’ business portfolio with their organic line of CBD oil products grown and manufactured on the farm. But a few close calls with state hemp legislation showed Edwards they needed to diversify their own offerings, too.

“I had been looking for other business opportunities because I realized how fragile my position was. An act of the legislature could put us out of business,” Ben recalled. “That’s what led me to purchase the elderberry business last summer.”

Now, as owners of Seattle Elderberry, Schoppee Farm manufactures its products, too, sourcing organic elderberries from other Maine farmers while they work toward growing their own. But they’re not stopping there. This summer, in the farm’s original milking shed, they’ll open a cafe, including a French-inspired bakery, enlisting the talents of Chef Ross Florance.

“One of the things I thought I was giving up when I moved here was a cafe,” said Edwards, who recently sat down with Meroff to share ideas. “The overall attitude of collaboration in Machias is entirely different from what I remember as a child, and I think it looks better than I have ever seen it. That might be in contrast to things looking relatively dire, but I think what Bill [Kitchen] and some of the other local people have done has not only turned things around but really built some momentum for Machias.”

In June, Edwards was elected to the Machias Board of Selectmen, where he joins another local son who moved home to invest in Machias. Selectman Jake Patryn works as director of operations for Acadian Seaplants and, together with his fiancée Morgan-Lea Fogg, farms sugar kelp and manufactures a line of kelp products under the brand Nautical Farms.

“When we showed up saying we were going to start a seaweed farm, people thought we were insane. But now there’s a growing interest, which is exciting,” said Fogg. “There’s a need to figure out how to continue our working waterfront that doesn’t rely on only one product.”

In June, Patryn and Fogg opened their first storefront stocking Nautical Farms’ line of kelp-based food and bath products, as well as books and other seaweed-related gifts.

For Patryn, doubling down on Machias was an easy decision.

“Machias has always been a part of me. I knew I didn’t want to leave again, so I started to think, how can I get more involved?” Patryn said, recalling what led him to run for selectman. “A big part of it is Bill Kitchen. I have a lot of respect for Bill, and as a leader, he really makes me want to be there beside him and help in any way that I can.”

Kitchen, whose background is not in municipal management but corporate and brand strategy, says he thinks of himself as Machias’ cheerleader, facilitator, and expediter rolled into one.

“It’s my job to get everybody to believe to a point where they are willing to invest their money and their time because it takes both,” he said. “Nobody wants to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. I think that for a long time, people felt this was a listing ship, and that’s changed. I think we have reached a point of critical mass.”

The post Machias reaching a “critical mass” for growth, boosters say appeared first on The Maine Monitor.

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Building Publicly Owned Broadband Starts with a Low-Tech Approach: Community Buy-in

This story is part of a series.

On a Tuesday afternoon, standing in front of the Islesboro Sewing Circle on an island off Maine’s MidCoast, Jane Wherren holds up items recently completed by members for the annual fundraiser. The president of one of the nation’s oldest sewing circles, called simply “circle” by locals, Wherren begins every meeting with show and tell. As sewing machines hum and knitting needles click, a dozen women glance up from their work to watch. “Look at these potholders with blueberry pie.” A woman calls out, “Who knitted those cute mother and baby socks?”

Standing in a 120-year-old building with one of the oldest sewing groups in the nation, you’d almost think you had stepped back in time. Then a voice calls out, “Those are gorgeous, can you zoom in?” 

The voice isn’t coming from the women in the room; it’s coming from a computer held by the circle’s secretary. To zoom in the woman walks closer to Wherren, turning the screen to capture the purses. Later in the meeting, when women sing happy birthday to one of its members, women both online and in person sing along. 

“We’ve been having hybrid meetings since the pandemic,” Wherren said. “We still do. We want to include everyone from our community, whether they’re homebound, in another state, or just unable to attend. Soon we’ll be teaching online sewing classes.”

Ten years ago, long before today’s unprecedented amounts of federal funding in rural Internet infrastructure, Roger Heinen watched Islesboro’s population drop precipitously. “We were facing an existential crisis,” he said. “There’s nothing like young people moving away to threaten the survival of an island community.”

In 2014, Heinen formed a small volunteer coalition to come up with a solution for the island of under 600 year-round residents. 

“Our coalition spent two years talking to lobstermen, selectmen, the hunting club, the school, and power brokers like the sewing circle,” he said. 

In 2016, voters approved a $3.8 million bond to fund the construction of a fiber-to-the-premises infrastructure capable of speeds of 1 gigabit per second. By 2018, Islesboro Municipal Broadband construction was complete and service was installed for all home and business subscribers.

“Getting the network off the ground was the hardest work I ever did,” Heinen said. “We (the town) knew that at the end of the day when the last ferry left, there was no government to save us. We were on our own.”

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It’s been nearly five years since Islesboro’s Municipal Broadband connected those first subscribers. Today, as unprecedented federal and state funding is funneled into high-speed broadband access, increasing numbers of coalitions are attempting to build publicly owned networks. In the last two years, numerous attempts in rural Maine have failed. Lack of financial resources is often cited as a factor. Some say campaigns by large telecommunications companies to undermine broadband utilities are another reason.

Heinen says another issue is the most important barrier to getting municipal broadband off the ground. 

“When I talk to towns, I tell them money is not the primary issue,” he said. “What’s most critical is the ability to create strong social capital. There is money out there. There are technical and financial consultants out there. Social capital building, though, that must come from the inside.”

Peggy Schaffer, Maine’s first director for broadband funding, now a strategic consultant and board member on the American Association for Public Broadband, echoed Heinen’s advice. 

“Though there is no clear path to success, strong community engagement is at the heart of most successful publicly owned utilities,” Schaffer said.

In June, one of Maine’s newest town-owned fiber optic networks, Leeds Broadband, will start marketing their service after nearly four years of navigating the murky challenges of garnering support and overcoming incumbent provider opposition. Joe McLean, the organizer of the network, building community understanding and support was important at every stage of the process.

“It’s been a long haul of hard work,” he said. “We’ve done a lot of coalition building as we’ve worked alongside our selectmen. Each stage has another level of community buy-in, from basic education to the benefits of high-speed internet, to why we can offer it cheaper and better.”

Both Heinen and McLean said the political disagreement between local elected officials and publicly owned broadband committees can be another impediment to implementation. “I’ve watched broadband committees who are on a completely different page with their selectmen and other people in town, arguing about the two different ideas rather than just getting to one good idea and trying to push it,” McLean said.

Having worked with dozens of coalitions promoting publicly owned broadband, Schaffer said one of the biggest mistakes coalitions make is presenting fiber-optic broadband as very technical.

“In reality, it’s a very human infrastructure,” she said. “When asking for money for publicly owned networks, committees need to realize that just because they’ve picked the right technology for their community, that doesn’t mean the community is going to buy into it.”

There’s no substitute for spending time to build local support, she said. 

“There’s so much work to do, committees often forget the importance of public outreach. If committees don’t (get buy-in), when the cable companies and the Spectrums come with their flyers, mailers, newspaper ads, and online attacks, run by people who make their living running these reaching people on a seemingly personal level, it’s too late to start to build support.”

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Running Fiber-Optic Cable to Rural Communities Is Part of Maine’s Ambitious Broadband Plan

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Relieved to have weathered some of these incumbent campaigns, McLean’s team is excited to begin marketing. “We’ll be putting up displays in the town office, at the farmers’ market, and other events around town,” he said. “We want everyone to understand that with this nonprofit model, the more people sign up the cheaper it can be. We are going to focus on being a local provider for our local community. We want people to know that in comparison to the incumbent provider, we can provide far better service for far less.”

Schaffer said the benefits of building strong social capital as part of municipal broadband projects are worth the effort. “We see it across the country,” she said. “Community-owned networks … put revenues back into the community. They increase speed and service while reducing prices. For communities who can bring these networks to fruition, the profits always exceed the costs. The challenge is getting the community on board.”

To do that, Heinen has some practical advice. 

“Make sure to include your sewing circle.”

The post Building Publicly Owned Broadband Starts with a Low-Tech Approach: Community Buy-in appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

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