Maine Policy Matters

S3E7: A Tale of Maine’s Public Lots: Loss and Recovery

In this episode, we cover an article by Richard Barringer, Lee Schepps, Tomas Urquhart, and Martin Wilk titled “Maine’s Public Reserved Lands: A Tale of Loss and Recovery”. The authors tell us a story of Maine’s public reserved lots and its history to show how efforts to maintain these lots have preserved Maine’s natural heritage. This article was published in volume 29, number 2, of Maine Policy Review, a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center. For all citations for data provided in this episode, please refer to Barringer et al.’s article , which can be found here: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1843&context=mpr
Transcript
[00:00:00] Eric Miller: To preserve the crown jewels of Maine's heritage, tune into today's episode to learn about Maine's consolidated public lots and how they can remain for public use and enjoyment as long as they are valued, accessed, and safeguarded from harm.
[00:00:22] This is the Maine Policy Matters Podcast from the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine. I'm Eric Miller, research associate at the Center.
[00:00:30] On each episode of Maine Policy Matters, we discuss public policy issues relevant to the state of Maine. Today we'll be covering an article by Richard Barringer, Lee Schepps, Tomas Urquhart, and Martin Wilk titled "Maine's Public Reserved Lands: A Tale of Loss and Recovery."
[00:00:47] Richard Barringer is author and editor of numerous books, reports and landmark Maine laws in the areas of land use and conservation education, the environment, energy, sustainable development, and tax policy. Lee Schepps represented the state of Maine in the public lots matter, both in the litigation and as the second director of the Bureau of Public Lands. Thomas Urquhart was formerly executive director of the Maine Audubon Society, where forest practices and the opportunities offered by Maine's North Woods were among his top priorities. Martin Wilk represented the state of Maine in the public lots litigation and in the settlement negotiations that followed the Maine Supreme Court's decision in the state's favor.
[00:01:31] The authors tell us a story of Maine's public reserved lots and its. History to show how efforts to maintain these lots has preserved Maine's natural heritage. This article was published in Volume 29, number 2 of Maine Policy Review, a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center. For all citations for data provided in this episode, please refer to Barringer et al.'s article, which can be found in the episode description.
[00:01:58] In 1820, when Maine separated from Massachusetts, it acquired a public domain of 10 to 12 million acres, which was later reduced to 8 million acres. The Maine Constitution required the state to reserve four lots of 320 acres each in any newly organized township. Later, the formula was changed to a single, 1,000 acre lot in each new township for "public use." The legislature authorized the state land agent to sell the "right to cut and carry away the timber and grass" from the public lots in 1850. In 1874, the legislature tried to terminate the Office of Land Agent, but it did not have the power to do so, and the office was eventually abolished in the 1920s. Responsibility for the public lots passed to the Maine Forest Service in 1891. By the early 1970s, the Maine state government had undergone significant changes. In 1972, there were concerns about the state's stewardship of the public lots, and the Attorney General looked into the legal issues surrounding ownership and responsibility for them.
[00:03:08] Schepps researched the history of public land reservations, timber trespass, and forestry practices in Massachusetts and Maine. He found that professional forest management was not a concept in the early and mid-1800s, and that it only came into practice through early forestry pioneers such as Gifford Pinchot. Schepps also looked into the legal disputes involving the word "timber" and argued that if the original deeds only granted the right to cut and carry away the existing timber, the duration of that right could not expand its substance. Schepps submitted his report to the Attorney General, but it was not released to the public. However, due to the relentless reporting of Bob Cummings, the issue became highly publicized and politically charged in Maine.
[00:03:58] In 1973, Jon Lund became attorney general of Maine and released the Schepps report, which argued that the right to cut timber on public reserve lands only applied to the standing timber at the time of sale, not subsequent growth. The report also stated that the state had legal rights of use and access to public lots that had not been located on the ground. The legislature created a joint select committee to investigate the matter and pass legislation to terminate timber rights on public lots, leading to a lawsuit by paper companies and landowner seeking adjudication of their rights. They argued that the state's persistent and long-standing course of conduct barred from asserting rights it may have once have had. The state counter-claimed, stating that the timber cutting rights had expired because the timber in existence at the time of the conveyance had long since been cut. The lawsuit was then used politically to delay consideration of the grand plantation legislation that would terminate cutting rights.
[00:04:59] Then the Maine legislature created a Bureau of Public Lands, to manage the state's interests in public lands. However, the agency had no staff or direction, and its mission was unclear. In 1974, the Maine Forest Service Director assigned a desk, a vehicle, a forester, and a forest ranger to the Bureau of Public Lands.
[00:05:19] The Bureau of Public Lands led by Richard Barringer, surveyed public lands and proposed a grand plantation, but public sentiment was lukewarm. However, in June of that year, the president of the Great Northern Paper Company, Robert Hellendale, approached Governor Curtis to suggest a negotiated settlement to the disputed public lots. Over the summer and fall, Barringer and Helendale negotiated an agreement to consolidate the 60,000 scattered public lots into a small number of high value places that Great Northern Paper Company owned outright. In December, 1974, governor Curtis and Helendale signed the agreement which violated a long established behavioral norm among paper companies and large private landowners. However, Helen's action broke the political log jam, and over the next five years, all but one of the paper companies engaged in similar exchanges with the Bureau of Public Lands.
[00:06:14] In November, 1974, Attorney General Erwin ran unsuccessfully as the Republican candidate for Governor against Democrat George Mitchell and independent James Longley in the wake of the Watergate scandal and President Nixon's resignation in August, 1974, Longley won a surprising victory among Maine voters.
[00:06:33] In 1975, shortly after the Great Northern Paper Company trade was consummated, Barringer was nominated by Governor Longley to become commissioner of the Maine Department of Conservation. Schepps subsequently became director of the Bureau of Public Lands; John Walker, director of the Maine Forest Service; and Herb Hartman, director of the Bureau of Parks and Recreation. Together, the four agreed on a strategy for dealing with the claims of the remaining paper companies and private landowners.
[00:07:03] Using the same value-for-value approach and selection criteria as used with the Great Northern Paper Company, Schepps and his staff evaluated and proposed lands for consolidation, negotiated trade deals with paper companies, and sought approval from the legislature to add another dozen consolidated parcels to the Bureau of Public Lands land-holdings. In each exchange, landowners claimed to be donating the timber rights on the public lots and took tax deductions. Subject to the outcome of the Cushing v. Lund litigation. The Bureau of Public Lands grew as forest operations and other management activities expanded to hundreds of thousands of acres of newly consolidated units.
[00:07:43] Schepps shared information about lands he believed might best be acquired with Barringer, Walker and Hartman for their consideration and approval. Schepps then negotiated a trade based on tax-value for tax-value, without separate appraisals. The state accepted no discount to the value of its own lands because they were scattered, largely inaccessible, and in many cases small minority interests not located on the ground. The private landowners in each case received a release of any liability for timber trespass. In the past, if the state were to prevail in the litigation and claim tax deductions for the assessed value of their timber rights, if the state were to lose the litigation. Each of the trades thus negotiated were consummated after the proposed contract was approved by resolve of the legislature.
[00:08:34] Meanwhile, back in the courts, the lawsuit which spanned 125 years and involved voluminous documentary evidence, was assigned to a retired Supreme Court Justice Donald Webber, who considered two main concerns. One, whether the cutting rights related only to timber in existence at the time they were conveyed, and two, whether the cutting rights were limited to certain sizes and species of trees considered timber at the time. The two issues were presented to Justice Webber based on a Stipulated Record of over 1,000 pages and more than 250 exhibits. Two days after evidentiary hearings were held during which the state presented as its lead witness, University of Maine, Professor David C. Smith, on the contemporaneous meaning of the term timber in the timber and grass deeds.
[00:09:22] After evidentiary healing hearings and presentation of expert testimony, the referee ruled in favor of the private landowners stating that the cutting rights included all standing timber in existence at the time they were sold, as well as timber growing on the land thereafter. The state appealed the judgment. The court ultimately ruled in favor of the state, stating that the cutting rights related only to the timber in existence at the time the rights were conveyed and that these rights had been exhausted.
[00:09:51] The court did not address the party's subsequent conduct or the effect it may have under various legal doctrines. The private landowners had continued to harvest timber on the public lots until the present, which the state claimed were unauthorized and entitled to it to damages for the value of all such timber. The court left it to the state to determine how to proceed with a final settlement given the potential damages were substantial. The court also recognized the special status of the state as a trustee of the public lots stating that it held title to them in its sovereign capacity.
[00:10:26] In the 1980s, there was a legal battle in Maine between the state government and private landowners over the control of millions of acres of forest land. The state believed that these private landowners had harvested timber from state-owned land without authorization, resulting in significant economic losses to the state. The landowners resisted the state's proposals for land exchanges and were initially united in their opposition.
[00:10:50] The state government, however, came up with a comprehensive proposal to resolve the issue which it presented to the private landowners at a meeting called by Governor Joseph Brennan. The proposal involved consolidating public lots to compensate for the timber value lost over the past six decades of company harvesting. The landowners were shocked and angry and left the meeting without reaching an agreement.
[00:11:13] For the next three years, the state government negotiated with the private landowners to settle all outstanding issues. Initially, little progress was made as both sides refused to budge from their positions. Then, in a surprise move, Seven Islands Land company on behalf of the heirs of David Pingree, broke from the other private landowners and entered an into negotiations directly with the state. The Pingree settlement became the standard for all future settlements, and the other private land owners began to rethink their opposition to the state's proposals.
[00:11:44] The state government focused its efforts on landowners who were most amenable to settlement and deferred discussion with those who were most reluctant. The one at a time negotiating strategy proved effective, and all of the remaining landowners eventually came to the table and entered into mutually agreeable land exchanges. The state government claimed damages of approximately $50 million for unauthorized cutting since the 1920s, which accrued added value to the state, in addition to the value of the extraordinary lands acquired. During the eight years of litigation before the Maine Supreme Judicial Court rendered its historic decision in favor of the state, the land holdings in Bureau of Public Lands unchallenged jurisdiction increased from 50,000 to 600,000 acres. Meanwhile, the state government drafted two far-reaching Maine laws to improve the management of public lots according to the principles of multi-use, and to create the nonlapsing revenue account for their improvement in public access and use. These laws have stood the test of time and have been used as models by other states in their management of large blocks of multi-use land.
[00:12:51] In 1972, there was this dispute between the Baxter State Park Authority and the Great Northern Paper Company, over the latter's rights to residual cutting in one of the two scientific management townships located in the north end of the park, which had been acquired by Governor Baxter in 1962. The controversy was based on the application of the multiple use concept and law that guided the management of federal lands by the US Forest Service, particularly the provisions of the Multiple Use Sustained Yield Act of June 1960.
[00:13:26] The multiple-use concept in law prescribed that public lands should be managed in a way that ensures their sustained use for various purposes, such as recreation grazing, timber harvesting, wildlife habitat, and water conservation. This approach aims to balance the needs of different user groups and ensure that the resources are not overexploited or degraded.
[00:13:50] Schepps, who was the assistant attorney general at the time, was familiar with the federal multiple-use mandate and used it as a framework to build a case against Great Northern Paper Company's harvesting techniques in the township. The case aimed to limit the Great Northern Paper Company's cutting rights in line with the principles of scientific forest management, which entails managing the forest for long-term productivity, ecological health, and multiple benefits.
[00:14:16] In Maine, the multiple-use mandate for managing public reserve lands is based on the Federal Multiple Use Sustained Yield Act of June 1960. This law requires that all renewable resources on federal land, such as timber, water range, and recreation, be managed in a way that ensures their sustained yield or maximum use without degrading the environment.
[00:14:36] Overall, Schepps used the federal multiple-use concept and law as a precedent to establish the principles of scientific forest management and the sustainable use of natural resources in the Baxter State Park controversy. This approach helped resolve the dispute between the state and the Great Northern Paper Company and laid the groundwork for future management of public lands in Maine and elsewhere.
[00:14:59] In 1974, Schepps wrote, "Maine's Public Lots: The Emergence of a Public Trust." In it, he stated that no precise legal definition of what constitutes a public trust and different examples can exist along a spectrum At one extreme, large public domains inherited by states such as Maine can be considered assets of the state similar to surplus land or the balance in a state's bank account, the state acts as proprietor and has full power over their disposition and use. At the other end of the spectrum, there are public trusts such as Baxter State Park in Maine, where the state is just the nominal owner for the benefit of the general public and the judicial branch of the government has large powers with respect to the use and disposition of such public trust assets.
[00:15:48] Under US law, courts enforce and protect the beneficiaries of trust. For example, the US Supreme Court has held that submerged lands in Lake Michigan are not merely public domain, but constitute a public trust. Maine's public reserve lands, which are explicitly required to be reserved by the Maine Constitution, appear to enjoy special and restricted status and their use and protection for the people of Maine ultimately and properly reside with the judicial branch of the state government. Schepps brought attention to the fact that if the legislative or executive branch of Maine state government decides to use the public reserve lands for a purpose that strays from the existing authorized use, the judicial branch may be willing to assert its traditional power with respect to public trusts.
[00:16:34] Maine's success in implementing environmental protection policies in the face of strong opposition from the state's powerful lumber and power interests, interests that had outsized influence over economic affairs relative to most every other state was due to a rare alignment of factors, including a free press, sustained leadership, support from the legislature and judiciary, talented staff, strong analysis, good teamwork, skillful negotiation, calculated risk taking, devotion to the task, good timing, good luck, and personal courage. The issue was made public by persistent private citizens and intrepid reporters, and the presidents of two private companies broke the tradition to support the effort.
[00:17:16] Environmental consciousness was growing in Maine and the nation, and the right people came together to meet the challenge with an abiding belief in the public interest, government as an instrument of the public good and unceasing teamwork as the vehicle of high accomplishment. The passage concludes with quotes from retired landowners who now accept and feel satisfied with the policy changes.
[00:17:38] And what of the landowners today, some 40 years later? In the afterward of his forthcoming book, Thomas Urquhart writes, "With the passage of time, much of the bitterness around the struggle has termed to acceptance, even a feeling of satisfaction." Urquhart quotes Brad Wellman, retired president of Pingree Associates: "Take away all of the resentment and whatnot, I think the result has been good for both the landowners and the State." And Roger Milliken, president of Baskahegan Company, stated that "the dominant-use policy [was] farsighted, an example of Maine leading, and ecological reserves never would've happened otherwise."
[00:18:24] Timber harvesting-related controversy began once again in 2011 when Doug Denico, a corporate forest manager, appointed by Governor Paul LePage, proposed a more intensive commercial approach to timber management in the public lots. Denico ordered a 61% increase in harvesting without consultation with the bureau or public comment. This led to a years-long encounter between the Maine Forest Service and the Bureau of Public Lands, as well as between the executive and legislative branches of Maine government over management of the public lots and access to the public reserved lands trust fund for non-trust purposes.
[00:19:01] The governor's office proposed using the trust fund to pay for a cash rebate from the state to replace old, inefficient home-heating furnaces with energy efficient wood pellet boilers. The trust fund had pre been previously used for an unrelated purpose in 1992, but authorizing legislation from the government for the MPFA proposal, LD 1468 was voted down by the legislature.
[00:19:28] Governor LePage won a second term in 2014 and proposed cutting more timber on the public reserved lands to prepare for potentially devastating spruce budworm outbreak in the Maine woods. However, Robert Seymour, a longstanding member of the Bureau of Public Lands Silvicultural Advisory Committee, called the governor's rationale an unnecessary scare tactic to secure more revenue from the public lots, for a favored public response. In response, LePage proposed splitting the Bureau of Parks and Lands between a new Bureau of Conservation, and the Maine Forest Service.
[00:20:04] In 2015, the state of Maine considered changes to its management of public reserve lands, which are protected by a constitutionally mandated trust. Governor Paul LePage proposed increasing the annual timber harvest from 141,500 cords to 180,000 cords to generate additional revenue for the state, but opponents argued that this would threaten the long-term sustainability of the forests and violate the terms of the trust. A special commission was established to study the issue and ultimately recommended maintaining the existing allowable cut, conducting regular forest inventories, and providing oversight by the legislature.
[00:20:45] The historic importance of this commission's deliberations was underscored in a letter dated September 23rd, 2015, signed by five former conservation commissioners- Richard Barringer, Richard Anderson, Ronald Lovaglio, Edward Meadows, and Patrick McGowan. On October 26th, 2015, then-Attorney General Janet Mills sent a written opinion regarding the legal risks of rating a constitutionally protected trust fund. A definitive answer would have to come from the Maine Supreme Judicial Court she argued, but based on the 1992 case, the governor's proposal "would likely meet great skepticism." Further, public reserved land dollars spent on state parks would replace general fund monies effectively making trust money interchangeable with general fund revenue, which is not permitted."
[00:21:36] The special commission released its unanimous report with recommendations in December, 2015. Mindful of the attorney general's warning, it did not include money for Efficiency Maine among its recommendations. The Bureau of Public Lands should maintain a cash operating account of $2.5 million a year against unexpected costs; a forest inventory should be undertaken the next year and every five years thereafter, and Bureau of Public Lands Foresters should make decisions on harvest levels, subject to ACF Committee oversight by the legislature.
[00:22:09] Governor LePage attacked the commission and its report as well as the bill that would implement its findings. The legislature passed LD 1629, however, and the governor promptly vetoed it. The legislature's vote to override his veto fell nine votes short. In 2016, Senator Saviello again presented a bill to implement the committee's recommendations, which passed, and again, the governor vetoed it. The Environmental Priorities Coalition, a partnership of 34 Environmental Conservation and public health groups, took up the battle this time and the legislature succeeded in overriding the Governor's veto.
[00:22:46] These possibilities would have to wait, however, upon a new gubernatorial administration. In January 2019, Democrat Janet Mills succeeded Paul LePage to become Maine's first female governor. Amanda Beal, the new ACF Commissioner, previously led the Maine Farmland Trust's efforts to revitalize Maine's rural landscape. Andy Cutko, the new Bureau of Public Lands director, is an ecologist who has worked for the Maine Natural Areas Program and the Nature Conservancy. He comes to his position with a depth of knowledge about the public reserve lands, and well equipped to manage these natural treasures as they were intended for the people of Maine and our visitors, for their many and diverse values.
[00:23:29] Bill Patterson, the new deputy director of the Bureau of Public Lands, when the original article was published in Maine Policy Review, believes that an important challenge facing the agency is to increase public awareness and appreciation of these lands, "where they are, how and for what purpose they're managed, and what is their potential to serve Maine people and are growing numbers of visitors." To this end, he'll seek to improve the management capacity and tools available to his staff to identify for improvement particular sites with high demand and large need, and invest in their future by leveraging the new federal America's great outdoors monies for strategic investments.
[00:24:10] Forty years of experience teaches that the public reserve lands are at once a high-value and highly vulnerable asset- vulnerable to periodic raids on the trust fund, to meet emergency political needs, and to takeover by private commercial interests. If it is to succeed in this new opportunity, the Bureau of Public Lands must take the offensive and build a comprehensive strategy to broaden public knowledge of the public reserved lands and their many values to improve public access to them and to the facilities they offer, and realize their potential to help strengthen Maine's rural economy.
[00:24:46] This strategy will be best created in collaboration with other state and federal agencies and private organizations that leverage Maine's exceptional outdoor recreation assets to increase economic opportunity and revitalize remote rural communities. Most of all, if there great potential is to be realized, the Bureau of Public Lands must take care to build abiding support for the public reserve lands among the citizens of Maine, just as Governor Baxter did for his own renowned state park.
[00:25:14] These lands must become part of all that Maine people know, understand, enjoy, take pride in and love. They will endure and become all they might be, only as part of Maine people's hearts, minds imaginations, and ongoing conversations.
[00:25:29] Finally, then one may ask, what is the overriding lesson in all of this for all of us? It is to heed the words often attributed to Thomas Jefferson, "Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty, then, now, and always.".
[00:25:47] What you just heard was Richard Barringer, Lee Schepps's, Tomas Urquhart's and Mark Wilk's perspectives on Maine's Public reserved lands. Maine Policy Review is a peer reviewed academic journal published by the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center.
[00:26:01] The editorial team for Maine Policy Review is made up of Joyce Rumery, Linda Silka and Barbara Harrity. Jonathan Rubin directs the Policy Center. A thank you to Jayson Heim and Kathryn Swacha, script writers for the Maine Policy Matters podcast. And to Daniel Soucier, our production consultant.
[00:26:16] In two weeks, we will be hearing from me the host Eric Miller, Marci Sorg, and Priyanka Sarker on "Drug Related Morbidity and Mortality in Maine".
[00:26:26] We'd like to thank you for listening to Maine Policy Matters from the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine. You can find us online by searching Maine Policy Matters on your web browser. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow us on your preferred social media platform and stay updated on new episode releases.
[00:26:41] I am Eric Miller. Thanks for listening and please join us next time on Maine Policy Matters.

S3E6: Empowering Maine’s Women Through Community Leadership

Today, we will be following up on a 2018 Maine Policy Review article titled, “Our Path: Empower Maine Women Network and Leadership” by interviewing the authors Parivash Rohani, Oyinloluwa Fasehun, Ghomri Rostampour, Bethany Smart, and Laura de Does along with a conversation with Cathy Lee, co-founder of the Empower Network. Their article was published in volume 27, number 1, of Maine Policy Review, a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Policy Center.
The article can be accessed here: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1807&context=mpr
Link to "Justice for Women Lecture": https://mainelaw.maine.edu/events/justice-for-women-lecture/
 
Transcript
Welcome to Maine Policy Matters, a podcast from the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine. I am Eric Miller, Research Associate at the Center. Today, we will be following up on a 2018 Maine Policy Review article titled, “Our Path: Empower Maine Women Network and Leadership” by interviewing the authors Parivash Rohani, Oyinloluwa Fasehun, Ghomri Rostampour, Bethany Smart, and Laura de Does along with a conversation with Cathy Lee, co-founder of the Empower Network. Their article was published in volume 27, number 1, of Maine Policy Review, a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Policy Center. The article can be accessed in the description of this episode.
In 2016, Mufalo Chitam (now the executive director of the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition) and Catherine Lee (founder of Justice for Women) created the Empower Maine Women Network, referred to as the Empower Network. Their goal was to address the isolation New Mainer women felt and to give women who have long called Maine their home the chance to interact with new members of their community.
Mufalo was unavailable for an interview, so we will do a reading of her section of the article:
On March 12, 2018, I stood in a room at the Maine State House in Augusta on behalf of my organization, the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition (MIRC), to testify against a bill, LD 1833 “An Act to Facilitate Compliance with Federal Immigration Law by State and Local Government Entities.” My daughter Grace was home on spring break, and while it was a privilege to have her there in the room to witness the work I have been so passionate about for much of her young life, it was also heartbreaking.
Eighteen years ago (Now 23 years ago), I met a young man in my African country of Zambia. He was on vacation, and we met just a couple months before my husband, my then 2-year-old daughter, and I were about to emigrate to America. His words to me were simple: “Please come to Portland, Maine. It is a safe place to raise your family and even though there are few immigrants, Mainers are very nice and welcoming.” If LD 1833 had passed, it would have changed not only this narrative, but also how my daughter feels about Maine, the only place she has called home.
That day I was upholding our humanity, a value my late father taught me at an early age, so that this bill would not make immigrants feel less welcome in Maine. I have spent my whole life constantly looking for small opportunities and for connections to improve someone else’s tomorrow. My role as executive director of MIRC grew from working with immigrant women from diverse countries, ethnicities, and religions. Leadership is seen in suffrage, shown in courage, tolerance, and kindness, and is driven by strength. End of passage.
Empower network met regularly in Portland to connect New Mainers with nonimmigrant women so they could talk about the challenges they face and how to help each other overcome these challenges, as well as to highlight opportunities for engagement in the community. The meetings offered a special presentation featuring women speakers making a significant contribution to the Maine community.
On March 24th, 2018, the women that penned the original piece sat down to discuss the concept of leadership and their definition of what makes a leader. They were asked to reflect on the idea of empowerment and specifically tie empowerment to kindness, suffrage, and tolerance. Now, we will catch up on the authors and hear their perspectives on the importance of community building and interpersonal relationships. Then we had an opportunity to talk to Cathy Lee, one of the co-founders of the Empower Network to speak about her journey and experience working and community engagement in Maine
Eric Miller:
Hello everyone. Thank you all so much for joining us on podcast today. To get us started could each of you give an overview of your experience of moving to Maine and how you all met each other? . Let’s start with you.
Pavarish: Okay. Before I just tell you how I got to Maine, I have to give you a little background.
I’m originally from Iran, so in 1979 when revolution happened, My house was burned down because I belonged to Bahai community and I had to leave the country. So really I became homeless overnight, and then I escaped Iran to India with two of my cousin for safety. We chose India because the proximity to Iran, and also because most people were Buddhist and Hindu, we felt that we were safer among that kind of population.
And then after few years being in India, The embassy of Iran did not actually renew our passport again because of our religious belief. So we had to convert and we refused to convert. So we became from being homeless in Iran stateless in India, and the only option we had to become a refugee. So we became a refugee and came to United States in 1986.
As you can imagine, coming to Maine, I felt I’m a kid in a candy shop, for the first time, I had identity, I had respect. I have freedom. Things that really, even today, people are living their country and giving their life to come to America for freedom. So I really found out my identity in Maine. As a human being and being respected and because of the climate,
actually, I felt at home, because I came from northeast of Iran, the climate is identical to Maine, so I immediately felt at home. I know many people are surprised when they hear, I’m from Iran and I live in a climate like this. But in the north we do have a similar really climate. I just wanted to mention, really it wasn’t the event that it brought me
to come to know Bethany, Laura, Ghomri and Oyi. It wasn’t one event. It was really the desire to serve our community and our intentionality that we wanted to group with people who were doing things in the community. And that’s how I feel, I came, I crossed path with all of these lovely woman that I have really learned a lot from them.
And I have so much respect and love admiration for them. And I think that’s the key. The love that we have for each other have made this connection so meaningful. It wasn’t the event because you can meet people at event. And then you go your separate way. So that doesn’t mean anything but our desire to be together and advance or community for better.
Eric Miller: That’s a very special connection and I am glad that you experienced some of the Maine style climate prior to getting there. Let’s go with Ghomri next.
Ghomri: Hi. Yes. I came from I grew up in Iran. Obviously as Parivash mentioned, just they had they executing them for different reason because of the religion, and they executed us because of all ethnicity, because of our language, because of our, just practicing even.
We are not allowed to practice our culture. And so I became a refugee and stayed in Turkey for -I think I stayed in Turkey for, yeah, so many months. And then I I came to USA and the reason that I ended up to Maine, one of my cousin was here. And at the same time, we have a similar climate, and we have a lot of snow and we have a lot of, just rain and obviously it’s a little different.
We have ocean here. We don’t have any ocean over there. And I miss mountains a lot because , we have mountain here, . I miss it anyway. And yeah, and feel very connected to Maine. I feel like that I am home, especially with the friendly environment and welcoming people here. And so yeah, unfortunately the thing that is just too much for us here,
it’s just when any kind crisis, any kind political turmoil or war is happened in in Iran or in region, in general, it’s it’s too much for us, and I know we have great friends and which is very thankful and always we have them here that they they’re out there for us always.
They’re out there for us. Yeah. And otherwise, yeah. And being free here and practicing my language, my cultural, my culture, my ethnicity, my identity. And imagine in country that even they are not giving birth certificate. They didn’t give birth certificate to,
our great parents, and yeah, it’s feel like that you are you’ll find yourself, and then you feel that you are at least belong to humans. You are a human and belongs to a community that you are getting support from. And then it was back in 2018 that we start to have empower the immigrant women.
And I I just became friends and not only as Parivash mentioned to -it’s just not like a group that we are meeting. We meet with each other and just everyone go back home and, just being on their own business now, we’re still friends. We are doing hiking together. We are going to restaurant with each other, we’re spending time with each other.
We eating, we are crying with each other. We’re celebrating with each other, and sometimes in the middle of night when I get so tired especially Laura , I pick up the phone and give us give her a call, and long conversation and not, and the other friends as well. Yeah.
Yeah. But at the same time, we are in general that, the role of a leader is to coach, guide, and inspire others and to motivate team through you, if you motivate the team through challenging the challenging time that you, they have and guide them. I was very active on so many areas, I should say, but mostly with women and especially Afghan women, I was able to establish the Maine Afghan woman community and which is running right now.
They have little by little at the beginning it was really, it was not easy for them to come along with each other, but I, we were able, to make this unity happen. And so at least, let to share their beliefs with each other, to be honest with each other and their integrity. And, just the influence that we had, kind of like building especially building the skills, acting women that they, when you know, when you are in, when you grow in a country that is dominate country and they’re not letting you to be out there it’s not easy to bring them, to the field.
It’s not easy, to inspire them. But anyway, so it was amazing and it’s running right now and I’m a member of I’m a member of housing Authority Board member, sorry, the board member of Housing Authority and Opportunity Alliance and Civil Commission. And at the same time, I’m a civic activist and happy, and excited and at the same time have my education and raising my two beautiful kids here in university, safe in environment.
And they finished their education and they have their own career. And if you wanna be out there as a role model, just, it’s very important that someone who ensures their team has supported and tools to achieve their goals. You have to start it from your yourself. You have to start just the commitment, the passion, the confidence that you have, and how much you are able to give this to your community. It’s very important, either directly or indirectly or what kind of work vision that you have and the vision that is also managed, for the managing them deliver this vision and inspire them to achieve their goals.
Eric Miller: That’s great. Ghomri. Laura, how about you give me an overview of your experience and with this community?
Laura: Sure. I decided to attend the rather small meeting. It wasn’t a huge meeting of the empower of the immigrant women, and I hadn’t been a part of the organization at all, and went with Bethany and really didn’t know what I as a white Mainer,
I was born and raised in Maine, had to contribute, and I was amazed how all of us just really supported each other and we were there and talked around the room and we were each able to state our needs, something that we needed help with. I had taken in a young man from another African nation who was really struggling and I was trying to find ways to help him, assist him.
And so I brought that to the attention of the group and we just really all supported each other with whatever it was that we needed. And I’ll never forget at the end of the meeting, walking out to the sidewalk and just realized that we were all gathered together, a bunch of us, and just realizing that we had just made these incredible friends.
Now, some of the people I knew, but not, other than Bethany, not on that level. And it’s amazing that more than 50% of the people there I consider my very dear friends today. There was a conference that was put on in part of the Community Network conference that Ghomri and I, not really meaning to ended up co-hosting it.
So I was involved in it in that way too. And again, like as a couple of the women have said already, just the incredible friendships and the support that came out of that first meeting was just amazing.
Oyi: Yeah, I think what everyone has said so far, especially Parivash is actually true. I came into the country as a student, so my story is a little bit different, but and when I came into the country, I came into New York and I met my husband in New York and then he got his first full-time job with the university in Maine, and that’s how I found myself in Maine. Now, Maine was like definitely very cold compared to New York, but I can’t remember exactly how I found myself in the Empower Women Network, but I know Mufalo was the first person I met, and then I started attending the meetings, while I was in Maine, even though I came in as a student, I came in to do my master’s, but after my master’s was over, I needed to still find something to do to keep myself in status, immigration wise. That’s one of the things we have to deal with as immigrants. You have to, to stay legally, I had to do something like go to schools or something. So I went back to community college. I was actually attending Maine community college at that time.
But going to these meetings with these women, I’m like, I’m the youngest so everybody on this group is like my big Auntie , I – going to these meetings, meeting these people was like, it was really it was a great opportunity to just meet people and I found out that everyone was very supportive of where I was at that point in time, even though it wasn’t like I was working, but having good conversations with these great ladies and them supporting me. Even at that time I was even trying to like, get a job, get a job that could could file for me, that could give me like a work visa. And even though I didn’t get to that point, eventually everyone was supportive of me trying to get that including, especially like Mufalo. She tried to connect me with some law firms. ’cause I studied law. I have a legal background. So Mufalo was trying to connect me with people who could like, employ me and file a work Visa for me. And for me that’s like really part of what Empower Women Network is about, trying to ensure that immigrants find their voice, they find something, that they, they can get to do in Maine and Maine is very welcoming in that regard. And that’s just like the most welcoming place I’ve ever lived in so far. Yeah, they’re very welcoming of immigrants, which was what I appreciated about them. And the Empower Network and like Parivash said, everybody was intentional about building that bond, building that relationship.
I remember when I had to have my first child, Bethany was there. I had complications, bethany went through it with me. She cried with me. Parivash was also with me. Laura came to the hospital. Parivash came to the hospital. Parivash was like telling me,’causemy baby was in ICU for a period of time.
Parivash. I remember Parivash telling me to speak with her, even though of course she’s a baby. She couldn’t, but Parivash made me understand that, okay, she’s a baby, but she can hear your voice. You’ve carried her for a long time. And, eventually my child ended up doing great. She’s still a miracle to everybody today.
But yeah, we have that sisterhood, that bond and even though we’re miles away, we don’t call each other every. When we get to connect with each other, we share pictures. We connect with each other on Facebook. When I post something, Bethany, Laura, Ghomri, comments, and even though I haven’t been to Maine in a long time, I still plan to visit the place with my daughter and see everyone, I think it’s more of the fact that everybody was intentional about building this relationship, building this sisterhood, and I really appreciate. I really appreciate that network and I really appreciate everyone on this call for that.
Yeah. And since then we moved to Missouri. From Missouri. We’re now in Tennessee. Yeah. And like I said, it’s like the last move. And I’ve had another child. I’ve had another child in August, and so right now I am. Eventually my husband actually filed for me while I was in Maine to get a green card, but it wasn’t coming through on time, which was why I said I had to go to community college.
Eventually it came through in 2020 and I was able to pursue what I really wanted to do. Right now I’m working for a consulting firm working in the financial services space. I work in like the financial crime investigation side of it, and I work hundred percent from home, which, gives me the flexibility of being a mom, being a present mom, and, working at the same time.
Yeah. So that’s really a summary of, what has been happening to me.
Eric Miller: That’s a wonderful story. There’s so many beautiful memories and congratulations on, on acquiring Your Green Card, finishing school, getting the job, moving around all over the place successfully raising children. What an amazing experience.
And since you named dropped Bethany let’s round up getting to know everyone here.
Bethany: Hi, I’m Bethany Smart. I live in North Yarmouth I in 2018, but prior to the Pandemic was as a volunteer work volunteering through Hope Acts and Hope House as a mentor coordinator. So I would talk to people about Hey, would you like to connect with a new Mainer and help them navigate some systems, be their friend, show them around Portland connect and just listen over coffee, like to what their needs are and see if you can help or,
if Hope House can help or, getting the, we can get the word out to the community and see what folks need. I actually attended, like Laura said with Laura this first meeting I mean my first meeting of the Empower Women Network with, along with a young woman that I was mentoring from Rwanda. And I think my initial thought going was that like she would have a place to connect and that she would know this group existed. So it’s interesting how it turned out that really for me, here we are like all of us connected strongly. And she was even younger than Oyi. So maybe it was just an age factor, but but still I hope that she knows that, she has proceeded with her life here.
She has, sorry. She has I’m sure like, linked up with other friends and organizations in Portland and has the support that she needs. But as it turned out, as you’ve heard from everyone, we had a very strong connection. I mean, I do look at things from through my faith and a spiritual lens so for me, I just feel like it was just all of us coming with really open hearts to connect with one another. And Mufalo asking, like just saying, introduce yourselves and say who you are and say a need that you have. So all of us have multiple needs, right? But I think us coming from Oh, I’m from Nebraska.
I didn’t say that I moved to Maine in 1996, but coming, whether, from any place in the us as a white woman, like in that group, it can be really intimidating to express, like what can my need possibly be when I’m seeing people whose lives I’ve had to, be torn apart and start over.
But as Oyi said, we all rallied around each other’s needs. I remember Laura I think did some editing for somebody who said they needed some editing work, done for work. Maybe that wasn’t you, but I think it was. Yeah, and then the aunties, that’s what we called us planned a baby shower that was at Parivash’s house that she hosted.
And just we started, connecting. Laura and I had always for a long time prior to this been connected and trying to meet needs where we saw them. But this was just clearly just a deeper level of friendship and connection that kind of allowed us all to, I think, extend our leadership into our own spheres even more with the strength of knowing one another.
So I just saw Parivash last week at the State House and I realized later I think I said at the beginning to my husband I’m so glad I went to that meeting. I can’t imagine not having met those women like we were, like Laura said, there’s something about, I think it was supposed to be a one hour meeting and it ended up being three hours.
And then we were doing like selfies and the elevator on the way downstairs who does that when you’ve just met a group of people. But it felt like there was like a reunion and we’d known each other forever. So I realized later, had I not met Parivash that day, I would’ve met her eventually’causeshe’s everywhere all the time activating. But yeah, this has been a really amazing group and amazing friendship and amazing leaders.
Eric Miller: Wow, that I am blown away by the the strength of connection that just going to one place and all, having a collective goal and then letting your guard down and being okay to be intimate and how that builds this community is just such a wonderful thing.
And Oyi you answered this question a little bit already, but that article was published in Maine Policy Review about five years ago, a lot has transpired since then. So I’d love to hear about where people are at now and if Bethany, you mentioned you and Parivash spend time at the State House, if you like to mention other advocacy group or other organizations you’re part of be happy to share that or just general life updates.
Oyi’s been very busy.
Pavarish: Yeah, so I mean, Everybody who is really here in this podcast, we are all involved and we feel, women in general, it is in our DNA to try to make our community a better place. From the unit of home to, you know, local community, national and international. It’s just that, I don’t know how to say it.
We don’t think that we are alive if we are not doing something for somebody or making changes in our community. So yeah, if there are things that, need support at the policy level, look, as Bethany mentioned, it was a day of advocacy in the state house. So we all rallied around Wabanaki people, because we believe in justice. So the justice cannot be discriminated. If you feel everybody have to have a equal, right, then you have to be in forefront of that fight for those people who are really fighting it. And beside that, I do a lot of advocacy around the homelessness and also that recently we had 55 family move to South Portland.
So the, interfaith group decided that, there were items that they needed. So we wrote a email, like I forwarded the email to the Maine ___, and I was overwhelmed with their response of items that had to be delivered to South Portland for the asylum seeker. And I’m not the only one. Every one of these women who you see here, they are involved in many level with that because we all think that it is important.
And I’m among few of the board in Portland Family Promise Board and Portland Park Conservancy that, just doing different thing. It is not maybe so much gear towards the immigrant and asylum, but it is geared towards environment and conserving parks in Portland.
Eric Miller: It’s wonderful. Yeah, you are certainly busy.
As Bethany said let’s go with Ghomri. It’s, it is five years later.
Ghomri: Five years later, yes. As I was my official position was a refugee and immigrant resettlements through Jewish Community Alliance. And when, as you know that how they fragile when they come into this country and we house them when we provide them what food with clothes and reach out to so many organizations, other non-profit organizations, and even, just volunteers that they come out and regardless of color, ethnicity, identity, you know, they house and we were able to house 100 in total. I think in total we had 150, but 50 of them were Afghan community, Afghan families.
And in addition of this one, as I said, I was very involved, to establish empower I mean empower the Afghan woman and, just establish their community. They had community, but it was not very active community. It was not like they didn’t have structure and they, especially the women were not involved at all.
Not at all. I remember at the first meeting that they had only males and they were there and I said, what are the women? And they said, no, we don’t have any woman here. And I said, I’m gonna cancel it out. So then for the next one, we had only two women, and for the third one we had just three women.
And for the fourth one that we had it here in housing Authority, we had 25 women, Afghan woman. So luckily right now, and they are very happy and they’re running their organization. We choose the name for them. Maine Afghan Women and at the same time, civic activist as well and working on my degree to finish it and hopefully another, just the 40 units left to get my master degree from our university international violations.
And the job that I recently, they offered to me, which is, I did not announce that because I have one more exam that I have to take, became a foreign service general. So I know that it’s not an easy job. But anyway, I’m very excited and hopefully to be in the office officially by the August at the end of the August.
And at the same time, I’m a very active member of Worldly Woman. Worldly Woman is under the World Affair Councils here in Maine. The same thing that Empower Immigrant Women did it. We are going out and Laura actually participate in one of our meeting because we are very new and we are still reaching out, just kinda like international women from different group, from different, background and to participate and share their memories and, just supporting each other.
And we have empathy for each other and. So yeah, that is five years later and hopefully in another five years, be president of Iran . We need a woman, yeah.
Bethany: We’ll need a new podcast then.
Eric Miller: Congratulations on making it to this point. Good luck on your final exam there. I have little doubt and how that’ll go for you. I’m sure you’ll pass it without a question. Let’s go to Laura next.
Laura: So I’m trying to think from five years ago how things have changed and I’m not involved in too many direct organizations yet I kind of dabble in a few different ones. And I had a friend, an African friend, tell me not too long ago that,’causeI was trying to find my place in helping in certain situations and he’s, he said to me, you’re a connector. That’s what you do. You connect people. So I’ve kind of taken that and run with it and felt like, that, that is a purpose to connect people that whether it be, to services or that they are trying to better their career or better.
In this particular case, my friends and artists and he just needed to connect with people to Lead to jobs that he has picked up since then. So whether it be people, just needing clothes, I have a couple families right now that are two women are having babies and just even finding some of the basics for some people when they’re new here and they don’t know the language, they don’t have transportation is a struggle.
So anything that we can do, all of us to help make their make their settlement here a little bit easier is what we can do. So I also am on the board of directors of ___ African Newspaper, which is an African newspaper here in Maine. Started in 2018, and the main goal of the newspapers to really connect africans here with Mainers here and also provides news back in Africa for folks settling here so they don’t lose the connection with their homeland. And it also teaches us why a lot of new Mainers are here from African nations, mostly asylum seekers and what might have made them flee and why they’re here and what things are like in their country.
So that’s been really near and dear to my heart. I have an African son, so when I first heard about this newspaper, I thought this is something I really wanna be involved in. So that has helped me connect to other people and just become more and more part of the immigrant community. And, but we’re all Mainers now, so we have to support each other.
Eric Miller: Yeah, that’s absolutely fantastic. Bethany, how about you?
Bethany: So I would say I’m also not, like directly involved like on boards and things like that. But I think just, again, I think my description of leadership in the article like five years ago was just like more pushing myself to do new things. Pushing myself to step outta my comfort zone. To make, always be making new connections, to always be trying to build awareness of what’s happening in Maine, but what’s happening in people’s lives that is important to them. And I think for me it’s allowed me to have conversations on a more informed level than just here’s a general idea of justice.
Everybody should have these basic rights or everybody should be able to do X when they come to the United States and not have all these hoops to jump through kind of thing, but even with family members, with other friends, having like just a greater understanding of the struggles and to say, my friend’s going through this like this, we, we all need to be supporting one another.
So I think, I’d say like Laura’s a major connector. I’ll take minor connector. I’m a connector as well. And I just going back to the spirituality and faith piece, I just look at leadership, not so much as being out front and center as standing my integrity and like doing small things and trusting the ripples that we don’t see.
And yeah, just gaining awareness and it’s it’s like more of a scaling in then scaling up kind of perspective.
Eric Miller: Absolutely. That’s great. So a lot of these points that you all have made actually feeds really nicely into the next question because Parivash in the article in 2018, you mentioned often grassroots leaders making seemingly small decisions have a huge impact on the lives of ordinary people.
Would you mind providing some examples of some of these small decisions? It seems Laura, Bethany have captured these small decisions in small actions and there’s large ones serving on boards. Would you like to elaborate on that a little bit?
Pavarish: Yeah. So really in general, I don’t feel that this, we have this conception of leadership that we think leadership is some alien or coming out of a space and making things work better or we have this complex, I don’t know, idea, and to me leadership is not complex because leadership is about others. It is not about the leader, it is not about us, it is about other people. And I always feel there are so many unsung heroes that they, doing a small thing, but do a small thing or organically changing your community. Sometimes when we talk about complex thing, it’s very disappointing because when you want to take a big, have a big goal. Sometimes it is not possible to fulfill it, but if you make small changes, it is encouraging because you see the result. Like what all the stories that Laura, Bethany and Ghomri share, these are little changes that they are all making and making our community a better place.
So I have an example that I mentioned earlier, like just sending the email, it wasn’t a big deal, but the response that I got was so overwhelming to me. And it wasn’t the leadership because it was about orders, but people were generous. They stood up and, really contributed. But I have, few years ago, I went visiting this family in Lewiston from Congo, and I was visiting them with one of my friends who was from Paris. She was from France. So she was able to translate, all of our conversation. And I casually ask the woman why she’s at home and she is not taking English classes because everybody in her household was gone for, the class except her. And she said, because she cannot see. And I was very surprised because I didn’t see any disability with her sight. And I mentioned to her, I said you can’t see what you mean. She said, I cannot read. I cannot see, to read right. And I had over counter glasses that I bought from Dollar Store, so I thought, okay, I’ll just try to give her this reading, over counter reading glasses.
And she had a paper in front of her and she started reading and she started crying because she was overwhelmed that her problem was just, was solved with reading over counter reading glasses. It wasn’t a big deal that I offered to her, but just being intentional to make sure what is her problem, and if there was anything that I could do to make a difference, which I wasn’t sure that it would make a difference, but just being intentional.
So when I left there, I was thinking really many of the problem that people are dealing with is not a big problem. They are a small problem is just that we are people who are connecting with other people, whether they are immigrant, asylum seeker. If you are intentional in our day-to-day work, we would be able, with a small decision, make a change in people’s life.
So this intentionality is very important and doing something about the problem that we are facing and not saying, oh, okay, so what, they are dealing with this for a long time and nothing has changed, so just let it be. I think that’s the important, really lesson for all of us, that the small changes can be perceived big from the point of view of the person who received that small change.
It can impact their life.
Eric Miller: Yeah. Thank you. For expanding on that point in intentionality is a very special and powerful thing and can be channeled into, I like how you framed as it be channeled into as small or as large as an act as what is in front of you in that moment. And so as leaders and yourselves and as immigrants or have worked intimately with new Mainers yourselves can you all speak to how leadership and community networks can help individuals and families that call Maine their new home?
Pavarish: Yeah, I would like to say because I’m immigrant, what am I offering is not some vague, something in a vacuum because I live the immigrant life and I know what was important to me was learning the language was one of the really the most important thing that you need to learn the language of the country that you reside in because that could also improve your own life, if you are fluent in the language.
The second thing is, I think the attitude or attitude towards getting job, because most immigrants who come here, they are highly educated. So if we want to wait for that perfect job that pays $150 an hour, it’s very hard . So we have to have a different attitude towards job. And I share a little story after I say this. That’s very important.
The another point is that as immigrants, we should not take everything and anything that people say and put it in a category of discrimination that, oh, these people tell me this because I’m from another country, so you can’t take everything as discrimination because that would make our life very hard.
Another point that I really want to make sure that as immigrant, the immigrant are paying attention to that, is just that we need to take the first step. If we want to become friends with other people, we need to take the first step. I remember when we moved actually to Maine, it was winter and people hibernate in Maine, so you can’t connect with anybody.
And I remember, my neighbor heard that we are from Iran and they thought this terrorist family moved next door to them. They were worried about their children and all of that. And I was alone. I left everything that I was familiar with in Iran. I didn’t have family. When I came to Maine, it was only me, my husband, and my daughter.
So I needed connection, but my neighbors didn’t need connection because she already had relative, friend, well established, community. But I didn’t. So I couldn’t sit home and say, oh, I’m waiting for my neighbor to come say, hi, Parivash, how are you? I’m glad to meet you. If I would have that attitude after 30 some years, I still would not have any connection with anyone.
So I say that we really, as immigrant, we have to take that step. I want to tell you the story. My husband was doing his PhD in India. So when we came, he was working two jobs as a stock clerk in 7-Eleven, and he was also as a stock clerk in L.L. Bean. So the first job, the first week we were in Maine, got a job in L.L. Bean
I remember when he would go to job, I would sit and cry because I was thinking, oh my God, he’s so intelligent. He has done all of this PhD work and now he’s stocking, somewhere in 7-Eleven and I don’t know, in L.L. Bean, and I would not let him know that I was worried about that. So I remember one day he came home and I was crying.
I would make sure he doesn’t know that I cried because I thought he’s working hard for me and my daughter. There is no reason that I should show him that I’m distressed. So I remember he came home sick and he saw me crying and he thought something happened to my parents. So he said, something happened to your parents?
I said, no. He said, please tell me why you are crying. I said, I’m crying because you are an intelligent man. You have did your, pre PhD and all of this work while you are now folding clothes at night in a L.L. Bean. My husband got mad at me. He said, what is the use of PhD if I cannot put food in front of you and my daughter,. He said, still whatever I’m making is better than $0.
And because I’m working in L.L. Bean actually I’m aware of other opportunities because if I am not working in L.L. Bean, most of a job are posted within the company. So the fact that I’m there as a stock clerk makes me aware of the posting. So I have the ability to apply for better job. So really these all the advice that I’m offering humbly if, because we went through that as an immigrant, it’s not some abstract something out there that I have no clue or I didn’t go through that hardship.
So I feel these are something that we need to remember. Or attitude need to be very positive and not, because I have PhD, I’m not going to work here, I’m not going to work there. But those are all opportunities for better future.
Bethany: Can I just also say that, Parivash cut the story short, but she took her neighbor that a meal to meet her, right? In the first story.
Pavarish: Oh yeah.
Bethany: When you were feeling like your neighbor didn’t wanna meet you and you said you need, people need to take the first step. You cooked her a meal and it should have been the It should have been the reverse, but it wasn’t.
Pavarish: Yes, I make food. I, with any excuse, I go and knock at the door. And I have to tell you, it had a happy ending because when we became friend, she gave my name as somebody in the school because her kids had allergy, very bad allergy. So if something happened to them, they would call me because she was working full-time. So it had a really happy ending, but it had a happy ending because I try to make sure we connect so she doesn’t have this misconception that I’m terrorists because I’m from Iran. If I would have really, that would have been something that I would say, oh, okay, she thinks I’m terrorist. I’m not going to reach out. She would’ve never found out that our similarities is more than our differences. Thank you for reminding me Bethany.
Eric Miller: Ghomri, d you have something that you’d like to add for how as an immigrant yourself, you can speak to leadership community networks in, in Maine and how that can help individuals and families?
Ghomri: Yeah, a lot, just if you share your stories with them and journey that you had, and anytime when we have when I have home visit with them, because we have a lot of home visit with them, we’re talking about our stories.
How I was mentioned to it, I was a principal back in Iran and I had my master’s degree, but I never prayed to go to ___ food, and pack food, just work very hard and I’m telling them the same, just they are really frustrated and they are sometimes, they get so emotion, they’re crying and obviously, that is’causeof the barrier language called for shot, not they’re not able to navigate with the system.
But when you out there and telling them that is my story. When I came here, I went back to work, I went back to education, and you will get there. You will be there. So yeah, that is very important. And then at the same time, just , it’s, the difference is it’s here. Some people with the strong but strong educational background.
And then the other one is with zero educational background. That makes your job much difficult. When you know the language and when you just, at least a little bit familiar with technology world. This is the technology world and the thing that they suffered a lot and some of them, they’re dealing with a very little, email address and they do not know how to send an email address and just, but we’re providing with classes for them. Just teaching them and even sometimes you are going to their home and we’re there, just to help them. But they give the cell phone to you and they don’t know how to use the app. They don’t know how to do the online banking. They don’t know how to, just send the documentation to their , the organization that they’re supporting to their attorneys. Who are mostly working with asylum seekers and the attorney is asking for a lot of documentation, pictures and this and that, technology world, it’s not easy for them, but still, just, if your action inspires others, to dream more, learn more, do more. So then became more. It means that you can, you have a good message for your community and you can inspire them in so many ways. I know that they’re frustrated sometimes. And as an example, the immigration system, when they when they’re coming here, some of them even, they do not have their own name and they change their name and then they get frustrated and their name is not matched with their age and their name, their age is not matched with their name, and then social security and, dealing with social security, dealing with the department of Health and Human Services and dealing with the medical system, they became sick, just so tired and anxious, nervous, and, exhausted and but we were there and we’re trying to help them in so many ways.
Not only emotionally, not only, how to navigate with the system that is the most difficult part for them. But just I hope this world, be just like how the birds are migrating, if people, to get to this point, if they get to this point, the migration is not hurting anyone and migration is not hurting any system, anything.
Just for make a world to a better place to live. If they come to this concept, the world will be much better. Look at the birds, they’re migrating. When it’s winter they’re flying. When it’s getting warmer, they’re coming back just for the contribution. Right? And the same as, said, if they do not think that you are coming here, just you are not a terrorist, you are not a danger person, you’re a human.
Humankind, just every, everybody else in this area, we have all of us, regardless of the color, religious, ethnicity, background, we have just one type of blood and it’s red.
Eric Miller: Yeah. Thank you so much Ghomri I can’t imagine something more isolating or intimidating than trying to navigate a foreign bureaucracy.
So having those resources are invaluable for people new to an area. Oyi it sounds like you were quite the beneficiary of this cultivated community. Would you like to share you shared a little bit about how you benefited and had support. Would you like to share some of your experience with the leadership and community networks with folks who are new to Maine or anywhere?
Oyi: Like I said, when I introduced myself, I was trying to find a job as a new immigrant, but of course I didn’t have a green card. So I was looking for an employer who could file for me. And like I said, even though I didn’t get that eventually I got support from Empowerment Network . As to connecting with people who were in my field.
And I feel like every immigrant has a story. they have a story of how they started and how they got to where they are now. And I always tell people who just move into the country who have had the opportunity to know maybe back from Nigeria, that, you have to be patient with the process because it’s a process, it doesn’t happen overnight and you have to just be patient with it.
And if you stick through the process, you eventually find it rewarding. And that is what I have realized in my own journey as an immigrant. It was tough at the beginning because I had a master’s degree. I sat for the New York BAR exam, but I couldn’t work with it because I didn’t have a green card, and it was really frustrating. I had to go back to community college, the degree, yeah. There’s no, you can’t knowledge, no knowledge is wasted, so I won’t say that I didn’t gain from that, but eventually that was like an associate degree. I already had a master’s degree. So at the end of the day, it was just like, let me just do something to be in status.
But so at that point it was frustrating us. And if you’re not careful, you may feel like, oh, you’re not good enough. You may begin to doubt your worth. You may begin to say, oh, my friends they pass the by exam. They’re working with a law firm. Now what am I doing?
But at the end of the day, everybody’s story is different. Everybody’s story is unique and you just have to believe in yourself and know that it’s a process. And, being an immigrant everybody has to go through it. Everybody has to go through it. As an immigrant, whether you come in as a refugee, whether you come in as a student, everybody has to go through that process, that was what I was able to benefit from the, this network of amazing women. I was able to meet people. I was able to meet people that were like me, that I could share my story with, that I could hear their own stories, which, eventually encouraged me to keep pushing. And I think that is what is important for, moving forward for people to be able to come together as immigrants, as Americans, to support each other, to keep each other going that, okay, you’ve got this, there’s light at the end of tunnel, at the end of everything you’re going to be better for it. So I feel that was one very important thing that I gained from the network, and I feel it should continue, and I feel every immigrant should be encouraged and should know that at the end of the day, you are, you’re going to go, you’re gonna get to where you want to go to eventually.
Eric Miller: That’s great.
And to bounce back from that adversity after passing the BAR exam and being, hitting that administrative wall that forced you to adapt is very impressive, and the yeah the message is very powerful.
Laura and Bethany, you each had quite a bit of experience working with new Mainers. I would love to get your perspective on, on, on leadership and community networks and Laura, would you like to start?
Laura: It always resonates me when somebody says to me, particularly new Mainers will say, oh, you’ve done so much for me. You’re so amazing. Look at all the things you’ve done. How could I do this without you?
And I just, it, it’s always makes me uncomfortable to hear that because I know what I have gained from, the richness I have gained from having such a diverse group of friends and learning people’s culture and just seeing things through their eyes when they come here. Moving anywhere new is so difficult, but then you add the lack of the language and just how to navigate anywhere in this country, particularly Maine, of course we’re talking about, and I just feel like I, I want to tell people how much they have to gain by reaching out. Just like how Parivash’s neighbor, thought that she was a terrorist. And we have, people have these bias and these stereotypes, and once they actually get to know someone, it’s hard to have that same feeling about them when you become friends with them.
And I feel like when we take the time to truly connect with others and learn about them, there’s no longer, and us and them, it’s just us. And that’s really what this world needs right now. I just feel so grateful to have the ability to connect with people from other nations. When I grew up here in Maine, there, there was nobody from other nations in the Portland area really, very few .
I went to a pretty big high school and it was a very white high school. So our world looks very different now. Again, I have an African son, it’s just made things so much better and our family to have so many other people from other nations be his big brother, his auntie, his, really connecting with others.
So I just wish everyone could feel how wonderful it is to truly make our world a little bit smaller and to connect with people that we really don’t think we have anything in common with, ’cause we do. Absolutely.
Eric Miller: Bethany, do you have anything to add?
Bethany: I feel like I’ll probably reiterate like that connection is just where it’s at.
People have to build relationships. I would say like the distressing, situations like Ghomri’s describing and just the challenges people have and just getting to the point where you’re like, is this even worth it? What am I doing here? Having. Being there, being able to be there for people is a gift.
It’s a gift to us. I know it means a lot, like people will say like we’re their American family and that benefits everyone involved. But I can also say, so that sounds beautiful. I can also say it like breaks my heart and I know Laura would say the same thing, you just get to a point sometime, you’re like why are these things the way that they are?
And it’s hard to have this conversation without naming that our immigration system is broken and it’s created by a system of white supremacy and it, it can’t be a white person in this conversation without saying that It’s painful to see where we’re at and I don’t know the way out unless people choose to connect. What I can say is that many of the cultures that share our community now in Portland have such strong cultural concepts of community that I think we can learn from. And people already if there weren’t all these barriers, if there weren’t all the barriers to working, barriers to language barriers if life wasn’t so difficult I, and we didn’t make it so difficult, our system didn’t make it so difficult for people.
Even they’re, just ready to get in there and be community and give back and work even sooner. So we’re talking about yes, it’s beautiful when it happens, and then there’s also this like unsaid piece that I feel like we haven’t addressed it. Like it can happen sooner. We need to, be advocating for changes to make this not so complicated and not so charged politically and stuff like that.
That might be a bit off topic. I feel like that has to be said that we have to work for a change.
Eric Miller: It’s all relevant. Thank you. Thank you both so much for your perspectives on this issue as well. As we close out in our final question here, I do you have any quick thoughts for budding young leaders in this space?
And any advice or short stories that would you think that they’d find beneficial? Parivash? We’ll start with you again.
Pavarish: I think few things I would like to stress. One is of course, to listen and to learn as new leaders. That’s very important to listen because sometimes we think we are leaders.
Everybody else has to listen to us, and we don’t have anything to learn from others if we feel that we are leaders. But really, as a good leader, you have to be listening and also being open to learning. Another thing is really I feel that the leadership, as I mentioned before, is about others. It is not about us.
So if we are good leaders, we are not creating followers, but we are creating leaders who would be leading, because, I mean, the global community is full of leaders who have followers, but we don’t see changes happening in our community because people blindly following these leaders without knowing where they are going.
And also to give vision and inspiration to people who are with collaborating as supposedly leaders with people who we cross path, it is important to do, be intentional that they become leaders and we all actually empowering other people and creating resources in the community because if we are just thinking about us and our own leadership, nobody is there to step up for taking the role of leadership in the future.
I think really those are among the thing that those think it is important. And one last thing doesn’t have anything to do with leadership, but I always say if I die and they dissect me, they never going to find a gene that say, para honey was Iranian. No gene would indicate that we are all human. So what they find is just indicating that I’m another human like anybody else.
So I think it is important to remember that we are all more interconnected, more interdependent than we think we are. We have, and that’s why really connecting with people no matter where they come from. And connecting and forming relationship doesn’t happen going to the lecture, listening to podcast, it happened at each other’s kitchen, sharing food and being together and celebrating important things.
Recently I dropped my phone in somewhere that it was not very nice, but Laura supported me, and she stayed with me till my husband go and get something to fetch the cell phone. So those are the things that, make our friendship and connection stronger, and I don’t think Laura is going to let me forget it because she texting me and she says, take care of your cell phone from Parivash.
Laura: I’ll never let you forget that.
Pavarish: No.
I want to say that I have a lot of trust in this younger generation, really wherever I go, if I don’t see young generation among people, I say something is wrong with this picture because this younger generation is the generation that is going to lead global community.
They have it right. We just have to support them and accompany them and let them know that they are doing great thing, really. I mean, I mentioned few things, but I really, I think this younger generation know it all. They know how to lead. They have proved it in many areas that they know. They know the priority.
Eric Miller: That’s great. Thank you for the story. This is great. Ghomri, do you have anything you would like to say about young leaders
Ghomri: Yeah. For young leaders? Yeah, absolutely. Always your action is louder than your talk or your speak. When you inspire others, as I said, as I mentioned before, when you inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, became more and this one will have to be done by your action.
So it means you are Good leader. And at the same time to me, just because after Covid, you know that 4 in 10 household have lost their job, their business, and they reduce wages and hours, and the rate of the death. And then the young generation are fortune afraid. They are home right now and they’re always on technology and technology is good. It’s so many ways, it’s very beneficial, but at the same time, the communication, it’s getting, it, the skills, communication skills get lost. And we have to, and then the the empathy, the compassion we have to take them out and, just pull them, they, their commitment, and confidence, commitment, communication. To me, those are really important and we have to work on this one, in this area .
Eric Miller: That’s wonderful. Thank you so much. Laura, quick if you have any thoughts about young leaders in the community?
Laura: My only thought really is to just not get overwhelmed with the idea of how can I be a leader? How can I, what can I do? What difference can I make? And, as Parivash said it’s not, leaders aren’t necessarily the ones in charge. They’re the ones maybe just being there for others who want to make a difference. And I think if I had concentrated too much on being a leader, I wouldn’t be doing anything because the idea of having to lead and might be overwhelming to me and thinking, what do I have to offer?
But as we’ve talked about, it’s the little things that can make a difference. If we all make a little difference, what a huge difference it becomes for everyone. So I think it just do something, whether it be learning more about everything from race to different cultures to policies that aren’t helping anyone besides the white man.
I think that everyone can make a difference. So whatever it is, whatever your passion is, even if it’s the environment that affects all of us, whatever your passion is, try and find your way to make a difference.
Eric Miller: Very inspiring. That’s great. Oyi, do you have anything you’d like to mention as we close out?
Oyi: Yeah, I, the only thing I want to add is at the end of the day, everybody is a leader in their own space. And at the end of the day the work of a leader is to serve. And it’s not just, having the title of being a leader. Everyone should be able to have some form of influence in the space that they find themselves.
And once you realize that you have that kind of influence, you want to make sure that you are, you are being the person that you’re treating people the way you want to be treated. That’s like the summary. At the end of the day, everybody is, we’re all human beings. Whether you’re white, whether you’re black, whether you are from Iran, whether you’re from Nigeria, at the end of the day, we are all human beings and we should be able to treat each other with respect, with dignity. And, the world will be a better place if everybody has that understanding. And you if you wanna be treated right, you want to be able to treat people right as well.
And yeah that’s all I have to say.
Eric Miller: Fantastic. It’s hard to close out everything after all those amazing perspectives and insights Bethany, but do you have any thoughts you’d like to share for young leaders or your community involvement as we end here?
Bethany: I would just really echo all of that Ary saying, inspiring people to do more, to act more, to dream big.
Laura’s points about everyone has something to offer and always that people are standing in their integrity and treating others as they would want to be treated. I just think that our definition of leadership has been so skewed. And especially these past few years, like what young people have grown up with and seen as labeled as leadership is horrifying.
That we need to like rebrand. What does it mean to be a leader. And I think it is totally like just back to these basics of treating each other well and focusing in our immediate environments, as Oyi said. We can always branch out from there, but we always have a immediate sphere of influence in our community around us will uplift us to more if they see gifts that you know, like that we can inspire in others. But otherwise, our job, I feel, is to be uplifting those around us.
Eric Miller: That was great parting thoughts. Thank you all so much for joining us today. It a great conversation. And thank you all listeners for tuning in and I hope our panelists enjoyed themselves and have a wonderful rest of their day and we’ll be in touch sometime soon.
Cathy Lee
That was our discussion with the co-authors of the article. And now to our discussion with Cathy Lee. Hello, Cathy, welcome to the podcast. It’s a pleasure to have you.
Cathy: Thank you, Eric. It’s wonderful to be here.
Eric Miller: So you helped start the Empowered Network in Maine, and could you touch a little bit on your personal professional history?
Cathy: Sure. I grew up in Lewiston and in those days the ethnic community, that was the target of a lot of hostility were French Canadians. I was surrounded by that whole dynamic. I eventually moved to Brazil for a year in high school through a program that Maine has, or Maine. And the most northeastern state in Brazil are sister states and the program still exists.
And that was my first real international experience that is being in another culture ’cause I went to a place where no one spoke English at that time. So I, after two weeks of not saying anything to anyone, decided I better try to learn this language. And I did. And it just, the experience of living in another culture as part of that culture just opened up the world to me.
So that was a really important event in my life. I came back, went to college, left college, went back to Brazil, went to law school in Brazil for a while. came back finished college in New York City, went to law school, and then became a sex crimes prosecutor. And I think in addition to the language and opening up the world, the experience in Brazil also strengthened my sense of being a very committed feminist.
Watching the way women and girls were , and living the way they were treated there made me very clear about what I believe. So I worked as a sex crimes prosecutor in New York City for three years and then moved back to Maine. Got married, actually got married, commuted for four years, and then moved to Maine with some reluctance because I had experienced Maine as boring, as not diverse as, just limiting. That’s how it felt to me for many years growing up. But we moved to Portland and I’ve made a really exciting and interesting life for myself. I spent 13 years at Bernstein Shore, one of the big law firms in Portland, and then worked for a few more years managing the main office for a New Hampshire law firm, and then decided I want to do something else, more international, more entrepreneurial work, where I feel every day what I’m doing is making a difference.
And I started to focus on climate change and that’s still the work I do as a lawyer. But I also in 2010, felt it’s time to stop traveling because a lot of my work was in Southern Africa. The climate work and spend a little more time in Maine. That was the year my father died and I felt like he did so much for the community.
I need to do more and I need, but I needed to do something from me that was based on what I had to offer. And one of the first things I did was start a program called Justice for Women. And it’s a program that brings some dynamic leader from the developing world, from the global south to Maine every year for a week.
And the woman gives a big public lecture that’s free. In fact, this year, it’s April 26th at Hannaford Hall and spends the rest of the week meeting with different communities. And what inspired me was watching the demographic change in Maine and realize there were women in African dress walking up and down the Franklin arterial and traditional Mainers look at these women and they have no idea who they are. They make assumptions that they’re victims or that they’re ignorant or uneducated. And I knew just from all the travel I’d done that there are so many amazing leaders out there around the world, particularly in Africa, in Southeast Asia, and parts of the world that people in Maine don’t get to experience for the most part.
And I ought to bring some of those women that no one’s ever heard of here and put them up on a stage, have them meet with members of different communities as a way of trying to show that, first of all, there are incredible women leaders from some of the very places that we have asylum seekers and refugees, so don’t make assumptions.
Second, they’re all activists. They’re all outrageous, strong, active. And I thought by bringing them here, it can help to send the message that everybody can be an activist in their own backyard. You just need to find your inner courage. So I think it was through that, that I met Mufa lo and just thought she was one of those incredible women who has yet to grow into her own.
This was years ago here in Maine, has yet to be recognized for the strength and the courage and just. Her ability to lift others up. And the same the, so we got together and decided we need to find ways to bring main women, white women together with the immigrant women in the communities and get to know each other and get to help each other.
And it really is helping each other, that those of us who have a lot of, let’s say social capital, can open doors for some of the women immigrants, but they can show us other ways of looking at the world also and how to be courageous and so on. So that’s how we met and decided we would start this thing to get women, to give women an opportunity to know each.
Eric Miller: What a beautiful life story. Thank you so much for the work that you’ve done. And if you’ve made this far in the podcast you have heard the discussion we had with the panelists earlier, and you can see the dividends that were paid in, the relationships they formed based on your work, and truly incredible. And to this day are regularly in contact with each other and building those community ties. And we touched a bit on community and leadership in their discussion, and I’d really like to hear your perspective on the qualities in the leader or when you first met Mufalo, hat were some of the things that spoke to you as this individual is, has the potential to be a leader, and what are some tools of engagement? If people are looking to get more involved themselves, what can they do as well?
Cathy: I think the first thing is don’t make assumptions. Don’t think, you know who this woman is. And that’s one. Number two, whether it’s in employment or in friendship or in any other context, give these women a chance to show who they are, because so often they’re limited in what their opportunities are and they just don’t get a chance.
And when they do Mufalo, Ghomri, like Parivash like so many other women, they flourish. But part of the issue is often give them an opportunity to show you who they are. So that’s one piece of advice I think, in one of the early years when I brought. I, when the speaker was from Zimbabwe, I remember years ago, and she led an organization, this is the Justice for Women’s Speaker.
She led an organization in Africa in 17 countries that worked on food security. So we used that opportunity to raise an issue of child hunger in Maine. So try to always connect the speaker with an issue of importance in Maine. And the Empower Network, which was still very much active in those days, gave a dinner at somebody’s apartment.
And there were maybe 25 women who were all crowded into somebody’s living room. Everybody brought food that they had made from their own country. And we went around the room and these women, there was a dental surgeon. I mean, they were just incredible and they were stuck in these. Dead end jobs for many that hadn’t yet learned enough English, which is almost always number one challenge to integrating into the workforce, into society.
But they were just something I saw in Mufa and I see in all of these women strong, courageous, have the ability to persevere in the face of the most incredible challenges. And, but people don’t know that about them. Each one has her own story of difficulty in just getting here and trying to make it here, and they just don’t give up.
And another year we had a. A justice women speaker from India, who is one of the worldwide leaders in the movement, a against sex trafficking. And at one point she made a state, made a comment saying, courage is contagious. And I thought, oh, I love that. That’s great. It turns out it was actually Gloria Steinem, who said it, who’s a good friend of ___, but the dean, oh, I didn’t say before that when I created the program Justice for Women, I took it to the law school and said, would you like the law school to be the home for this program? I’ll raise money for it and I’ll put the community piece together every year. But the public lecture, it will all be identified with the law school. So it’s been at the law school .
So every year the dean of the law school gives a Courage is Contagious Award, and this year it’s going to two immigrant women who were part of those who I met through those that, that early networking that the Claudette and Mickey, who are co-founders of in Her Presence, which is a fantastic program in the greater Portland area that helps immigrant women with all sorts of things from English to employment and so on.
So they’re going to get the award this year very much deserve and they just capture. Leadership as Mufa does, just being able to show by example, lift other people up and get help. People just have the courage to keep going.
Eric Miller: That’s wonderful. And so many insights and your just casually trafficking so many groups and events as well.
And I would love to hear, so April 26th is there’s an event going on there if you’d like to remind us what that is. So if people would like to attend, they can. And I’d also love to hear about any ideas you have or for the future of your own work or any other type of initiative or advocacy that you’d like to highlight before we, we close out here.
Cathy: Okay. The Justice for Women Week is April 24th to the 28th. The lecture, which is Wednesday evening, Hannaford Hall 7:00 PM and it’s open free, but you have to register. So I sent you the link, Eric, just so you could see what the program is. I don’t know if there’s a place for you to post it, but if people just want to Google Justice for Women Main Law, they’ll go right to the link.
And our speaker this year is a very courageous journalist from Brazil. Who was targeted by the former president on social media. And she just embodies all of those qualities. And the rest of the week we’ll be going to high schools during high school where she’ll be meeting with a group of 30 plus recently arrived Lan minors who are asylum seekers who speak Portuguese like she does.
And we’re going to Brunswick High School, so we have a whole week of events. But the public lecture we’d love to have people come and join us. April 26th, Wednesday, 7:00 PM Hannaford Hall, just Google Justice for Women Main Law and you can. You can sign up. One of the things I haven’t mentioned two things I wanted to mention that the, in addition to just becoming friends with so many immigrant women, in addition to the ones I’ve mentioned, Saia Khalid, who’s in Lewiston, and Betty and Vicki and some of the other women from the South Sudanese community, Angela and Dina from Bangor, Deka Dak, who we supported going to emerge and she then ran for office and was mayor of South Portland now is in the legislature. So many amazing women who’ve come into their own. But I’m also on the board, I’m actually currently serving as vice president of the board of the Greater Portland Immigrant Welcome Center. And we just got an earmark thanks to Representative Pingry substantial amount of money to develop a program called Women Lead.
And we’re going to be working on this very question of women and leadership under the direction of Raza Jali, who’s the executive director there. But I’m very excited about the work that the Great Appointment Immigrant Welcome Center is doing, and the opportunity gives me to try to continue to offer so, So watch for those programs.
It’s, there’s an English lab, small business hub, but the Women Lead program is going to be something I hope will be a national model.
Eric Miller: Oh, that sounds amazing. And we’ll definitely keep tabs on that going forward. And I’ll put link in the description of this episode for the event as well. Great.
And so we are very grateful for the work that you’ve done. Very impressive. And look forward to yeah, like I said, keeping tabs on this new women lead group that’s going to be established. And we really appreciate you taking the time to speak with us today.
Cathy: Thank you for the work that you do. I think it’s great that you take the time and make the effort to give an opportunity for these women to speak.
Eric Miller: It is our pleasure. You can also livestream the Justice for Women Lecture if you are interested and cannot attend or prefer to watch it online
What you just heard was our panel discussion with Parivash Rohani, Laura de Does, Ghomri Rostampour, Oyinloluwa Fasehun, Bethany Smart, and Cathy Lee about community, engagement with New Mainers, and leadership. Maine Policy Review is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center.
The editorial team for Maine Policy Review is made up of Joyce Rumery, Linda Silka, and Barbara Harrity. Jonathan Rubin directs the Policy Center. A thank you to Jayson Heim and Kathryn Swacha, scriptwriters for Maine Policy Matters, and to Daniel Soucier, our production consultant.
In two weeks, we will be covering Richard Barringer’s Lee Schepps, Tomas Urquhart, and Martin Wilk story of Maine’s public reserved lands.
We would like to thank you for listening to Maine Policy Matters from the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine. You can find us online by searching Maine Policy Matters on your web browser. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow us on your preferred social media platform to stay updated on new episode releases.
I am Eric Miller–thanks for listening and please join us next time on Maine Policy Matters.

S3E5 200 Years of Maine’s Forests: Navigating Vacationland

On each episode of Maine Policy Matters, we discuss public policy issues relevant to the state of Maine. This episode covers an article by Lloyd C. Irland, author of five books, fellow of the Society of American Foresters, and participant in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and National Assessment on Climate Change. Irland gives us an inside perspective on Maine’s Forests from 1820-2010 in his article titled, “From Wilderness to Timberland to Vacationland to Ecosystem: Maine’s Forests, 1820–2020”. This article was published in volume 29, number 2, of Maine Policy Review, a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center. For all citations for data provided in this episode, please refer to Lloyd Irland’s article: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1863&context=mpr
Transcript
This is the Maine Policy Matters podcast from the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine. I am Eric Miller, research associate at the Center.
On each episode of Maine Policy Matters, we discuss public policy issues relevant to the state of Maine. Today, we will be covering an article by Lloyd C. Irland, author of five books, fellow of the Society of American Foresters, and participant in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and National Assessment on Climate Change. Irland gives us an inside perspective on Maine’s Forests from 1820 to 2010 in his article titled, “From Wilderness to Timberland to Vacationland to Ecosystem: Maine’s Forests, 1820–2020.” This article was published in volume 29, number 2, of Maine Policy Review, a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center. For all citations for data provided in this episode, please refer to Lloyd Irland’s article , which can be found in the episode description.
Want to know the history of Maine as a vacationland and how the forest has changed over the last 200 years? Lloyd Irland has some answers.
The story of Maine’s forest has many themes across American economic history, including technology and markets for wood products, labor-management conflicts, financial technology, and logging equipment to name just a few. Irland touches on these topics by focusing on how Maine’s forests have changed over time. He examines many aspects of Maine’s forests, and in this episode we focus on Maine’s forest at statehood, as timberland, as part of Vacationland, and as ecosystem, and carbon sink.
Maine had a rough start at its statehood. Communities were trying to restitch a political society after three devastating events: Jefferson’s embargo, the War of 1812, and 1816—the “year without a summer.” Two years of unprecedented harsh weather brought famine to the countryside and stimulated significant outmigration. In1820, most of Maine’s population of 300,000 people lived along the coast and by a few inland rivers . In rural areas, many people spent some part of a year cutting wood. 1820s Mainers preferred fishing and lumbering to establishing farms, which they say contributed to the slowing down of Maine’s development as a state.
In 1820, Maine’s land was 92% forests (only 1% of which was managed for timber),11% wetlands, 4% farmland, and 1% urban. In 1829, Moses Greenleaf, one of Maine’s earliest cartographers, predicted a future in which Maine’s northern forests were replaced by thriving farms and small towns along with managed woodlots and town forests. But a combination of events, including transportation revolutions, westward migration, and new agricultural technology, meant Maine’s farm economy was short lived. World War 1 caused crop prices and Maine’s farm economy to crash. The final blow to Maine’s farm economy came with a new invention that replaced horses: the tractor. The demand for hay, which had supported many marginal farms, virtually disappeared. As farmland areas continued to shrink in response to its diminished competitiveness, plowland and hay fields shifted first to pasture, then went back to scraggly, uneven forests. Between 1920 and 2020, Maine’s farmland dropped from 10% of the state’s total acreage to 2% and forestland increased from 76% to 89%.
Before Maine’s first legislature met, 9.8 million acres of Maine had already been sold or granted away in the Bingham purchases and royal grants. This meant that Maine forests were already owned by mostly out-of-staters. In 1820, 6.6 million acres of mostly forest land were in the settled towns and plantations. In the Act of Statehood, Maine and Massachusetts split 5 million acres of surveyed public lands into two roughly equal parts. This act ended Massachusetts’s interest in Maine lands with a buyout in the 1840s. Between the 1840s and 1870s, public lots in many wildland towns were held in common and undivided tenure with the majority owners and never laid out on the ground. Statewide after 1880, the Maine forest gained some 4 million acres through natural reseeding, which led the forest to return as a timberland.
Historians say puritanical New Englanders thought that sport fishing and hunting were for ne’er- do-wells; hard work was king. However, this idea began to shift in the late nineteenth century when resort hotels along the coast and the lakes became popular, marking the shift to Maine as Vacationland. These hotels began to sprout in Rangeley and on Moosehead Lake. Prosperous families summered at high-ceilinged hostelries with captivating views and access to public transportation. The Boston sports participated in a genteel culture of small sporting camps with their guides, guide boats, and refined fly-fishing techniques. These gentry were also among the first to explore the paths up the region’s peaks to see the views. Irland names three events that solidified Maine’s status as Vacationland. The first was union membership, the 40-hour week, and higher wages in manufacturing. The second was widespread auto ownership. Blue-collar families now had the means and the time for enjoying activities that were once reserved for the wealthy. Returning GIs in the late 1940s sought well-earned peace and recreation in the forests and brought the kids along. Many were used to camping out and preferred the outdoor air to the Brahmin atmosphere of the old and costly hotels. Third, the turnpike and the Eisenhower era’s interstate highways trimmed travel times dramatically. The gateways to the Northwoods became busy on summer weekends and during hunting season.
Only a few of the big resort hotels survived the Depression and WWII, which led to more people camping in the Maine woods and eventually purchasing land for camps. This caused people to resort to tenting, then camping with travel trailers, and eventually purchasing land like homes and lots. Rafting and canoeing also increased and caused some conflict. Groups jostled for places at crowded put-in points on major wilderness rivers. Allagash paddlers sought more solitude and fought bitterly against access points that might allow motorized canoes to disturb their peace. Managers of Baxter State Park struggled to contend with large groups holding parties atop Katahdin in defiance of regulations designed for a more conservative age. The age of snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles brought baffling new conflicts to both private and public timberlands managers, now rebranded by the tourism industry and outdoor magazines as the wilderness. For the first time, recreationists were traveling the Maine Woods in numbers, and many did not like what they saw. The wildlands people remembered from childhood visits was now full of large clear-cuts with little evidence of regrowth or care for long-term sustainability or for the forest as home for wildlife and fish.
By the 1980s, it was clear that vacationland, timberland, and the wilderness did not always comfortably coexist. Wealthy individuals were buying large lots on mountainsides and lakefronts. This threatened to change the view and restrict public access. By the 2010s, hunters were reporting that the extensive road network spawned was shrinking. Roads were blocked and reverted to shrubs; bridges were being removed, and old hunting haunts could no longer be reached on wheels.
During the nineteenth and much of the twentieth century, timber harvesting in Maine was relatively benign compared to today’s technology. Amazingly, crews with horses or oxen logged the steep upper slopes of major mountain ranges, even building flumes to run logs to drivable water. Logging and roading wasn’t seen as a threat to Maine’s regrowing forests and its ecosystems. But with the beginning of ecological research in the 1970s,, researchers began to dig more deeply into Maine’s ecosystems. They uncovered disturbing facts about the effects of insecticides on birds and the effects of intensive harvesting on soils. Naturalists noticed that some rare species were in danger of disappearing. Conservation efforts are now focused on keeping track of a list of federal and state threatened and endangered species and their habitats.
In the twenty-first century, Maine woods came to be threatened by global change: the warming climate and its ominous implications. Changing temperatures, longer growing seasons, lower snowfall, and more frequent intense storms are likely to shift habitats for many trees, shrubs, animals, and associated creatures. Economic effects will not be far behind. Now, scientists and managers are trying to understand how forests can be managed to store more carbon, and how they might better adapt to the changing climate that lies ahead. These problems are more complex and difficult than many realize. To date, much of the discussion has been at the level of vague and unhelpful generalizations. The knowledge base is so limited that virtually every constructive suggestion is promptly attacked by skeptics.
After reviewing two centuries of Maine’s forests, where does it stand now? Irland writes, [quote] “Today, Maine’s forest is nearly as large as it was when captain John Smith first gazed on it in 1614…to this day [Maine’s forests] remain largely in private hands”. For a century and a half, Maine citizens and successive governments welcomed new mills, dams, power facilities, and railroads as tokens of progress and improved life prospects for Maine people and for immigrants as well. Interregional and international changes in demand, competition, and technology have brought creative destruction to the doorsteps of Maine’s small farms, mill towns, and rural communities, and the entire forest. In mill towns, local civic and economic development groups struggle to find new manufacturers or other occupants for the vacant spaces and to create new housing projects, to bring a few jobs, pay taxes, and provide community stability. The days when passive state and federal governments could gaze calmly over Maine’s forest as it shifted from wilderness to timberland to vacationland and to an ecosystem and carbon sink have passed. We are only beginning to learn how our forest—the backdrop of Maine’s 200-year history as a state—can continue to produce the benefits.
In 2020, private owners still owned large swaths of the wildlands, though some had sold development rights in the form of easements. Offshore capital, nontransparent investment funds, and a few wealthy individuals joined the roster of timberland owners. Public and conservation ownership now accounts for 20 percent of Maine’s land area, an amazing accomplishment, born of intense effort in less than 30 years. Additionally, key reaches of Maine’s re-engineered rivers, especially where dams blocked migratory fish, have been restored to free-flowing condition. Yet, the recent rearrangements of ownership and expansion of conservation interests have not led to full agreement on the larger purposes of all this activity.
Irland concludes by asking his audience to contemplate the following questions,
“Have these changes been done to retain wood production potential and a basic industry? To conduct re-wilding as some advocate? To preserve deer or canoeing opportunities? To preserve scenic views from the decks of high-end homes on mountain view lots?”
What you just heard was Lloyd Irland’s perspective on Maine’s changing forests from 1820 to 2020. Maine Policy Review is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center.
The editorial team for Maine Policy Review is made up of Joyce Rumery, Linda Silka, and Barbara Harrity. Jonathan Rubin directs the Policy Center. A thank you to Jayson Heim and Kathryn Swacha, scriptwriters for Maine Policy Matters, and to Daniel Soucier, our production consultant.
In two weeks, we will be commemorating Women’s History Month by hearing from the authors of an essay titled, “Our Path: Empower Maine Women Network and Leadership”.
We would like to thank you for listening to Maine Policy Matters from the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine. You can find us online by searching Maine Policy Matters on your web browser. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow us on your preferred social media platform to stay updated on new episode releases.
I am Eric Miller–thanks for listening and please join us next time on Maine Policy Matters.

S3E4 Antiracist Public Policy in Maine: Reflecting on a Troubling Past for a Better Future

Trying to understand the history of race and public policy in Maine? Today we will be covering James Myall’s arguments on active antiracism to improve the lives of people of color and correct historic wrongs.
You can find Myall's article here: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/vol29/iss2/4/
Transcript
Trying to understand the history of race and public policy in Maine? Today we will be covering James Myall’s arguments on active antiracism to improve the lives of people of color and correct historic wrongs.
This is the Maine Policy Matters podcast from the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine . I am Eric Miller, research associate at the Center.
On each episode of Maine Policy Matters, we discuss public policy issues relevant to the state of Maine. Today, we will be covering an article by James Myall, he is a policy analyst at the Maine Center for Economic Policy, who focuses on health care, education, and the inclusive economy. Myall gives us an inside perspective on  his article entitled “Race and Public Policy    in Maine: Past, Present, and Future.” This article was published in volume 29, number 2, of Maine Policy Review, a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center. For all citations for data provided in this episode, please refer to James Myall’s article in Maine Policy Review.
Myall identifies four factors that contribute to racism and public policy. These are Constructing Whiteness, Second-Class Citizenship, Discriminatory Drug Policy, and School Segregation. First, let’s go back to 1867. In 1867, a heated debate raged in Maine’s legislature and filled newspaper columns across the state. Advocates for Black rights wanted to repeal the state’s long-standing ban on interracial marriages, but opponents rejected the “mixing of the races,” often citing racist theories of white genetic superiority. The Portland Daily Press in 1897 reported on February 4 that people who opposed the repeal were afraid that if families were allowed to have mixed children, that “there will be no Caucasian society left.”
Mainers like to think of themselves as being on the right side of history when it comes to racial justice. Maine entered the union in 1820 as a free state and was home to several abolitionists. Abraham Lincoln appointed one Mainer, Hannibal Hamlin, as his first vice president and
Another, Oliver Otis Howard, to lead the Freedman’s Bureau. The Maine legislature had just recently ratified the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the US Constitution in the 1860s. Despite this progress, they stumbled at the idea of interracial marriage. The 1867 attempt to end the ban on interracial marriage failed, and Maine’s anti-miscegenation would not be repealed until almost a generation later in 1883.
Myall claims that “This episode is a stark reminder that Maine’s record on racial discrimination is not as clean as conventional wisdom would have us believe. It is easy for residents of northern and western states to assume that racism was largely, or even entirely, confined to the South.”
For example, between 1790 and 1970, the US decennial censuses recorded Maine’s population as at least 99 percent white. As recently as 2018 Maine has 93 percent of its residents identifying as white non-hispanic.
Myall identifies two ways that Maine has been harmful to nonwhites. The first is explicit racism. An example of this would be the prohibition on interracial marriage. The second is implicit discrimination and unintentional harm. Myall cites this discrimination affected not only Black and Indigenous populations, but also groups whose whiteness was questioned, such as Irish and French-Canadian immigrants, and Jewish peoples.
It is important to look at Maine’s past to better understand current policies and the future of Maine’s legislation. The effects of historical racist policies like banning interracial marriages causes a ripple effect through generations. Children inherit the negative impacts of historically exclusionary policies, and so do their grandchildren. Nationally, white families have 10 times the wealth of black families, with this gap being wider in some local areas
To understand historic racism, we have to look at how whiteness was constructed. Myall believes that we need to understand the historic definitions of race. These definitions have changed over time because race is a social construct. The decennial census has categorized Americans into at least 14 different racial and ethnic categories in the past 220 years. In early censuses, Americans were divided between “white” and “colored,” with the definition of colored being somewhat ambiguous.
An example of this in Maine are Acadians in 1764 and 1765, once deemed “French Neutrals” after being evicted from what is now Nova Scotia. Acadians were not the only group considered to be only partly white, or white in an inferior sense. Other immigrant groups were also deemed lower status. In Maine, Irish and French-Canadian immigrants suffered discrimination alongside people of color, though generally not to the same degree. Maine’s Jewish community was seen as both religiously and racially distinct.
Another aspect of Maine’s history with discrimination is the second-class citizenship status of nonwhite groups. The 1890 Census found that among men aged 21 and older, just 3 percent of native-born white Mainers with native-born parents were illiterate, compared to 12 percent of those with foreign-born parents, 25 percent of those who were themselves born abroad, and 38 percent of Mainers of color. The literacy amendment did specify that voters who were already registered could keep their registration without passing the literacy test, which was for first-time voters only. However, 1893 also saw the creation of local voter registration boards, which had the ability to remove voters from the rolls and make them reapply.
Discriminatory drug policy is something that greatly affects nonwhite communities today. Black Mainers are six times more likely to be incarcerated than non-Hispanic white Mainers.This disparity has a long history, extending back at least as far as 1840 when the US Census Bureau began tracking rates of incarceration. Throughout Maine’s history, people of color have been incarcerated at much higher rates than white Mainers. Maine’s recent experience with decriminalizing cannabis hints at one possible way to tackle these disparities. However, there are deeper inequities to address in Maine’s criminal justice system. Once arrested, Mainers of color face harsher charges and sentences. A recent report by the Justice Center of the Council of State Governments found that Mainers of color, especially Black Mainers, were more likely to be charged with serious drug offenses.
Segregation in schools also has roots in Maine. The right to public education has been enshrined in the Maine Constitution since 1820, but its provision has not always been universal or equitable. Maine towns with Black communities often created segregated school systems. Such separate schools were found in Portland, Brunswick, Warren, and Machias when white residents objected to their children attending integrated schools. In Atusville in Machias, the Black community established its own school in 1853 after their children were attacked by white students for trying to attend the local school.
Economic hardship also limits children’s access to education. While Maine had some early laws limiting the use of child labor and punishing truancy, the laws were irregularly enforced until federal legislation outlawed child labor. For many low-income families, the decision to send a child to school meant losing an income. Economic necessity likely depressed school enrollment among children from immigrant families and families of color.
Today, Mainers of color still face educational disparities. Black, Latino, and American Indian students graduate high school at lower rates than white Mainers.  Black and Latino students in the University of Maine System are also less likely to graduate within six years of enrolling than white students White K–12 students in Maine are one-and-a-half times more likely to be enrolled in AP classes than Black students, while Black students are two-and-a-half times more likely to be suspended.
So, what can Maine lawmakers do to change the course of Maine’s public policy towards more racial justice? Myall concludes with the following message:
To truly achieve racial justice in Maine, policymakers need to be deliberately antiracist, with actions that work to overturn more than two centuries of harm. Lawmakers need to recognize the legacy of this harm and the need for targeted policies that repair it. Lawmakers need to continue to ensure that people of color aren’t left out of broadly progressive economic measures like the minimum wage. Lawmakers need to be keenly aware that legislation can have racist effects even without racist language or intention and to consider the racial impact of new policies. Antiracism requires consistent and deliberate work, but it is possible. Mainers deserve no less.
What you just heard was James Myall’s perspective on the history of race and public policy in Maine. Maine Policy Review is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center.
The editorial team for Maine Policy Review is made up of Joyce Rumery, Linda Silka, and Barbara Harrity. Jonathan Rubin directs the Policy Center. A thank you to Jayson Heim and Kathryn Swacha, scriptwriters for Maine Policy Matters, and to Daniel Soucier, our production consultant.
In two weeks, we will be covering Llyod Irland’s piece entitled, “From Wilderness to Timberland to Vacationland to Ecosystem: Maine’s Forests, 1820–2020.”
We would like to thank you for listening to Maine Policy Matters from the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine. You can find us online by searching Maine Policy Matters on your web browser. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow us on your preferred social media platform to stay updated on new episode releases.
I am Eric Miller–thanks for listening and please join us next time on Maine Policy Matters.

S3E3 Winter Roads, Salt, and the Slippery Slope

Today, we will be covering a report by Jonathan Rubin, Shaleen Jain, Ali Shirazi, et al. titled, “Road Salt in Maine: An Assessment of Practices, Impacts and Safety”. In their report, they present the results from a research project by a team from the University of Maine, in cooperation with the Maine Department of Transportation that examines the use of road salt in Maine for winter travel safety. This report was published by Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center in April of 2022.
You can find the article here: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mcspc_transport/11/
Transcript
Eric Miller: A classic public policy dilemma. What do we do to limit the bad impacts of salting our winter roads while keeping the good impacts? Tune into today’s episode to find out. This is the Maine Policy Matters podcast from the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine. I’m Eric Miller, research associate at the center.
On each episode of Maine Policy Matters, we discuss public policy issues relevant to the state of Maine. Today we will be covering a report by Jonathan Rubin, Shalene Jain, Ali Shirazi, et al. titled, “Road Salt and Maine: An Assessment of Practices, Impacts, and Safety.” In their report, they present the results from a research project by a team from the University of Maine in cooperation with the Maine Department of Transportation that examines the use of road salt and Maine for winter travel safety.
This report was published by the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center in April of 2022. Maine Policy Review is a peer reviewed academic journal published by the Policy Center. We’ll first briefly summarize the article and then speak with Jonathan Rubin and Brian Burne, a highway maintenance and engineer for the state of Maine.
Since 2010, there’s been an increase in accumulation of chlorides and freshwater and groundwater environments due to road salt in Maine, a trend consistent with the rest of the Northeastern United States. The state of Maine has 45,586 miles of public roadway, more miles per person than any other New England state.
This mileage is maintained by the MaineDOT, Maine Turnpike authority, as well as 483 municipalities in 16 counties, as well as three reservations. There are largely three best management practices regarding dealing with snow and ice on the roads. De-icing, pre-treating roads with brine, and pre-wetting the salt as it’s being spread.
The latter two of those options being considered anti-icing. Anti-icing and de-icing are different approaches to achieving the same goal. Anti-icing is different from de-icing largely due to the timing of the treatment. Anti-icing is a pre-treatment of the road before snow and ice start to stick. While de-icing involves removing ice already on the road by plowing snow and applying sand for temporary retraction and salt to melt the ice.
Anti-icing is a principle best management practice by MaineDOT and currently uses this approach on almost all state roads by treating them before ice and snow are able to bond to the. The Maine Turnpike Authority uses this on the entire turnpike. A survey shows that roughly 28% of Maine’s municipalities use anti- icing while the rest use the de-icing approach.
As mentioned earlier, anti-icing is a strategy that utilizes the application of pre-wetted salt early in a storm or by pre-treating the roads with a liquid brine. Pre-treating the roads with a liquid brine before a storm is another best management practice. As mentioned earlier, Maine Turnpike Authority and MaineDOT do not use this method.
12% of municipalities reported pre-treating their roads. However, it is not specified whether a liquid brine was the treatment of choice as opposed to pre-wetted salt. Pre-wetting salt involves the process of wetting solid salts as they’re being applied, which has been shown to reduce the amount of salt that ends up in the ditch off the road.
Pre-wetting can be an anti-icing strategy that the main d o t and main turnpike authority employ statewide. 71% of municipalities surveyed that they never wet their salt before spreading. Ruben et al. report that the most widely used material on winter roads in Maine is rock salt, or sodium chloride because it’s cost effective and easy to handle.
The total bulk salt purchases from distributors in the state in 2019 to 2020 amounts to approximately 535,000 tons. According to the authors’ calculations, they estimate approximately 493,000 tons, about 91% of the 535,000 tons of total bulk salt were used by the MaineDOT, Maine Turnpike Authority, and municipal governments.
This 9% is likely explained by the non-road use of salt on commercial and industrial parking lots and other private uses. This means that Maine uses roughly of 787 pounds of salt for every Maine resident, or about 11 tons per lane mile per year . They also estimate that the cost of clearing winter roads statewide is 155 million dollars , which translates to $114 per resident million.
MaineDOT is obligated to resolve well claims for private water supplies that are destroyed or rendered unfit for human consumption by constructing, reconstructing, or maintaining a highway, including the use of salts for winter road maintenance. This means that MaineDOT has spent an additional 53 million dollars since 2006 to investigate, assess, and resolve well claims.
While winter road maintenance practices allow for high levels of safety and mobility for residents, the consequences of our road salt use can be seen in the reduced water quality of some streams, contaminated wells, infrastructure and vehicle corrosion, and state and municipal budgets. Rubin et al. explained that quote, “as salt use increases, so do its impacts. One way to reduce salt is to change driver’s expectations of travel during a storm” end quote. Much of the impacts from road salt are to the aquatic environments in both the short and long term. Winter road maintenance is a significant source of total chloride loading to fresh waters. The short term effects are directly related to the seasonal timing of salt use with peak levels occurring in Spring and Fall.
Several long-term studies have shown an increase in chloride trend as well . This can be seen in the list of 20 streams the Maine Department of Environmental Protection has made of chloride impaired urban stream watersheds. Just as we discussed in episode one of the season with regard to wind development, Maine can learn from other states regarding how to manage road salt impacts.
For example, Connecticut has followed New Hampshire’s statewide program for training and liability protection to winter contractors. New York has also proposed a road salt applicator training program. They also pilot a program for road salt reduction that is saving the state costs in some Adirondack communities.
The main reason salt is used on our roads is to ensure traffic safety for those who need to travel after a storm . According to the report, approximately 67% of all lane departure crashes from 2010 to 2019 occurred during the winter period. Federal Highway Administration data shows that the winter period accounted for an economic loss value of 618 million dollars on a yearly average during the 2010 through 2019 period.
MaineDOT also reported that the yearly average cost was 309 million dollars from fatalities alone. The authors suggest a few recommendations for mitigating the ongoing concern for road salt use. The first is that the public needs to better understand the fiscal and environmental costs of winter maintenance. They suggest that all levels of government MaineDOT, Maine Turnpike Authority, as well as municipal need to better articulate the tradeoffs for different levels of service .
The second is their recommendation that Maine develop a statewide chloride reduction plan that identifies and prioritizes salt reduction in regions with environmentally sensitive areas on already impacted areas. To accomplish this, they suggest MaineDOT and MaineDEP increase their monitoring of chlorides and water bodies and make this information easily accessible to the public through a data dashboard, which would also contribute to the goal of public awareness.
Funding sources should also be identified to help underfunded municipalities upgrade their equipment training and winter practices. Finally, the authors recommend collaboration. They write, quote, “Maine could benefit from stronger connections between university research, environmental monitoring, and road practitioners.”
An examination of the partnership structures and practice in other states in New England at both state and municipal levels may offer models for collaborative partnerships in Maine. Now that we have covered the report, we’ll hear from Jonathan Rubin, professor at the University of Maine, director of the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center, and contributor to the report. After him, we’ll hear from Brian Burne, a highway maintenance engineer for the MaineDOT.
Thank you for joining us today, Jonathan.
Jonathan Rubin: My pleasure. Thank you, Eric.
Eric Miller: So to start off, what are some of the most significant trends and differences since your last report that was released 10 years ago?
Jonathan Rubin: Well, I think in some senses what’s changed is really what has not changed. What has changed is the weather.
Climate change has made the frequency and intensity of storms greater. We’ve all seen that very recently, and with the changing weather, you do get changing freezing thaw patterns, which changes the way, you want to manage and control your winter maintenance. So, that is a, that physical change is something we have to adapt to in the state in terms of our winter maintenance practices.
Also what’s sort of changed and yet stayed the same is that the costs are still high. About 10 years ago when we did this, it was about a hundred million across the Maine Turnpike Authority, the Maine Department of Transportation and the municipal governments with municipal governments covering about 80% of the roadway in terms of maintenance.
And now we’re at up to about 150 million dollars . So in some senses, what stayed the same is that the costs are still really high, and they’re going high for a number of reasons, including weather, as I mentioned. But also the price of inputs goes up, the price of labor goes up. So our costs are not declining, but in fact rising over that time period.
And that’s something that everybody should care about .
Eric Miller: Yeah. And not every town feels in Maine feels the effects equally as Maine as a, from a biophysical standpoint experiences very different conditions from coastal to mountainous ranges. So the way that you finished the last bit of your answer there about how costs are changing recently do you expect to have winter costs to continue to rise?
Jonathan Rubin: I do. Costs are gonna rise unless we collectively as a state that means main Department of Transportation, main Turnpike, authority, and the towns right. The towns are responsible for 80% of winter road maintenance. So, unless people make changes to the way we maintain our roads, how quickly we clear them, get them down to pavement.
If unless we make changes, why we are not going to expect any changes in the cost. Because materials are not going to get cheaper. Labor’s not going to get cheaper. Equipment’s not going to get cheaper. So there’s no reason to think the costs are going to go down unless we make changes and those are going to be policy changes at the state and local level .
Eric Miller: That makes a lot of sense. So something I found pretty interesting about the report is that many towns spend of like quite a variation of range of costs in terms of maintaining the roads in winter, even if they’re at similar sizes. Would you care to elaborate on why that is?
Jonathan Rubin: Well, some of the cost differences in towns Are due to just where they are. Western Interior is quite a bit different in terms of needs versus southern coastal versus an island community. They have very, they are very different towns in terms of snow impacts, ice impacts, freeze thaw cycles. So part of it is just fate of where people are. But some of it is also policy decisions.
Some towns clear sidewalks, others don’t, and so that clearing sidewalk cost goes into the winter maintenance cost. So those are, again, I’m not saying I love,  I’m a walker. I think we should clear sidewalks. Not saying we shouldn’t, but that is a reason why you have some cost differences in towns. Another major reason you have cost differences in towns, we think because it’s hard to know for sure, but we think it’s because of choices that towns are making, how quickly to get the roads clear. How do we do our secondary or secondary roads brought down to bare pavement or is some standing snow left there for and people are told to slow down and drive more slowly on snow packed roads. Now what you expect for the interstate is not what you’re going to expect coming out your driveway.
And there’s differences in those types of roads and how to maintain them. So some of that is a choice. Another difference is some towns use their own employees, municipal employees for the and other towns contract out to, to to private contractors. Again, those explain some of the differences in the per town costs, but not all. I think a lot of this may come down to and it’s hard to know for sure, but a lot of this may come down to just this policy level choices at the town about how quickly they want snow cleared and how thoroughly I
Eric Miller: see, I see. It’s, I know that me personally driving around in winter particularly after the storm, I was in Hampden recently and I saw a flurry of contractors clearing out all of the, what I believe to be contractors, whether it’s by municipality or individual businesses were putting in a lot of work.
And so it’s interesting to get an idea of how some of these operations vary so much because you think it’s snow clearing. So it seems like a pretty uniform type of approach, but in fact, there are significant differences in how different areas handle their specific situation and decide to go with the route that they do.
Jonathan Rubin: Yeah, that’s correct. So, so some of it’s beyond, so some of it is beyond the controlled towns and some is within is within their control. And these are things that towns should talk about. We talk about school budgets, we talk about police budgets. I think talking about winter maintenance budgets and expectations is a perfectly reasonable thing for towns to talk about because it affects our tax rates .
Eric Miller: Absolutely, and the cost outlined the report which I encourage people to check the executive summary of the report because there are some pretty shocking figures in there. To finish things off what is something you’d like to share that we haven’t covered already?
Jonathan Rubin: I think one thing we know that safety we, why do we clear roads? We clear these roads for mobility and safety and it’s really important. I wouldn’t want anyone to say, Professor Rubin or Jonathan Rubin is advocating we don’t clear our roads. We need clear roads for our economy and for safety. And it’s not an either or. These are choices that we make. But safety is something we really have to pay attention to, especially with younger drivers and older drivers.
And so I think thinking of just remembering. Getting to your destination as fast as possible after snow days may not be the wisest choice.
Eric Miller: Makes a lot of sense. Thank you so much for joining us today professor Rubin and I look forward to having you on again sometime.
Jonathan Rubin: Thanks, Eric.
Eric Miller: Thanks for joining us, Brian.
Brian Burne: Sure. Glad to be here.
Eric Miller: The MaineDOT costs related to winter expenditures have risen from about 30 million to 46 million from fiscal year 2016 to fiscal year 2020. What are the most significant reasons for this increase?
Brian Burne: Well, when you look at two specific winters, like those two, a lot of that is just related to the winter severity.
So we had a little bit more of a mild, or actually it was quite mild winter, back in 15 to 16. And you know, the 19 to 20 winter was a little more severe. But absolutely snow and ice costs have, you know, just been on a continuous increase for the last decade or so, and especially in this past year.
And that’s on pretty much every single line. So when you’re looking at labor all of those costs relating to labor, All the benefits for the labor that’s all increased. Salt increased dramatically this past year it went from $63 a ton on average, that MaineDOT pays up to over $80 a ton.
So that was a very dramatic increase that hit us all at once. Same thing with trucks. Trucks have gotten very expensive. If you can get ’em, they’re very difficult to even get. It’s very difficult to get parts. All the parts have increased. Plow blades, we used to be down around, say $35 a foot, and now you’re up around a hundred.
It’s it’s just been every single thing that you can think of has increased in cost. You know, not only just the regular cost of living increases that you normally see, but there’s just been all the challenges that. That are facing more than just the snow and ice industry right now. They’re facing a lot of industries but they’ve all kind of hit and hopefully they’re gonna, you know, not be quite so bad going forward.
You know, the, we’ve seen the diesel prices spike up and, you know, now they seem like they’re kind of stabilizing a little bit, and hopefully they’ll stay that way, but or maybe even go back down, which will be nice. But yeah it’s been quite an increase over, over time.
Eric Miller: Wow. MaineDOT has, is similarly affected to economic conditions as the rest of us which I, we in the public don’t hear about specifically these things very much. I had no idea, like the price of salt, for instance. Do you mind elaborating on, I’m very curious about why salt prices increased for folks like you.
Brian Burne: Sure. Yeah. Well, Well, I don’t know if many people realize, but there, there’s plenty of salt. There’s no shortage of salt on the on earth. We get most of our salt from Chile.
And but what it relies on, of course, is the availability of ocean freight. And of course, any fuel costs associated with running all of that freight are gonna affect it as well. So it’s based on just supply and demand of the ships that are out there and and on the fuel. So, moving that salt from Chile up to Maine, it’s like a full week process to do that. They come right through the Panama Canal and it’s just you know, that, that becomes more expensive. So that’s been what’s mostly affected that. We also get salt from, you know, mines around the country. Sometimes you can get ’em out of New York, sometimes you get ’em outta Canada.
Northern Maine is supplied from a mine up in Sussex, new Brunswick. That used to be a POTASH mine and salt mining salt was a waste product of that. But they’ve started mining salt only out of that mine in the last couple of years. So we get some out of there, and, but you know, that price went up just as much. In fact that’s our most expensive salt that’s up close to a hundred dollars a ton.
Eric Miller: Wow. Okay. I had no idea. The global supply network of salt fascinating. And the salt, one of those resources that human civilization has been mining and getting in some way or another forever. And the fact that it’s not a scarce resource is kind of amazing, but also makes a ton of sense.
So in the report crashes were demonstrated to have been increased during snow and rain. How can drivers best avoid an accident and make roads safer?
Brian Burne: Yeah, I, that, that is key. It’s, you know, as your, the Margaret Chase Smith Center report calls out, there’s a lot that goes on with snow and ice control.
It’s not just what MaineDOT does, but it’s what we do as a society and you know, what we expect our roads to be like. And how long of a, you know, a disruption can we take with a storm? How long can it take to get back to bare pavement and things like that. But a big part of that, of course, is all of us as individuals taking a look at what our needs are.
And if we are the type of person that lives in Maine and has a need to be out driving in storms, you want to make sure that your vehicle’s prepared for that. Going into the winter you want to take a good look at your tires and if you are someone who has to drive in most storms, you need snow tires.
It’s these all season ones. It’s, that’s really not what an all season tire is best for is running in a Maine winter. There’s a huge difference. To put snow tires on a vehicle. So if you’re going to be running out in storms, do that. If you can avoid storms for the most part, like if you can, you know if you are using vacation or if your business, you know, shuts down during most snow storms, or you can, you know, however you avoid it.
If there’s ways to avoid travel during the storms, then you might be able to get by with an all season type of tire. But if you’re going to be out in it, you’re really gonna want an all season tire. Now a lot of people think of that as. Extra expense. You know, you’re buying two sets of tires, but one of the things that they don’t consider is the fact that when you’re changing to a snow tire in the Fall and changing back to your regular tires in the Spring, you’re rotating those tires.
So the tires, both sets are going to last much longer. And you know, so you really don’t, in the long run, the cost is not that different. It’s actually better for you. And the fact that you are safer in your travels during the winter because you’ve got more appropriate tires for that you know, that’s even more important.
So that’s the first thing is. Just make sure that you think about how you need to drive during the winters in Maine and that your vehicle is prepared for that. Now when you get into a specific storm or you know, just driving in any kind of, you know, problematic weather, it’s just a matter of slowing down.
You know, a lot of times people just kind of get rushing and you know, some of the most dangerous storms are the snow squalls, and I think that’s just because. The day’s bright and clear and people are just trucking along and then they come flying right into a snows squall and they’re just in the middle of a condition that they hadn’t really, it hadn’t built up on ’em, you know, it just was on ’em before they knew it.
And it’s one of the causes of some of the most severe crashes that are out there. So when you see snow, when you drive into snow just slow it down. The slower you can go, the better off you’re going to be. Cause once you get ice between the road and your tires. There’s really not a heck of a lot you can do.
So you just got to make sure that you’re going slow enough that the impacts are lessened.
Eric Miller: Makes a lot of sense. I saw in the report that as speeds increased, as did crashes and
Brian Burne: Absolutely.
Eric Miller: And so, this, if you could avoid the storm, that’s great, but if you can’t, snow tires and slow down. Makes, makes perfect sense to me.
Brian Burne: Yeah, they’ve got a lot of really good snow tires out there now. The technology of snow tires has gotten better and there’s some out there that are just as good as snow tires with studs and they don’t have studs. So there’s a lot of really nice stuff out there. So yeah, you can spend a little bit of time looking up some ratings and things like that. And you know, there’s some good.
Eric Miller: Good to know. Good to know. Looking forward, how does MaineDOT think about climate change and technological development with regard to snow and ice control? Could you speak to how these factors affect infrastructure and budgetary planning? How does it vary across coastal and more populated areas in this state versus northern western Maine. A nice and easy one for you. We warmed up to it.
Brian Burne: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There’s quite a lot there to unpackage. So. I guess what let’s take that in pieces. Snow and ice control it’s kind of unique in that there’s aspects of it that don’t change a whole lot.
And that piece is mostly the fact that you’re using a freeze point depressant of some sort. So that’s typically sodium chloride that we’re using to do that. To battle the snow and ice, and that’s been around for decades and that’s probably gonna be around for, you know, for the foreseeable future basically.
So, that really doesn’t change too much. But a lot of the technology affecting the information that we get you know, the information we use to make decisions, the equipment that we use, all of that changes pretty regularly. And as the technology’s always advancing in that regard. So just as an example that we, these weather stations called Road Weather Information Systems.
And if you’re driving down the interstate, you might see it’s, it looks like a utility pole right behind some guardrail and it’s got a bunch of solar panels and devices on it. And what these devices are is that they’re just weather monitoring devices. There’s a camera on there and there’s pavement, temperature sensors, and you know, just all sorts of things that are gathering information for us.
So we put these in various locations along the highways, and then we can also do a thing that’s called thermal mapping, which is where we drive the corridor, the entire corridor that these RWIS stations are located on, and we get a thermal profile of the roadway surface. And you do this under some different conditions.
So what this does is it shows you your warmer spots and your cooler spots on the highway, but it’ll also relate it to your RWIS so that now you can look at an RWIS and it can now predict, that, okay, this is the information at this one spot where all these sensors are located, but yet four or five miles up the road, you now have an idea of what’s going on up there as well because you have this thermal mapping profile that goes up through there.
So that’s just. One example of tools that, you know, are fairly new in helping us understand what’s going on with the roadways. They’re useful for predicting when your temperatures are dropping down and hitting the dew point and you’re getting moisture coming out of the air and freezing up the road surface.
we can now predict that a little more accurately than we used to be able to in the past. So that’s just one piece of it. Another piece of technology that’s associated with those same stations is what’s called a grip sensor. So this is just a video device that looks at the roadway, but yet it’s able to figure out whether you’ve got water on the road, ice on the road, snow on the road, or a combination thereof.
And it sort of calculates how slippery that road surface is. So this helps us make decisions on when to apply and how much to apply to the roads. So it’s a very useful tool in that regard. It’s also good for providing some metrics. It helps us understand that when we treat a road, how long did it take for that road to recover?
So this is, you know, really useful technology. That same type of technology is now available on mobile devices. So we can now attach this type of device to a truck and drive a corridor and get a profile of the grip along that entire corridor so you can find the areas that are slippery in the areas that are not so slippery.
So then another aspect of technology that comes into play with this, is a process called MDSS, which is a maintenance decision support system where trucks are outfitted with, it’s GPSAVL, there’s a lot of different terms for it, but it’s basically you are tracking where all your vehicles are located throughout your network and you can also see how much salt they’re applying and you’re recording all of that.
So. When you’re looking at your fleet and you’re looking at the salt applications and you’re looking at the coming weather and the past weather and the impacts that your salt applications have had on the corridor, all of this can kind of be combined into these systems that these MD S systems that then helps snow fighters take and make decisions about what their next application might be and when it might be into the future. So there’s just a lot of improvements in technology that take the basic art of applying salts and sands and things of that to a roadway surface with a truck. But also being able to really make sure that there’s a level of accuracy in there that we never had the ability to reach before.
Eric Miller: Wow, that is so fascinating and makes sense. And what a tool to help make more efficient decisions, especially among increasing costs. I imagine that you can make allocation decisions much more informed and that’s, yeah uh, Enraptured by that.
Brian Burne: Yeah.
Eric Miller: Thank you.
Brian Burne: From a, yeah, from a you know, a region sort of a standpoint, the other thing that this has helped us with is, you know, monitoring of more remote locations. A lot of these types of devices come with the ability to send alerts so you can set up alerts that if I see the temperature dropping and it looks like the road’s going to freeze send a text message, you know, or send an email or you know, and we have a transportation management center that’s running 24/7 and they’re getting these alerts and these notifications so that they can call out the crews in a more timely manner than we were able to without these tools.
Eric Miller: Very interesting. So in terms of the technological innovations are fascinating. So in the coastal areas and as opposed to up over into the more mountainous spots we have this freezing thawing happening a lot in the winter. Over the past few years and looking ahead it seems like that’ll be more of the status quo and Maine’s pretty used to ice, so, how have these how have those conditions affected some of the decision making? That might be different if you, if I’m up over in a more mountainous like Somerset County area .
Brian Burne: Sure. Yeah, absolutely. As the temperatures warm we are seeing more icing. We’re seeing later freezing of the ground.
So like you just take a look at this year you know, it’s getting really cold today, but this has been, you know, January it was one of the warmer Januarys and we have a system for tracking our roads for when the frost comes into the ground and when the frost leaves the ground.
Because as you may or may not be aware when you get into the spring months and frost that’s leaving the ground, your roads go into this really vulnerable state that affect how we can truck on those roads. Because we have to start limiting weights, otherwise the pavements get ruined. And we used to count on a fairly lengthy time during the winter of, you know, totally frozen ground that adds extra support and allows you know, extra weight even.
In fact, there’s even a law on the books that looks at axle weights not being enforced through the January February timeframe because the roads were assumed to be not as susceptible. But yet here we are now in a global warming situation where, when January and February was always solidly frozen, it has not been this year.
So, in a lot of areas. So that’s a kind of a challenge for us when you’re looking at, you know, so your question was about comparing the mountains with the coast. Yeah. I mean, we’re certainly going to continue to have the more of the icing right along the coast even more so.
But I think what’s also happening is we’re starting to see more icing than we ever used to see in more of Northern Maine and Western Maine, because, you know, by the time you get far enough away from the ocean you didn’t really have as much. Going on, but we’re seeing more of it with this warming that’s been happening.
So it, it adds a different level of challenges to snow and ice control because certainly as you’re adding more moisture and you’re getting more freezing rain types of events these will dilute your salt products much quicker. And so as they get diluted, they have to be replenished more readily. So that becomes more of an expense.
Eric Miller: Okay. Thank you for indulging the question. Or questions rather.
Brian Burne: Sure.
Eric Miller: The MaineDOT is armed quite a few tools at their disposal. Quite fascinating how these specific technologies can be employed in ways that you never interact with. You just see as an average citizen, you see plows out on the road.
You might see MaineDOT trucks or people on the side of the road taking like traffic measurements. Otherwise you don’t really see what’s going on there. So we get a little peek behind the curtain. I’m really enjoying that. Before we go is there something you’d like to share that we haven’t covered in our few minutes this morning?
Brian Burne: Well, basically I think it’s just good to you know, share that report that the Margaret Chase Smith Center had written. I think it brings up a lot of good points and makes some of these things share some of these concepts with people. So that people understand that snow and ice control is, it’s a choice that we can make we can choose to have a little bit lower level of service end up saving a little bit of money.
You know, it takes a little longer for the roads to come back, but yet you have less of an impact on the environment and things of that nature. But the more that you push for bare pavement quicker, there’s a, there’s repercussions to that. It’s, it requires more materials and there’s going to be more potential impacts resulting from salt on the environment.
So it’s a definitely a balancing act that MaineDOT and all the other public works entities across the state and in any winter climate are constantly wrestling with because you certainly don’t want to see accidents on the road. You want people to be safe to get from point A to point B.
But there are a lot of other factors that all come together to decide how any particular road is treated and handled from a policy basis.
Eric Miller: Always those pesky trade-offs.
Brian Burne: Yeah.
Eric Miller: Thank you for joining us this morning, Brian. It’s really been a pleasure.
Brian Burne: Okay, thanks.
What you just heard was a summary of a report titled “Road Salt and Maine, an Assessment of Practices, Impacts, and Safety” and an interview with Jonathan Rubin and Brian Burne. There is a link to the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center’s website in the description of this episode where the report can be found. Maine Policy Review is a peer reviewed academic journal published by the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center.
For all citations for data provided in this episode, please refer to the original article in Maine Policy Review. The editorial team for Maine Policy Review is made up of Joyce Rumery, Linda Silka and Barbara Harrity. Jonathan Rubin directs the Policy Center. Thank you to Jayson Heim and Katherine Swacha, script writers for Maine Policy Matters, and to Daniel Soucier, our production consultant.
In two weeks, we’ll be covering the past, present, and future of race and public policy in Maine. We’d like to thank you for listening to Maine Policy Matters from the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine. You can find us online by searching Maine Policy Matters on your web browser.
If you enjoyed this episode, please follow us on your preferred social media platform to stay updated on new episode releases. I’m Eric Miller, thanks for listening and please join us next time on Maine Policy Matters.

S3E2 Maine’s Lobster Industry: What Does The Future Hold?

Today, we will be covering James and Ann Acheson’s article entitled “What Does the Future Hold for Maine’s Lobster Industry?”, which covers problems the industry faces that threaten its future, including shell disease, climate change, increased regulations to protect right whales, and economic uncertainty.
You can find their article here: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/vol29/iss2/11/
After briefly summarizing the article, we will speak with Rick Wahle, Patrice McCarron, and Geoff Irvine about what has been happening in the lobster industry in the two years since the article was published. Rick Wahle is a professor in the University of Maine’s School of Marine Sciences and the director of the Lobster Institute at University of Maine. Patrice McCarron is the executive director at Maine Lobstermen's Association and the president of Maine Lobstermen's Community Alliance. Geoff Irvine is the Executive Director of The Lobster Council of Canada.
Transcript
Looking for more information about lobster industry issues from the perspective of US and Canadian researchers? Tune in to this episode of Maine Policy Matters to learn more.
This is the Maine Policy Matters podcast from the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine. I am Eric Miller, research associate at the Center. On each episode of Maine Policy Matters, we discuss public policy issues relevant to the state of Maine.
Today, we will be covering James and Ann Acheson’s article entitled “What Does the Future Hold for Maine’s Lobster Industry?”, which covers problems the industry faces that threaten its future, including shell disease, climate change, increased regulations to protect right whales, and economic uncertainty. They also focus on several approaches that could help protect the lobster industry, including enacting lower trap limits, expanding markets for live and processed lobster, and increasing in-state processing capacity. This article was published in volume 29, number 2, of Maine Policy Review, a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Policy Center.
James, who went by “Jim”, was an eminent, internationally recognized scholar, whose work transcended disciplinary boundaries, including anthropology, economics, biology, public policy, and natural resource management. He received three National Science Foundation grants and authored over 90 articles in professional journals, along with five books, including The Lobster Gangs of Maine (1988) and Capturing the Commons: Devising Institutions to Manage the Maine Lobster Industry (2004). This episode is dedicated to Jim’s life and the work he accomplished.
After briefly summarizing the article, we will speak with Rick Wahle, Patrice McCarron, and Geoff Irvine about what has been happening in the lobster industry in the two years since the article was published. Rick Wahle is a professor in the University of Maine’s School of Marine Sciences and the director of the Lobster Institute at University of Maine. Patrice McCarron is the executive director at Maine Lobstermen’s Association and the president of Maine Lobstermen’s Community Alliance. Geoff Irvine is the Executive Director of The Lobster Council of Canada.
Lobster is the most valuable fishery in the country and most lobsters landed in the United States are caught in Maine. Lobsters have been an important food source for New Englanders since early Colonial times and for Indigenous peoples before.
In more recent years, overall lobster landings were worth $485.4 million dollars in 2019. The Maine lobster fishery is one of the world’s most successful fisheries with a high of 132.5 million pounds being caught in 2016. From 2018-2019, catches declined but still remained over 100 million pounds each year, playing a significant role in Maine’s economy.
Despite the relative success of the industry, it may face increasing problems in the future.
When their article was published in 2020, Jim and Ann Acheson named shell disease; climate change; North Atlantic Right whales; and markets, tariffs, and other economic matters as the four major problems facing the lobster industry.
Epizootic shell disease produces unsightly pits, growths, and lesions so that the affected lobsters cannot be sold as high-quality dinner lobsters. Shell disease has had a small effect on Maine’s lobsters to date, but has had disastrous effects on catches in Rhode Island waters. Between 2008 and 2013, an estimated 30% of Rhode Island fishermen were put out of business and others faced severely reduced incomes.
Climatic change due to an increase in atmospheric warming has led to increased storms, retreating ice, and rising sea levels that have caused lobsters in Maine waters to shift to colder Canadian waters. Lobster industry advocates do say that lobster can be caught all along the Maine coast despite this observation in the general movement north. Changes in herring movements leading to large schools of herring seeking cooler and deeper waters is leading to a scarcity of a major bait source in Maine waters. All of the ecological complexities regarding climatic change in the Gulf of Maine are something that researchers are continuing to understand.
The lobster industry’s problems with right whales began in 1996 when Max Strahan, who had petitioned the federal government to list the spotted owl as an endangered species in the Pacific Northwest, sued the Commonwealth of Massachusetts under the Endangered Species Act to prevent whales from being killed by lobster gear. In a different suit brought to court in 2020 by conservation organizations, the federal judge hearing the case ruled in their favor and found that the federal government was not doing enough to protect right whales from being entangled in lobster fishing gear. Fishermen feel they are being unfairly targeted because most whales are killed by ship strikes, and the proposed rules do nothing to curb ship strikes. Environmentalists argue the law is still not being enforced and that whales are still being killed by lobster gear. The Maine lobster industry believes its whale protection plan is not being given enough credit for reducing risk to the whales. The latest federal omnibus spending bill included a 6 year pause on new whale regulations while funding research as well as innovative fishing gear development which has been celebrated by the lobster industry and criticized by some environmental groups.
Lobster fishermen have faced economic problems for a number of years, which they describe as a cost/price squeeze. Between 2003 and 2013, the cost of bait increased 500 percent in response to reductions in the quota fishermen are allowed to catch. Other costs to fishermen have also skyrocketed. Fuel prices increased from $1.50 per gallon in 2002 to $5.00 per gallon in 2010. Prices declined in 2020, but increased again in May of 2022 to peak at $6.43 per gallon for diesel before lowering to the mid to low $5 per gallon mark later in 2022 according to the US Energy Information Administration. A new 36-foot lobster boat, which might have cost $125,000 in 1998, can cost upwards of $400,000 in 2020. The decline in revenue combined with markedly higher costs has put many fishermen in precarious financial straits. An economic study points out that there have recently been large year-to-year swings in lobster prices, quantities, and revenue. In 2020, the market for lobsters was reduced again by the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only had the Asian market already been shrinking due to the Chinese- American trade wars, but the European market also contracted due to the pandemic.
Jim and Ann Acheson detail hope for the future in the face of these industry problems, including trap limits that would reduce costs for bait, fuel, and traps, while also reducing the number of lines in the water which can aid the right whale problem. Lobster marketing and expansion of local processing capability can also increase lobster sales and increase income to fishermen, dealers, and others in the industry.
Now 2 years after the Achesons’ article, the Maine lobster industry continues to face challenges outlined in this piece and new ones as well. For example, the recent suspension of the lobster industry’s certificate of sustainability from the Marine Stewardship Council led to a pause in purchasing Maine’s lobsters by some major retailers, such as Whole Foods. These retailers use these certificates as a primary guide for informing consumers about the sourcing of their seafood products.  This move to stop buying Maine’s lobsters was criticized by Senators Collins and King, Representatives Pingree and Golden, as well as Governor Mills.
What follows here is a response from “the four members of Maine’s congressional delegation — Senators Susan Collins and Angus King, and Representatives Chellie Pingree and Jared Golden — along with the state’s governor, Janet Mills, sharply criticized the decision to stop buying Maine lobster.
“We are disappointed by Whole Foods’ decision and deeply frustrated that the Marine Stewardship Council’s suspension of the lobster industry’s certificate of sustainability continues to harm the livelihoods of hardworking men and women up and down Maine’s coast,”
Now that we have covered the Achesons’ arguments, we will move into our panel discussion about their article. We have with us today Rick Wahle, Patrice McCarron, and Geoff Irvine about some of these issues and what the future might hold.
Interview
Eric Miller: All righty. Thank you all for joining us today. So to each of you, how does the lobster industry most significantly affect the economic and environmental wellbeing of coastal communities? Our local impacts of Maine s and Atlantic Canada’s lobster industries, similar or quite different? We’ll start with Patrice and Rick to cover Maine and round out with Geoff’s Canadian perspective.
Patrice McCarron: Great. Well, I’ll kick us off from Maine’s perspective. I think it would be impossible to overstate the economic importance of the Maine lobster industry to the state of Maine . We are uniquely structured here in that we have an owner operator business model. So every vessel in Maine is owned and operated by the captain.
So the state license is about 4,800 people, which means those are 4,800 small businesses. They’re located. In our rural communities. So all of the money that we earn which is, you know, between 500 and 750 million a year annually, direct at the dock is spent locally. So in most coastal communities, the first dollar in those communities is often a lobster dollar.
So if we didn’t have those lobster dollars we wouldn’t have economic, economic opportunity. We wouldn’t have a good tax base, we wouldn’t have kids in school. So it really is the foundation of, of the coast for the state of Maine .
Geoff Irvine: Yep– well, I’m delighted to be here with you to have this discussion. We’re so linked in terms of our lobster sector in North America. So we work together on everything. So it’s the same in inland Canada and Quebec, Eastern Canada. There are literally hundreds of communities that rely on the lobster sector. I think I did, I did a bit of research on, there are 329 ports in Atlantic Canada, and 174 of them have the landed value of over a million dollars per port.
So that’s a dramatic impact. that’s on the harvesting side. On the shoreside sector, it’s also extremely important. We have literally hundreds of lobster plants in those hundreds of communities. The landed value in 2021 was over $2 billion. So that’s the money in the pockets of harvesters to pay, you know, to run their businesses, but with some profit at the end of it.
And for the exporters over 3 billion in export value. So by far the most important seafood sector in Canada. And you asked about the environmental well being. It’s a kind of a constant battle between the economic value and the environmental impact of the sector. which we, we all work on every day to try to mitigate, but certainly the seafood sector and the lobster sector, you know, provides some negative environmental impacts.
But I think everybody in the sector works hard to mitigate those.
Richard Wahle: Great. Well, and I’ll just follow on Patrice here too. And first I just want to say this is such a great opportunity to bring Patrice and Geoff together from both sides of the border. And to celebrate Jim Acheson’s contribution to sort of the human side of lobster science and the lobster world.
But to get to your question, Eric you know, Patrice said it well, and I’ll just paraphrase: the American lobster, again, is the most valuable single species fishery for both countries. And you know, 90% of the US harvest value comes from, from the Gulf of Maine, and about 80% comes from Maine itself. So Maine is really sort of the elephant in the room when it comes to the US side. And in any case, you know, while just the landed value of lobsters comprises about 1 to 2% of Maine’s GDP, that’s not counting the number of other industries that really depend on this fishery that would really inflate that GDP contribution. I’m talking about, you know, everything from trap makers, boat builders, the restaurant industry, tourism, and you can go on. It’s just a really important part of Maine ‘s economy, but to our national fisheries, and a really important international trade item as well.
Eric Miller: Yeah. Thank you all for, for your various perspectives on the greater context of the lobster industry in the North Atlantic area. And Jim and Ann in their article do note and comment the yeah, the lobster industry on how they jointly manage sustainable harvesting.
But there have been increasing concerns and, and discussion surrounding the practices. And we’ll get into those a little bit further. And then climate change is on the horizon as well as external environmental threats. So given the recent threat developments in cost of operations and relatively lower market price of lobster, how are fishermen with smaller boats and nearshore operations feeling about the future of the lobster industry and how their long-term business viability compared with fishermen who have larger boats and fish 50 plus miles offshore?
How have relaxing of Covid-19 restrictions and changes in overseas markets changed this?
Patrice McCarron: I guess I can jump in again for Maine. You know, the lobster fisheries are wild-caught fisheries. So anybody who is a commercial fisherman always knows you’re sort of at nature’s whim. You never know how much you’re gonna catch.
Lobster fisheries are not quota based fisheries, so it’s survival of the fittest, you know, the most skilled fishermen is gonna bring in the biggest catch. But like you say, there’s a lot in terms of the cost formula that fishermen cannot control. So, you know, year after year, the boat price might be really low or it might be really high.
In 2021 we had a record boat price. A lot of money. Input costs were high, but boat price was actually higher than that, and it was a profitable year. 2022, just a year later, the boat price has been about half of what we saw in 2021. And input costs for the business have skyrocketed even further.
So it’s a very unpredictable business year to year. I think anybody who fishes is by nature somewhat optimistic because you have to be crafty to make ends meet. You have to be a skilled fisherman and a skilled business person. You have to know when to set out your gear. You have to know when to spend time on the water, when you’re gonna maximize your catch.
And I think, you know, for the harvesters in Maine they’ve, they’ve gotten really good with that. What’s difficult for our fleet is that it’s very diverse. So you’re asking about boats that fish beyond 50 miles from shore. We don’t actually have that in Maine. We’re an area-based fishery, so we have a state waters only fishery that takes place between zero and three miles from shore, and those are our smallest vessels and they can be very vulnerable.
There’s not a lot of wiggle room in that business model. Our larger vessels, you know, we have a handful of boats that would be in the 50 foot range, but we’re typically like 35 to 42, 45 feet long. So again, they’re not super big boats. There’s a lot of unpredictability. Unit costs are high.
But I think over time guys just figure out a way to make it work. They’ll adjust their strategy on the fly, and they learn how to put money in the bank in a year like 2021 too. This year, 2022, where, where profits are lower. So there are a lot of threats, there’s a lot of anxiety, there is a lot of fear about the future, but I would just say fishing’s in their blood and they’re gonna go and they’re gonna hope for the best and they’re just going to be as flexible and innovative as they can to stay in this business.
And so far, so good. People are still here.
Geoff Irvine: Sure. I mean, it’s very much the same here, although we do have a significant number of in certain parts of the area, Southwest New Brunswick and Southwest Nova Scotia, there is a more mid-shore offshore component. But really the profitability and the business model really depends on how old you are when you got in, what your costs are.
So new entrants are finding it very difficult. But, I would argue a bit about low prices. We’ve really, since 2012, even this year, we’ve been on an increase of shore prices for 10 years. And it’s been really very good for many years. 2021, as Patrice said, was an incredible year.
Probably the gilded age of lobster, but also the last part of 2020. As soon as the pandemic started to snap back, and really the first half of 2022, our prices, shore prices didn’t start to change here until the end of June. Last year the fall has been more difficult, but this winter our prices are back up, you know, to fairly decent, decent shore prices.
So, you know, if you look at the 10 year trend, we’ve seen nothing but increasing prices every year. And also in the market we’ve done a lot of research that shows that 75 to 80% of the export value goes back to the harvester. Very consistently, year in and year out, and just shows you how kind of healthy the industry is.
But it’s challenging. And the inputs, I think Jim Acheson calls it the cost price squeeze. And that’s a reality the harvesters have because just because their costs go up doesn’t mean they can charge more because the port price is the port price. And they can’t just say, no, we need more today.
It doesn’t work that way. So it’s kind of unfair. But in terms of covid pandemic for the lobster industry was the best thing that ever happened in terms of economic impact. It’s a crass way of putting it, but we’ve never seen a better market for lobster. And so as it adjusts outta the pandemic we’re getting more back to sort of where we were in 2019, which was a very strong market as well.
I just looked at the export numbers and 22 is gonna be a big year again, so just gotta keep, keep pushing it and and hope we stay on that trajectory.
Richard Wahle: And Eric, I might just add, and I realize this isn’t my wheelhouse, but I’ll only put a little bit of a historical perspective on this.
Pulling from the landings graph that Jim has in his paper there, that just shows, you know, for so long, from the 1880s to the 1980s landings almost rock solid with some, you know, dips  during the 1920s and thirties, you know, at least I’m speaking for Maine here,roughly landing about 20 million pounds a year.
And that started dramatically changing in the late 1980s, 1990s. And by about 2016Maine was harvesting about six times more than it had been in the 1980s. And while we’ve fallen off that a bit, the value has been maintained although there’s been fluctuations we’ve seen with the coming in and out of the covid years.
But I just want to make the point that there’s really a whole generation of fishermen here who’ve known nothing other than a booming fishery. And a lot of their elders have been a lot more conservative about, you know, investing in bigger boats and so forth.
But this younger generation have gone whole hog into big boats and venturing offshore, having a couple sternmen. And so I think there’s a concern out there that if things start falling off and costs start becoming unsustainable and with the new whale regulations, that some of these fishermen may be overcapitalized and unable to sustain their businesses at that scale.
I’d be interested in Patrice’s or Geoff’s perspective on that.
Patrice McCarron: Yeah, I do think that the business model has evolved. I’ve been with the Lobster Men’s Association for 23 years, and from day one I’ve heard from the older lobstermen that the young guys are overcapitalized and they’re in for a rude awakening.
And, you know, at least for this last quarter of a century that hasn’t borne itself out. And there have been some economic investigations that are showing that really the most profitable sector of the industry has been this sort of nearshore. Federal waters fishery where you’re carrying more crew because you’re generating overall a lot more income.
And I think as we broach the new whale regulations, those are the vessels that have more operating capital. They have more of an ability to invest into high tech more expensive gear. And they may actually prove to be more resilient to some of the places where this management model is shifting.
Where you have a small vessel with a single operator, your ability to adapt is pretty limited. Your business model keeps your footprint really small. It keeps you close to shore. You have very small capital flow. And it does really limit your ability to adapt. So that’s one of the things that we’ve really been advocating for through the association, is that we have to recognize that our fleet is very diverse, and it is the combined diversity of that fleet from our small insure boats, our medi and then our larger boats.
That together is what makes this fishery really, really work. And to lose any segment of that would really prove to be devastating. So, you know, I don’t know, the jury’s still out in terms of the history that’s yet to be written, but I guess I’m a little bit skeptical about the fact that people are overcapitalized because I think that they have really created a modern business model that has proven very, very effective for them at least so far.
Geoff Irvine: Yeah, I could add from the Canadian perspective something I forgot to mention, and that is that we have very specific defined seasons here. So in virtually three quarters of the fishery, it’s a two month season. So you’re either fishing May and June, or you’re fishing September and October. and that’s the whole Gulf of St. Lawrence, that’s all of Newfoundland, all of Quebec, all of Cape Bratton, all of Eastern Nova Scotia. so those harvesters that have a lobster license generally have another job or a business. and we have this, the magic in Canada of the employment insurance program that is a part of our social safety network where harvesters have the ability to have two claims per year because they’re harvesters.
So you know, the reality of the business is a little different when you have that kind of support. But, but you know, if you have a two month season, you kind of need it. And we’ve set our fishery up to be that.
Patrice McCarron: Yeah, I think another really noteworthy difference–there’s so many similarities between the US and Canadian lobster fisheries, but there are some divergences on the business model–in Maine there’s no cost to entry.
So the cost to get into the fishery in Maine is you find somebody to apprentice with and then you sort of buy into the fishery at the level that makes sense for how you want to prosecute the fishery. And you start with a low number of traps and you build up. So in Maine , you can get a skiff, you can get used traps, you can build your way through boats. In Canada there’s actually a cost to entry to actually purchase the license. So the barrier of entry in Canada is significantly higher, is a much higher financial output to get in.
We’ve tried to keep Maine sort of more of the traditional model where you can work your way in and kind of not have a model where you need, you know, a big pot of money to actually gain access to the fishery and that that really differentiates some of the profit margins and how the fisheries actually operate.
Geoff Irvine: Yeah. And, and that, I guess, the difference as well is that then you can’t sell your license when you want to get out. So here you do have to buy your license, but then you can sell it when you retire. It’s all part of the business calculation.
Eric Miller: These are fascinating differences in how people approach their industry.
And I am curious about how far offshore are these bigger boats venturing? Because you mentioned, most of them stay with zero to three miles offshore, as well as kind of, if you have an idea of the share of the fishermen that have chosen this more. I don’t know if a more capitalized business model and how noticeable that is compared to 10, 20 years ago.
Patrice McCarron: Yeah, so for Maine, the state actually regulates state waters, which are zero to three miles. So every harvester in Maine has a state permit. So we issue the state of Maine issues about 4,800 of those, of that population. just over 20% also get a federal permit from the federal government. So to cross over the three mile line, that’s federal waters, you need to be permitted by the federal government.
You do actually need to purchase that license. There’s a limited number of those, so they have to be transferred from person to person. And depending on the market, those have been as high as 40, $50,000 for the permit. And they’re sort of sliding back to, you know, $15,000 right now. So we in Maine have about 1300 federal permit holders.
They tend to fish through the winter months. They tend to be on the boats that would be over 40 feet edging up 50 feet or above. Definitely a higher operating cost, but that allows them to kind of nudge over a little bit into the Canadian model where you’re getting to land lobster during the wintertime when it’s a harder shell lobster, a higher yield lobster, typically a higher price lobster.
So, the fewer boats were operating offshore, although it costs more to do that, the cost that you’re earning for each lobster that you land tends to be higher and does support that business. I think the big difference between 20 years ago and now is that most of those boats would come in for the summer and then go offshore in the winter.Now a lot of boats strictly fish in federal waters, and if they do come into state waters, they bring a smaller proportion of their gear, so they’ve just sort of shifted away and there’s more of a separation. It’s not, you know, exclusive but less crossover between those federal vessels and those state vessels because the state only tend to be smaller, smaller traps, smaller gangs of gear.
And the big boats would have the chance to sort of overwhelm their traps, their boats, their gear. So they’ve been able to make their living by staying more exclusively in federal waters, which is a big shift.
Eric Miller: All right. This is an excellent transition into the next question, which is more environmental and climate related.
And this change in behavior I find fascinating among lobstermen. How has warming waters and ocean acidification due to climate change affected current lobster stock and longer term confidence in the fishery? Is there increasing concern regarding the ecological condition and changing patterns of the Gulf of Maine in general?
Rick, if you don’t mind starting us off.
Richard Wahle: Sure, I’d be happy to start that off. And it’s a big question. Well, you know climate change has certainly played a really important role in the past decades. And we’re really seeing its signature on the shifting lobster stocks. and just to sort of set the stage, it’s important to realize that there’s a really,striking temperature gradient from the northeast to the southwest along our coastline. So, you know, Bay of Fundy and eastern Maine are much colder during the summer than say, southern New England. But all these areas have been warming at about roughly the same rate as a result of climate change. But whereas the southern New England was sort of well into the lobster comfort zone, temperature-wise, if you will, early in that time, as things got warmer, the adverse effects of warmer temperatures were really taking their toll.
We started to see it in the form of mass mortalities in Long Island Sound that knocked the stock down by 75%. It’s never really recovered from that. We saw shell disease rear its ugly head. Back in the late nineties, early 2000s, prevalence levels went up to like 35% and have just pretty much stayed there ever since and started spreading to the north. And that really knocked back the southern New England stock seriously.
But at the other end of the range, in the Bay of Fundy and eastern Maine, we saw that that same warming was starting to bring the lobster nursery habitats into the comfort zone of the lobster. And it started to trigger this wave of larval settlement into nursery areas that were otherwise at very low population densities, or virtually vacant great looking habitat, but nobody’s home. That all changed in the early 2000s, and on up to, to now. And it elevated, it ended up elevating the fishery to its current status now as the most valuable single fishery in New England.
In the US we’re really seeing that eastern Maine area, that boom that we saw there really accounted for that dramatic shift. But I should also say it’s not just climate change. We also have been seeing the effects of depleting groundfish, and groundfish are an important predator in this system. This has been seen, you know, throughout the range, whether you’re talking Atlantic Canada or the US. People point their finger to the depletion of cod and certainly cod are an important predator. But really it’s the entire assemblage of groundfish that include flatfish, you know, flounder, halibut, goose fish or monk fish as they’re usually called, other bottom dwelling or near bottom fish that have been widely depleted since the 1970s, eighties.
And so that predator release only acted to favor lobsters. And in fact, you know, I remember talking to fishermen back in the nineties already who were saying, you know, we’re catching lobsters in places we’ve never seen ’em before. Way out in the wide open. Well, there weren’t any predators there anymore, or at least the big ones that really take their toll on the small lobsters.
Groundfish were severely depleted, so it’s a combination I think we can say the boom was the result of the joint effects of both the favorable effects of warming temperatures, but also the depletion of ground fish. And of course, taking the bigger geographic perspective and including Atlantic Canada, you know, we’re seeing this eastward shift of the center of the population.
And definitely southern Gulf of St. Lawrence has been seeing an increasing wave of lobsters and even Nova Scotia and the Northern Gulf of St. Lawrence is seeing higher landings than they’ve ever seen before. So there’s definitely this northward shift as a consequence of warming climate and depleted pressure, predators.
Eric Miller: It’s fascinating how ecological systems function in that way and how connections ecologically just move in this truly dynamic manner. I mean, you often hear warming waters, you hear moving lobster so you kind of scratch your head when you see the stocks being caught at this level.
But there you have it. The predation being decreased because this was happening due to climate change. So we’ve got some almost increasing foot Northern fishery news. And are there reasons that those of us in the southern part of the fishery are people more nervous?
Patrice McCarron: Yeah, so, so I can jump in. , you know, I think overall from a fisherman’s perspective, climate change has been positive, whether you fish in downeast Maine or southern Maine, I think one of the confusing things about the center of abundance shifting north doesn’t necessarily mean that things have crashed below.
So, you know, as Rick described in southern New England, that sort of a different oceanographic regime south of Cape Cod, a different system. And, we did see a crash, and that is concerning. But the Gulf of Maine is its own sort of semi enclosed system and we have not seen that crash. We’ve seen landings in southern Maine on a very, very slow increase, above flat, but certainly not on a decline other than the inter-annual variability.
We saw in the late nineties and the early 2000s, mid-coast Maine is where the center of abundance had really blossomed, where it had been in Casco Bay prior to that, and then more recently in downeast Maine. And we’re seeing those rises in Canada. But nobody should think that we’re not landing lobster in southern Maine or mid-coast Maine anymore.
The landings have really been robust and steady, and the resource remains very strong and people are optimistic about that. I think the other really encouraging thing that came out of the literature on climate change was a study that compared southern New England with the Gulf of Maine, and it found very specifically that the sustainability measures the stewardship practices that we have in the Gulf of Maine fishery, had they been implemented in southern New England, would’ve lessened that decline significantly.
So we can’t prevent climate change. We can’t prevent the impacts on the resource, but we certainly have a very robust conservation plan in place, which has provided a buffer. So if Mother Nature is going to provide conditions that are gonna see the lobster stock contract somewhat, we have sort of built in all the protections and that decline is going to be a lot less severe of a drop off than what they experienced in the southern Maine because we are protecting our baby lobsters and our oversized lobsters and our bycatch goes back alive.
And we just have a lot of really practical measures that I think really honor sort of the biology of the resource in a really practical way. And a lot of that stuff obviously translates up to Canada as well, so I think fishermen remain very optimistic. I think everybody is sort of bracing for some sort of softening of the landings over time.
You know, how severe those are gonna be. The jury’s out; models say different things, but everything is basically saying, you’re not gonna continue up here forever. But we feel like there is a business model if the landings do start to start to soften a little bit in the next few years. And we’ve seen little bits of that so far, but I don’t know, Geoff, probably you’re seeing similar but different things up in Canada, right?
Geoff Irvine: Yeah, no, very, very much similar. I mean, I was in Newfoundland a few months ago and I was, this is the first live lobster holding facility in Newfoundland. There hadn’t been one there. So that shows you how much more they’re landing in Newfoundland and Labrador than ever. The landings in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and Cape Breton, eastern Nova Scotia all trending up. and in the southern part of the rain, southwest New Brunswick and southwest Nova. You know, there’s still a wonderful business model there, there’s still a great catch. But I mean, we’re seeing that the peak landings were 2016 and we’re seeing them kind of weaken off.
I mean, that’s a very recent history. but I think there’s, there’s definitely some concern about what the future holds. And as we talked about earlier, when you’re paying a million dollars for a license in LFA 34 and 500 grand for a boat that’s a big investment. And so this kind of thing keeps people up at night at times, thinking about what the future will hold.
So, I mean, it’s like Patrice said, it’s hard to know what it’s gonna look like, but I think there’s absolutely some concern in the southern part of the range and in the northern part sort of great enthusiasm and, and optimism. but as Patrice said, we also have very, very good harvest control rules in place.
And every LFA, if the stock goes down a certain amount. We have things that the harvesters can implement to adjust their catch, to adjust their effort to ensure that we keep the everything sustain.
Eric Miller: Fascinating. Rick, would you mind elaborating on for, for our listeners, the how vulnerable lobsters are to acidification where the science is there for that aspect of this issue?
Richard Wahle: Yeah. Well, the story on acidification is a relatively new and, and short one compared to our understanding of temperature effects. But, you know, it’s a topic that really only has gained some traction in, you know, 10, 15 years ago. And we’re starting to learn a lot across different species and taxa.
And with respect to lobsters and crabs some of the literature showing that, you know, these crustaceans are relatively resistant to acidification effects compared to, say, oysters and clams and so forth that are very vulnerable, especially at their earliest life stages when, you know, shells dissolve when on the mud flats, just as they’re settling.
So the concern is less for the American lobster in any case, is less focused on acidification effects or their adverse effects, as they are on the direct and indirect effects of warming temperatures. And, you know, even among crustaceans, that varies a bit because, as we look west to some of the Alaska crab fisheries, and their early life stages seem to be more vulnerable to those changes.
So but our American lobster for now looks like from the work,and the literature and some of the work that has been done by my colleagues suggest that there are mechanisms in place, physiological mechanisms, that can cope with these changes in acidification.
Eric Miller: Fascinating.
Thank you for that elaboration to go a little deeper on a notable consequence of climate change, mentioned by Jim and Ann Acheson in their article. As lobstermen south of Maine experienced economic hardships largely due to things like episodic shell disease. How much concern is there along the Maine coast about this specifically?
Are there any preventative or mitigating measures for this disease? And these two separate kind of larger capitalized federal waters, fishing, lobstermen, lobstering operations, and the smaller boats is one group more vulnerable to their share of lobster being affected by epizootic shell disease?
Patrice McCarron: I, yeah, I guess I. Yeah. so it’s not reached a crisis point for the Maine fishery. I mean, certainly that southern New England fishery that had pretty extreme warm water temperatures, I mean temperatures measured on bottom that were really outside a temperature where you would expect a lobster to survive at all is where we really saw that disease kick off.
And as Rick said, we saw it migrate into Maine. The state of Maine puts samplers on boats from May through the end of the year. They do the state waters fishery as well as the offshore fishery. And one of the things that they do record is the presence of epizootic shell disease. So we will, on a year to year basis, have little pockets in, you know, very small regions along the coast where we might see like, More lobsters than we would like to see.
But it tends to be female lobsters who are in the reproductive phase, who have not shed their shell in a few years. So there were a few years along the way where we saw it in newer shell lobster and that was very concerning and that was something that they really monitored to see. Is it something where the lobsters had the shell on for a long time and, and the dhell disease sort of has time to take effect, but they’ll ultimately shed it out?
Or are we gonna see it in this sort of new shell lobster, which represents the majority of the catch in Maine. And we really, we really didn’t see that trend. So, you know, you’ll get calls in the spring from a handful of lobstermen. You know, I just had, you know, a bunch of female lobsters with dhell disease. Immediately call the state of Maine, they immediately report that. I think it is an issue that’s elevated enough that if somebody sees an anomaly in their catch, they always call the state offering to send up samples. So from my perspective I have not seen anything that, that is just sort of like a really low level of sort of annoyance, but in a sector of the lobster stock that has had its shell for a long time is gonna mold out of that and not something that we’re really seeing sort of spread across the catch. So I think that translates into a pretty minimal economic impact on the fishery.
And, you know, something that much more rare we would hear in the offshore waters, like every once in a while, like a deep pocket of warm water, somebody might pull up a few again, a lobster that’s had its shell for a long time, a lobster that’s gonna mold out of that and not something that we’re really seeing spreading through what’s gonna be the majority of our catch those newer shell lobsters.
So I don’t know, Rick, if you’ve seen anything different than that in the data, but that seems to be the way that the trend has gone the last five years or so.
Richard Wahle: yeah. Yeah. I  think you captured it pretty well there, Patrice. You know, the highest prevalence levels are essentially in the warmest places and also among the lobsters that hold onto their shells the longest.
So the warmest places are near shore, southern New England,. and we see, you know, the highest prevalence among the larger, you know, oversized lobsters, but especially, as Patrice said, the egg-bearing females that are holding onto their, their shells longer, their exoskeletons longer.
So but you know, once that the epizootic took off, it did start spreading northward and it did start penetrating Maine waters. It sort of wrapped around Cape Cod and into Massachusetts, you know, north of Cape Cod Bay. And it reached its tentacles into, you know, southwestern Maine, but seems to have more or less stabilized, as that pattern hasn’t changed a lot in, say, the past 10 years.
So but you know, with increasing warming you know, the suggestion is that we might see higher prevalence levels, but especially in southern New England, I mean, sorry, in southern Maine .
Eric Miller: Got it. Definitely something to keep our eyes on as the years go on. According to NOAA Fisheries, approximately 368 North Atlantic right whales are left after what they define as an unusual mortality event, which has occurred since 2017. As the recent passage of the omnibus spending bill here in the States included a six-year pause on federal whale regulations as well as funding for marine ecological research and fishing gear, technological development.
Can you all weigh in on the significance of this pause and US federal government investment in those research and technical technological development initiatives? Which research priorities do you all think are most important to fishermen as the North Atlantic right whale and the greater North Atlantic Marine ecosystem?
And what do you know and not know about this endangered species? and how is this debate playing out in Canada as well?
Patrice McCarron: That is a broad question.
Eric Miller: Yep. Yep. An an easy one here.
Patrice McCarron: I’ll kick it off. Yeah. I’ll kick it off. Maybe I’ll just answer a piece of it and we can sort of circle through and, and, and work our way through.
In terms of the pause that we got from the federal government, that’s truly historic and, you know, very, very meaningful for our fishery. The US Lobster fishery, we implemented whale protection measures in the nineties. We did a significant round of whale protection measures in 2009, another significant round in 2014.
And then in May of 2022, we did a brand new 60% risk reduction, you know, off of our revised baseline. So we’ve taken rope out of the water, we weakened rope. We’ve really expanded our gear marking. We now have closures on the books and Maine. So super high impact for our fishermen. The Maine fishery was scheduled to bring that 60% risk reduction all the way up to 90% risk reduction by 2024.
And that is controversial because the Maine fishery doesn’t really have a documented track record of entanglement. So a lot of the risk that we’re mitigating now in Maine is hypothetical risk. We know where some of the entanglements take place, we know what fisheries they come from, but for a lot, we don’t know.
When we look at rope that right whales are carrying, we can say it doesn’t really look like the rope that Maine fishermen use. We tend to fish a smaller diameter rope than some of the rope that comes off. So the Maine lobster fishery has really been advocating to kind of put the brakes on and have the federal government reanalyze the science.
We feel like they haven’t followed the law as prescribed by the Endangered Species Act. What the federal government has done in giving us our risk reduction goals is they’ve basically said, anytime, you know, we, we get to a decision point and our data are modeling, we’re just gonna pick the worst case scenario so that we make sure that the whales get the most protection possible.
But actually what the law requires is that the federal government examines scenarios that are reasonably certain to occur. So not things that are so far-fetched that they’ll never happen. So we feel like, you know, bringing us to a 90% risk reduction and ultimately we’re slated to do a 98% risk reduction is something that would have potentially marginal benefit to the whales, but would have devastating impacts on our fisheries.
So this pause allows us time to kind of dig into these models, look at the data that we’re using, really examine the implications of the assumptions. and I, and I’ll give you an example of why that matters. When the federal government did a forward population projection for right whales, they said, you know, how many right whales do we think we will have in the year 2050?
And when they used very conservative estimates of reproduction, they used 2010 to 2018 in every scenario. Even with closing the US Federal Fisheries, the right wheel population continued to decline if they simply used the full reproductive dataset. So the nineties through 2019, in every scenario projecting that population forward, the right wheel population basically doubled.
And so it, it, it begs the question, you know, which is it you took the worst 10 years on record, or the worst eight years on record for a set of data that is without trend? And for us, it, it, it doesn’t make any sense. You know, they didn’t really ask the question of, you know, well, is it likely that whales are gonna continue to, you know, have more success in reproduction?
And since then they have. so we feel like, you know, they’ve just made very bad assumptions that will harm the fishery. So this federal pause, Congress recognizes that there’s a lot of work to be done. They actually haven’t solved the problem, but they’ve given national marine fishery service in the fishing industry and the conservation community and all of the stakeholders time to come together and really dig through those questions and try to figure out, you know, what the right risk reduction would be for our fisheries so that we can hopefully have a functioning industry and save the right whales.
And in terms of the funding that was a really important piece of the pause. there’s a lot of money that’s gonna come in for right wheel monitoring and surveillance, so have a better idea of where, where right whales are. Models are now indicating that right whales will be even less frequent in the waters where Maine lobstermen fish and shifting more into Canadian waters and down to the southeast US in the winter.
So to really get a handle on where the whales are, like what are the, what are the fishing areas we really need to be prioritizing for management will be important. But there’s also a lot of money in there to continue to develop innovative gear solutions, which will include on-demand fishing without rope, as well as other modifications to a traditional fishing system that would pose less risk to whales, that would allow maybe a more flexible, viable business model for some of the, the smaller vessels in our fleet.
So there’s a lot of really, really important stuff in there. And it set a high bar for all of us. We have a lot of work to do over the next six years to try to get answers and hopefully size that management to really address the actual risks that the right whales are facing. So I guess I’ll, I’ll leave it at that.
Geoff Irvine: Thanks. So the whales effectively came to Canada in 2017 and we did not expect them. They didn’t tell us they were coming. So that is, that is when we had that particular terrible mortality event, which caused us to immediately figure out how we could continue fishing, crab, and lobster and avoid mortalities and, and entanglements.
So we brought in a whole suite of measures, the dynamic closure management system where we have over flights and things that monitor whales. So if we see a single right whale on the Gulf of Sale, Lawrence, we close nine grids for 15 days. And if another whale is cited, we close it for the whole season.
So we’ve invested millions of dollars in that system and it appears to be working mostly. We’ve also done a lot of things that Patrice talked about you know, removing gear and gear marking and, and all kinds of other things like that, that we hope will work. So the old fishing industry’s committed to it.
We know it’s vital to ensure market access to the US to everywhere else that cares about right whales. I mean, we have customers in Europe and Scandinavia in Asia who are constantly asking us, you know, where we are with these measures. So it’s important for the market.
And back to the challenges in Maine. We’ve always wondered why the Maine harvesters have been so impacted by these measures by NOAA because we like, like Patrice, know that there aren’t a lot of whales there when they’re fishing. So we could never understand that. And also, we buy half of Maine ‘s lobster in Canada.
Uh we’re your biggest customer. and so we need that lobster to keep our plants going in the summer and the fall. So we were, we’ve been very concerned about your industry, notwithstanding all of our close relations. So we were delighted to hear about the pause. and we’re delighted to hear about more research.
I think one big thing that Rick will probably talk about is some of the work that he’s gonna do with the new NNA lobster network, which will do some of that work. But no, we’re taking it very seriously and, and the new measures every year, the Federal Fisheries Minister adjusts the measures, and we expect her announcement to come out in the next few weeks for this coming year.
But the fishing industry here is committed to doing what it takes.
Richard Wahle: Yeah. Perfectly well, both of you did. And really, this pause brings more than 50 million to start to address these really important questions. And they go toward both lobster and right whales and the communities that depend on this fishery.
So, as Patrice said, this is an unprecedented opportunity to start to deal with these thorny issues. But I divide the challenges into short-term and long-term questions because certainly, you know, resolving the entanglement issue, area closures and so forth, understanding right whale migration patterns and so forth, tracking them around you know, fields of lobster gear are really urgent needs.
And also understanding the impact of the new regulations potentially on our coastal communities. All that’s really urgent to know, but, you know, a lot of these changes that are happening as a consequence of climate change and we’re gonna be seeing longer term decadal scale changes happening.
We’re already seeing them and it’s really important to start to understand the mechanisms behind them. And this is where you really have to sort of back up and, and take the broader geographic view that not only encompasses our two fisheries, the US and Canada fisheries, Atlantic Canada, and basically New England, but really pan back to the North Atlantic and start to understand what’s happening here.
And what’s really interesting is that some of these dramatic changes that have been happening pivot around 2010 when there was a dramatic regime shift in the Gulf of Maine. All of a sudden we started to see warmer Gulf Stream water moving into the Gulf of Maine. And that had food, web level effects.
And, let me just put that in a somewhat broader geographic perspective. You know, we have really two currents that merge right off our coast. There’s the Gulf Stream I just mentioned coming from the south with warm, salty, nutrient-poor water. And then we have the Labrador current coming from the Arctic, bringing really cold, nutrient-rich water, and it’s that Labrador current in the Scotian Shelf water that has really fueled the huge historic productivity that the Gulf of Maine is so well known for. And in recent years, and again, pivoting around 2010, we started to see the Gulf Stream waters play a more important role in influencing the productivity of the system. And that’s where we started to see things collapsing to some extent primary productivity. The phytoplankton that feed the zooplankton that right whales depend on as well as, you know, things like herring, and even cod larvae and sand lance.
All those forage fish are strongly affected by the abundance of these tiny crustaceans called copepods. And there’s a particular copepod called Calanus finmarchicus that seems to be a real keystone species here. And it’s the prime and preferred food source for the Atlantic right whale. So that shift in the distribution of Calanus finmarchicus and some of these other cold water zooplankton to the north has played a role in influencing the migration of the right whale to northern waters and more prevalently in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
So, we’ve just secured some additional funding from the National Science Foundation to start to look at what’s influencing these changes in the Labrador current and the Gulf Stream. And, they’re linked to the changes that are happening in the Arctic. And so the program that’s funding this is one of the National Science Foundation’s polar programs called “Navigating the New Arctic.” And it’s really the only project in that portfolio of grants that have been funded that’s looking at the effects of Arctic change at lower latitudes, at a lower latitude system. Most of those projects are looking at changes in the Arctic and the consequences in the Arctic. And here we’re looking at the lower latitude effects, but having those, that larger scale view allows us to build these predictive models that essentially give us the lead time, out decades refining those predictive models so we can better understand these linkages between the changing climate, shifting lobster distributions, and shifting and migrating right whales.
Eric Miller: Got it. Yeah. As a data person myself, there always seems to be a need for more. It’s great to see so many resources poured into learning more, which is absolutely necessary. If folks would like to learn more about the North Atlantic right whale, as much as we do know—their habitat range, how many we think are out there, the context in which some of these fatalities have occurred—is on the NOAA Fisheries website for you to learn more. They’ve got maps and tables. So as we’re closing out here on our hour, are there any other things that you, you all would like to share about the lobster industry that we haven’t already covered?
Next steps for policymaker, citizens, the lobster industry itself, we’ll start off with Geoff.
Geoff Irvine: keep eating lobster…
I mean we’ve got a myriad of challenges and issues that are based on the world getting more insular and market access challenges where we’re noticing it in all of the markets, the de-globalization of the world it’s more, more challenging to, to, to sell protein everywhere around the world.
So we spend a lot of time dealing with those market access issues. And I’m sure our friends, our people who are exporting lobster for Maine do the same. So that’s just a really high level matter that we’re not gonna solve today. But it’s something that is becoming more and more of a challenge, and that is worldwide sort of nationalism and market access sort of putting barriers up that, that I’m seeing every day.
Eric Miller: Patrice, would you like to go next?
Patrice McCarron: Sure. Yeah. I would echo Geoff’s suggestion like, eat, eat more lobster. I hope that people took away from this, the incredible sustainability practices in place in the US and Canadian lobster fisheries. They are virtually unmatched internationally.
These are quite literally the most sustainable fisheries in the world. You know, throughout time where fisheries have been depleted and overfished and stocks have crashed, you know, these fisheries have blossomed. You know, in part, mother nature has given us a hand. But really it would not have been possible without the incredible conservation practices in place in both countries.
And I hope people also understand the commitment that both countries have to North Atlantic right whale conservation, all of the fisheries, the shipping industry. The governments are really trying to get measures in place that will allow these, you know, incredible heritage, fisheries and traditions to continue, and conserve this incredible endangered species that is at risk.
And people should feel really good that the fisheries are in fact making changes, that they are actively continuing to improve what they’re doing. And people should feel proud to choose this product and not be confused by the media and wonder, you know, if they’re doing the right thing. Because so much time and energy has gone into really getting it right and really having an industry.
We hope that we’ll be handing off to the next generation proudly in both countries.
Richard Wahle: Great. Well, it seems fitting to sort of close this out with a little quote from Jim Acheson himself. And there’s this wonderful book he wrote in 1988 called The Lobster Gangs of Maine. And, you know, it’s close to my heart because he did a lot of his interviews in my home town of Bristol, Maine.
You know, he was an anthropologist, and so he studied the social systems of territoriality, and used the American lobster fisheries as his case study. So the very first words in that book were, “Hhigh risk and uncertainty in all parts of the world are the everyday lot of the fisherman.”
And, you know, I think we just reinforce that message with this podcast today. But I think we also take away a really strong message of the sustainability ethic of the participants in this fishery. They’re, essentially naturalists in the field every day. They’re seeing these changes happening. Their fishery is in their own backyard and it’s in their best interest to make it sustainable. So that sustainability ethic is, a conservation ethic, is in their blood and right whales are part of the ecosystem in which they live and want to see them continue to thrive. So it just means bringing people together to work on this project and problem.
Eric Miller: There are some excellent closing words there. Thank you all so much for joining us today, Patrice, Geoff, and Rick. And we will have you look forward to checking in hopefully with you all again sometime in the future.
All: Great, Eric. Wonderful. Thank you very much. Thanks Eric.
End of Interview
What you just heard was Rick Wahle’s, Patrice McCarron’s, and Geoff Irvine’s perspectives on the lobster industry as discussed by James Acheson and Ann Acheson in their article “What Does the Future Hold for Maine’s Lobster Industry?” Maine Policy Review is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center. For all citations for data provided in this episode, please refer to the original article in Maine Policy Review.
Special thanks to the Lobster Institute at the University of Maine for sponsoring this episode of Maine Policy Matters. Since 1987, the Lobster Institute has been fostering collaboration and communication in support of a sustainable and profitable lobster industry in the Northeast United States and Canada as well as aiming to maximize the engagement of UMaine faculty and students with stakeholders in this iconic fishery.
The editorial team for Maine Policy Review is made up of Joyce Rumery, Linda Silka, and Barbara Harrity. Jonathan Rubin directs the Policy Center. A thank you to Jayson Heim and Kathryn Swacha, scriptwriters for Maine Policy Matters, and to Daniel Soucier, our production consultant.
In two weeks, we will be reading a summary of Jonathan Rubin et al.’s research on road salt in their report entitled, “Road Salt in Maine: An Assessment of Practices, Impacts and Safety”.
We would like to thank you for listening to Maine Policy Matters from the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine. You can find us online by searching Maine Policy Matters on your web browser. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow us on your preferred social media platform to stay updated on new episode releases.
I am Eric Miller. Thanks for listening and please join us next time on Maine Policy Matters.

S3E1 Offshore Wind Development - A Comparison of Rhode Island and Maine

On our first episode of season three, we cover an article by Mary Morrissey, who gives us an inside perspective on Maine’s offshore wind development and proposes short- and long-term actions to guide Maine’s development of the offshore wind industry in federal waters in her article “Maine and Offshore Wind Development: Using the Coastal Zone Management Act and Marine Spatial Planning to Influence Projects in Federal Waters.” This article was published in volume 31, number 1, of Maine Policy Review, a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center.
You can find Mary Morrissey's article here: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/vol31/iss1/2/
Transcript
How can looking to Rhode Island as an example in offshore wind development benefit Maine?
Today, we will be looking at a comparison between Rhode Island and Maine’s offshore wind development projects made by Mary Morrissey, a law student and editor-in-chief of the Ocean and Coastal Law Journal at the University of Maine School of Law.
Welcome back to Maine Policy Matters, the podcast from the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine. I am Eric Miller, research associate at the Center.
On each episode of Maine Policy Matters, we discuss public policy issues relevant to the state of Maine. On our first episode of season three, we will be covering an article by Mary Morrissey, who gives us an inside perspective on Maine’s offshore wind development and proposes short- and long-term actions to guide Maine’s development of the offshore wind industry in federal waters in her article “Maine and Offshore Wind Development: Using the Coastal Zone Management Act and Marine Spatial Planning to Influence Projects in Federal Waters.” This article was published in volume 31, number 1, of Maine Policy Review, a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center. For all citations for data provided in this episode, please refer to Morrissey’s article in Maine Policy Review.
How can comparing Rhode Island’s coastal management plan help Maine’s current offshore wind efforts and potential for marine spatial planning? Morrissey provides somerecommendations based on the Governor’s Energy Office offshore wind roadmap process.
Morrissey outlines the actions that Maine can take to replicate Rhode Island’s model in a ‘responsible’ way – as concerns for sustainability of marine ecosystems and the coastal economy are quite high given the environmental challenges on the horizon. Back in 1972, Congress passed the Coastal Zone Management Act, or the CMZA, to, “preserve, protect, develop, and where possible, to restore or enhance the resources of the nation’s coastal zone.” This act encourages states to develop and implement their own management programs for land and water resources of their spatial zone. For example, both Rhode Island and Maine participate in the CMZA and have their own coastal management plans. Where Maine can learn from Rhode Island is from their site assessment management plan, referred to as an SAMP. Maine has yet to designate a SAMP.
Morrissey cites that, “Marine spatial planning is a public, sociopolitical process that aims to manage human activities to achieve predetermined outcomes.”  Marine spatial planning is important because it identifies areas of ecological concern, makes space for conservation efforts, and protects cultural heritage, among many other benefits. Even though there are many benefits to marine spatial planning Morrissey names five main challenges. The first is marine spatial planning cannot be effectively carried out without legislative and regulatory efforts. Second, the necessity of stakeholder engagement to produce an innovative, long-term plan. Third, the requirement for collaboration and coordination to allow for engagement with administrative entities and overlap with regional, local, or other strategic plans, policies, and laws. Fourth is managing errors in plan design and execution. And lastly, that marine spatial planning is a process that can slow offshore wind development.
As an example of a state that successfully faced these challenges, Morrissey discusses Rhode Island’s offshore wind planning and their Ocean SAMP. This regulatory document was a result of 2006 Governor Donald Carcieri’s goal of harnessing 15 percent of the state’s electricity from wind within a span of three years. As Morrissey explains:
The Ocean SAMP is a regulatory document made up of three integrated approaches: research, policy making, and public engagement. It maps a portion of Rhode Island’s state and surrounding federal waters to identify how to use this region and manage its resources to support the state’s environmental, social, and economic needs. It also specifically details potential effects on existing uses and resources in the Ocean SAMP area, including impacts on port development and job creation, electricity rates, coastal processes and physical oceanography, marine mammals, and commercial and recreational fishing…Ultimately, the Ocean SAMP was one of the first marine spatial plans in the nation and “laid the groundwork for the siting and permitting of the nation’s first offshore wind farm.”
It was not until 2010 that the Coastal Resources Management Council approved the Ocean SAMP, giving it the force of law. In 2011, NOAA approved the Ocean SAMP as part of Rhode Island’s coastal management plan, which meant that federal actions that have reasonably  foreseeable effects on Rhode Island’s coastal zone must undergo federal consistency review to ensure they do not conflict with the Ocean SAMP.   This created an issue because NOAA only ensured federal action that impacted the state waters were consistent with Rhode Island’s coastal management plan. This led Rhode Island to take a new approach to apply for a geographic location description.
This request was approved in late 2011, and Executive Director of the Coastal Resource Management Council Grover Fugate remarked that the geographic location was
“the first of its kind in the state and the nation, and allows the Coastal Resource Management Council to have a voice in what kind of offshore development takes place in the federal waters off Rhode Island’s coast….This tool will work as a major component of the Ocean SAMP, and both will help further Rhode Island’s role as a model for other states in marine spatial planning.”
Ocean SAMP has five other strengths and strategies that Maine could find useful: conceptual benefits, tangible goals and guiding principles, strong university engagement and research, extensive stakeholder and public engagement, and adequate funding.
In 2019, Governor Mills received a request from the Board of Ocean Energy Management to join a Gulf of Maine Intergovernmental Renewable Energy Task Force. In response, Maine began focusing on its offshore wind through four efforts. The first is Aqua Ventis, an 11-megawatt floating offshore wind technology pilot. It will be located south of Monhegan Island, more than 12 miles off the coast of Maine. The University of Maine designed the VolturnUS floating concrete hull technology that will support the wind turbine and will lead design, engineering, research and development, and post-construction monitoring. UMaine and the US Department of Energy also funded many studies and surveys to help these efforts.
The second effort is what is being called a research array, the nation’s first floating offshore wind research site in federal waters, which is a response to  the federal government’s ambitious energy goals and to “ensure that Maine develops [the offshore wind] industry in a manner that capitalizes on [its] innovative technology and abundant resources, while protecting [its] interests, industries, environment and values.
The third is a roadmap, supported by a $2.166 million grant from the US Economic Development Administration, that will detail how to advance offshore wind in ways that support Maine’s people, economy, and heritage. The roadmap also looks to understand and plan for the state’s role in commercial offshore wind in the Gulf of Maine.
The fourth is a moratorium on offshore wind projects that was established by Governor Mills to restrict the state from licensing, permitting, approving, or authorizing leases, easements, or other real property interests for offshore wind projects in state waters for 10 years. The Mills administration also proposed the moratorium to appease fishing interests, especially lobstermen, who opposed the research array over concerns about what they saw as potentially disastrous impacts on the lobster industry.
Morrissey suggests that “if Maine can implement a marine spatial plan, there are
potential environmental, social, and economic benefits—not least of which would be more efficient coordination of offshore wind efforts with other marine industries, such as aquaculture and fisheries, while protecting areas of biological and ecological concern.”
However, she names a few challenges and possible solutions for implementing this planning. The first is the risk of interrupting progress from changes in administration as well as fitting Maine’s legislative and regulatory process. Planning for differences in administration stance toward marine spatial planning policy is not something that can necessarily be codified with ease, to say the least. However, regarding the issue of fitting a SAMP to Maine’s legislative and regulatory framework, Maine could follow Rhode Island’s plan of building a regulatory framework explaining the marine spatial plan’s goals, means of implementation, decision-making authority, general policies, and regulatory standards.
The second is Maine’s large gulf size. The Gulf of Maine spans 36,000 square miles of ocean and 7,500 miles of coastline, with Maine stretching along 3,478 miles of that coastline and the rest being split between Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts. In comparison, Rhode Island only has 384 miles of coastline with the Ocean SAMP covering roughly 1,467 square miles of the ocean as well as no international border. Maine would need to expend more energy and resources to define the limits of a marine spatial plan and divide the area among different ocean uses.
The third is concerns for collaboration. Maine must obtain support from its fishing communities, particularly lobstermen with over 4,800 lobster licenses, to successfully create a marine spatial plan.
As a solution to these concerns, Morrisey closes her article with several actions that Maine can take to replicate Rhode Island’s model and responsibly develop offshore wind in the Gulf of Maine.
Regarding actions that could be taken immediately, Morrissey outlines the following, increasing opportunities for public engagement beyond a public comment period, including fishing community in research, facilitate collaboration and investigating research gaps using public tools – such as the Northeast Data Portal, develop educational materials to communicate the benefits of offshore wind development, and developing partnerships with other Northeastern coastal states to identify points of concern and how the Gulf of Maine will be affected.
Beyond the immediate actions, Morrissey outlines longer-term options including signing memorandums of understanding with neighboring coastal states to facilitate collaboration, a marine spatial plan like the Rhode Island SAMP discussed earlier, codifying the marine spatial plan, and then expanding it into federal waters.
As a final note on this issue, Morrissey concludes:
Rhode Island serves as a primary example of how to use federal consistency review and marine spatial planning effectively in the form of an Ocean SAMP…Maine can begin working on its own marine spatial plan by capitalizing on preexisting efforts…The offshore wind industry is moving quickly, and it is in Maine’s best interest to take proactive steps to extend its influence into federal waters. Maine’s marine economy, environment, and ecology depend on it.
What you just heard was Mary Morrissey’s perspective on offshore wind development and marine spatial planning in Maine based on her article in Maine Policy Review, a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center.
The editorial team for Maine Policy Review is made up of Joyce Rumery, Linda Silka, and Barbara Harrity. Jonathan Rubin directs the Policy Center. A thank you to Jayson Heim and Kathryn Swacha, scriptwriters for Maine Policy Matters, and to Daniel Soucier, our production consultant.
In two weeks, we will be hosting professionals in the lobster industry for an interview and a synopsis of James and Ann Acheson’s article titled “What Does the Future Hold for Maine’s Lobster Industry?”
We would like to thank you for listening to Maine Policy Matters from the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine. You can find us online by searching Maine Policy Matters on your web browser. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow us on your preferred social media platform to stay updated on new episode releases.

S2E8 Frank O’Hara’s Comparison of Covid-19 to the London Plague

Today, we will be covering an article by Frank O’Hara titled, “The Great London Plague of 1665 and the US COVID-19 Pandemic Experience Compared.”  This article was published in volume 30, number 2, of Maine Policy Review, a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Policy Center. For all citations for data provided in this episode, please refer to Frank O’Hara’s article in Maine Policy Review.            
In the article, O’Hara uses historical accounts from a 5-year-old survivor of the London Plague: Daniel Defoe. Listeners might recognize Daniel Defoe as the author of the novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe also wrote a lesser known novel called A Journal of the Plague Year. This novel is based on Defoe’s childhood experience of the Plague, city records, and his uncle’s diary.
You can find O'Hara's article here: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/vol30/iss2/14/
Transcript
The COVID-19 pandemic and the Great London Plague of 1665. What, if anything, do we stand to gain by comparing these two crises?
Actually, quite a bit, according to long-time community and economic development planner, Frank O’Hara.  Today, we will be offering statistics and a survivor’s historical account of the Great London Plague of 1665 compared to the COVID-19 pandemic. While these two events may seem unrelated, the way survivors experienced them isn’t all that different.
Welcome to the Maine Policy Matters podcast from the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine. I’m Eric Miller, research associate at the Policy Center. For those of you who tuned in for this season of the show, we are deeply grateful for your attention and we are excited to bring the next season starting January 17th, 2023.
We’ll be bringing in the new year with discussions regarding the lobster industry, opioid crisis, forest resources, and. So we hope that you are as excited as we are for those essays and interviews. Until then, have a safe and happy holiday season and we will be back with you all next year. On each episode of Maine Policy Matters, we discuss public policy issues relevant to the state of Maine.
Today, we will be covering an article by Frank O’Hara titled, “The Great London Plague of 1665 and the US COVID-19 Pandemic Experience Compared.”  This article was published in volume 30, number 2, of Maine Policy Review, a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Policy Center. For all citations for data provided in this episode, please refer to Frank O’Hara’s article in Maine Policy Review.
In the article, O’Hara uses historical accounts from a 5-year-old survivor of the London Plague: Daniel Defoe. Listeners might recognize Daniel Defoe as the author of the novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe also wrote a lesser known novel called A Journal of the Plague Year. This novel is based on Defoe’s childhood experience of the Plague, city records, and his uncle’s diary.
Frank O’Hara uses excerpts from that novel to argue that our current experiences with the COVID-19 pandemic are not that much different from those of people in 1665 London.
At first glance, it would seem that there is little in common between these two plague experiences. How can we compare the mass deaths in the first 18 months of the Great Plague in London, for example, to the 98 percent survival rate of people infected by the coronavirus?
Despite these drastic differences, Frank O’Hara argues that there are similarities in the “human element” that get at what he calls  “basic human reactions to crisis”   that can teach us some lessons for the current pandemic. The human element of both crises goes beyond the differences in medical understanding, research and distribution systems, and public health infrastructure.
O’Hara identifies ten main similarities between the Great Plague and COVID, which he calls: the Early Rumors, Fears and Complacency, Fleeing to the Country, Quackery, the Economic Collapse, Government Relief Strategies, Government Public Health Strategies, Masks and Cleanliness, Social Division, and Easing Up Too Soon.
Today we’ll be looking at three of these topics: Fleeing to the Country, the Economic Collapse, and Easing Up Too Soon. We’ll start by discussing what O’Hara calls “Fleeing to the Country,” which refers to people’s attempts to leave crowded cities as a way of staying safe.
Dafoe writes in A Journal of the Plague Year:
The richer sort of people, especially the nobility and gentry, thronged out of town with their families and servants in an unusual manner. Nothing was to be seen but wagons and carts, with goods, women, servants, children, and coaches filled with people of the better sort, and horsemen attending them all hurrying away. In all it was computed that 200,000 people were fled and gone.
This type of plague-fueled migration also happened during the COVID-19 pandemic.
New York City, one of the most populated cities in the US, had a net outflow of 100 thousand households in 2020. This means that people were relocating to their summer houses or moving back in with their parents in smaller towns to try and get away from over-populated areas. Maine experienced a real estate boom in 2021 for this exact reason. Recent research from the Brookings Institute has found that “51 of the 88 U.S. cities with a quarter million people or more lost population between July 2020 and 2021.”
In both centuries, migration to the country highlights a class disparity. Wealthy people in both centuries were able to escape once things got bad, a move that not everyone could afford to make.
Relevant to wealth and class disparity is the next section of O’Hara’s article: the Economic Collapse.
O’Hara writes that “here in the United States, the country lost 20 million jobs in April 2020, the largest single-month decline on record. As we’ve covered in previous episodes, the hardest hit sectors were leisure and hospitality, retail, professional services, and manufacturing. This economic collapse is similar to what happened to the economy in London during the plague.
From Dafoe’s journal:
All master-workmen in manufactures stopped their work, dismissed their journeymen and workmen, and all their dependents. As merchandising was at a full stop, for very few ships ventured to come up the river, and none at all went out; the watermen, carmen, porters, and all the poor, whose labour depended upon the merchants, were at once dismissed, and put out of business. All the tradesmen usually employed in building or repairing of houses were at a full stop; so that this one article turned all of the ordinary workmen of that kind out of business, such as bricklayers, masons, carpenters, joiners, plasterers, painters, glaziers, smiths, plumbers and all the labourers depending on such. The seamen were all out of employment, and all the several tradesmen and workmen belonging to and depending upon the building and fitting out of ships, such as ship-carpenters, caulkers, ropemakers, dry coopers, sailmakers, anchor-smiths, and other smiths; blockmakers, carvers, gunsmiths, shipchandlers, ship-carvers, and the like; all or most part of the water-men, lightermen, boat-builders, and lighter-builders in like manner idle and laid by. All families retrenched their living as much as possible, so that innumerable multitude of footmen, serving-men, shop-keepers, journeymen, merchants’ bookkeepers, and such sort to people, and especially poor maid-servants, were turned out, and left friendless and helpless, without employment and without habitation.
Listeners might recognize some similarities from this account of the unemployment and supply chain disruptions that we are currently experiencing. Despite the similarities between the two crises, O’Hara points out that unlike 17th century London, the United States had unemployment insurance to cushion the economic impacts, something that did not exist in 17th century London.
The last section of O’Hara’s article that we will be covering today is Easing Up Too Soon. O’Hara states that, in the summer of 2021 in the United States, we opened up too soon, which allowed the COVID-19 pandemic to reignite through August and September via the new Delta variant. But even with rising numbers of cases and death, governments did not increase restrictions.
Something similar happened in London according to Dafoe:
Upon this notion spreading that the distemper was not so catching as formerly, and that if it was catched it was not so mortal, and seeing abundance of people who really fell sick recover again daily, they took to such a precipitant courage, and grew so entirely regardless of themselves, that they made no more the plague than of an ordinary fever, nor indeed so much…This imprudent, rash conduct cost a great many their lives who had with great care and caution shut themselves up and kept, retired, as it were, from all mankind. A great many that thus cast off their cautions suffered more deeply still, and though many escaped, yet many died. The people were so tired with being so long from London, and so eager to come back, that they flock to town without fear or forecast, and began to show themselves in the streets, as if all the danger was over. The consequences of this was, that the bills increased again 400 the very first week in November. 
O’Hara identifies other similarities such as the quackery of Londoners and Americans trying to make at home remedy treatments, the swift relief programs the magistrates of London and America’s federal government pieced together, the ways public health was handled by London officials and the US Centers for Disease Control, and Londoners’ and American’s desires for being done with the crises before they were actually over.
O’Hara concludes his article with a hopeful message and prediction:
There were similar behaviors in both centuries with regard to hating quarantines, falling for quack remedies, and easing restrictions before the pandemic was over. There were also differences. The American response to COVID-19 was much more casual than London’s response to the plague, our social divisions persisted during the pandemic, and oddly doctors in 17th century London appear to have been listened to with more respect than doctors today.
The year after the Great Plague ended, the Great Fire burned the City of London to the ground. Many records were lost, and the plague was forgotten in the rush to rebuild. Had that five-year-old boy not returned to tell the story 50 years later, we would know very little about the plague that wiped out a quarter of London’s population in 1665. Which raises the question—is there a five-year-old child in Maine today who will someday tell of our experiences in 2020 to future generations?
 
What you just heard was Frank O’Hara’s comparison of the Great London Plague of 1665 to the US COVID-19 Pandemic Experience. Maine Policy Review is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center.
The editorial team for Maine Policy Review is made up of Joyce Rumery, Linda Silka, and Barbara Harrity. Jonathan Rubin directs the Policy Center. A thank you to Jayson Heim and Kathryn Swacha, scriptwriters for Maine Policy Matters, and to Daniel Soucier, our production consultant.
We would like to thank you for listening to Maine Policy Matters from the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine. You can find us online by searching Maine Policy Matters on your web browser. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow us on your preferred social media platform to stay updated on new episode releases.
I am Eric Miller–thanks for listening and please join us next time on Maine Policy Matters.

S2E7 Sustainable Small Businesses and Employee Ownership

On this episode, we will be offering data and strategies from Rob Brown, the director of Business Ownership Solutions at the Cooperative Development Institute based in Northampton, Massachusetts. Business Ownership Solutions works throughout the Northeast states with business owners to think through whether conversion to a cooperative could meet their needs. They also work with employees or community members to execute the co-op conversion. 
You can find Rob Brown's article here: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1905&context=mpr
Transcript
Today, we will be offering data and strategies from Rob Brown, the director of Business Ownership Solutions at the Cooperative Development Institute based in Northampton, Massachusetts. Business Ownership Solutions works throughout the Northeast states with business owners to think through whether conversion to a cooperative could meet their needs. They also work with employees or community members to execute the co-op conversion.
This is the Maine Policy Matters podcast from the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center. I am Eric Miller, research associate at the Center.
On each episode of Maine Policy Matters, we discuss public policy issues relevant to the state of Maine. Today, we will be covering an article by Rob Brown, the director of Business Ownership Solutions at the Cooperative Development Institute. Brown gives us an inside perspective on how we can build back our economy in his article entitled  “How to Save Jobs and Build Back Better: Employee Ownership Transitions as a Key to an Equitable Economic Recovery.” This article was published in volume 30, number 2, of Maine Policy Review, a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center. For all citations for data provided in this episode, please refer to Rob Brown’s article in Maine Policy Review.
What are small business owners to do in the midst of a pandemic as they approach retirement age? How can small businesses and their employees successfully stay afloat once the owner decides to retire? Rob Brown has some answers.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Maine was already on the leading edge of what is called the “silver tsunami.” This term refers to the large oncoming wave of baby boomer business owners looking to exit and retire, many of whom do not have a plan and don't understand the process and options.
Nationally, the average age of business owners is over 50 years old. In rural Maine, almost half of business owners are over 60.
Maine has 12,790 small businesses where the owner wants to retire in the next several years. These retirements would affect 108,000 workers across the state.
And yet, less than one in five business owners have a documented exit plan for what will happen to their businesses–and their employees–once they retire.
What options do business owners facing retirement have?
Having their children take over the business is risky, as business transitions to second generations are only successful 19% of the time.
Well, what about retirement age owners selling their businesses?
This is also often not a good option either, as only 20% of commercial listings for businesses actually sell.
If retirement-age owners are closing their businesses, what happens to their employees? What are they to do when their jobs close down with the business?
Brown paints a picture of how such retirements impact employees and the community: “Too often, the default option ends up being liquidation and closure, and the smaller and more rural the business, the greater the likelihood of that outcome. As a result, business closure due to owner retirement is the largest single source of avoidable job loss over time.”
Workers affected by business closures had a harder time reentering the workforce.
In response, Brown argues that helping businesses transition to employee ownership can address some of these problems.
How can employee ownership save small businesses, and how has the “silver tsunami” been impacted by COVID-19?
Let’s take a look at a few small businesses in Maine that were saved by an employee ownership transition.
Rock City Cafe and Coffee Roasters is a great example. Maine’s first ever espresso bar and bookstore combo was opened in Rockland in 1992. After receiving community support, the business grew and added a coffee-roasting business. This allowed them to move to larger locations and become Rock City Cafe and Coffee Roasters. By 2010, Rockland had become a national model for downtown rejuvenation and Rock City Cafe and Coffee Roasters was an anchor business on Maine Street. At this point, the owner was considering retiring and it was time for her to consider her options. Because she was deeply committed to her 35 mostly young employees, she decided to transition her business to a worker-owned cooperative. This decision preserved her legacy, rewarded her employees who helped her build the business, and helped her secure a good retirement income for herself. But most importantly, this decision helped her business survive the COVID-19 pandemic better than other food and tourist-oriented businesses.
Three retail businesses on Deer Isle offer another example of a successful employee ownership transition. Burnt Cove Market, the Galley Markey, and V&S Variety employees heard that the owners of these businesses were thinking of selling the stores and retiring. So what did they do? They worked with a group of advisors to create the Island Employee Cooperative and bought the stores. Now the employee-owned Island Cooperative is one of Deer Isle's largest year-round employers, the largest worker cooperative in Maine, and second largest in all of New England.
As Brown argues, these examples suggest that employee ownership transitions are a good option for building back better, especially since the pandemic has impacted small businesses.
What are the benefits of employee ownership transitions?
First, these transitions are more profitable and productive. They create more jobs in the good times and lay off fewer workers in downturns, and invest more in workforce training. They also have lower rates of bankruptcy, closure, and loan default.
For workers, this means increased wages, benefits, and job stability and security. The benefits are even greater for low-income, non college-educated, minority, women, and young workers.
A big concern in Maine has been attracting and retaining young workers. One study that tracked 9,000 young workers from ages 18 to 35 highlights the benefits of working for an employee-owned company. These workers saw 33 percent higher wages, 92 percent higher household wealth, and 53 percent longer job tenure. These impacts held true regardless of race, gender, or geography.
Formerly incarcerated workers were also shown to have a lower rate of reoffending, had 25% higher annual income, and worked 9% more hours than formerly incarcerated workers in nonemployee owned companies.
Even though some businesses were able to survive through employee ownership transitions, others did not or were not able to make this change and as a result, were not so lucky.
Permanent business closures between March 2020 and February 2021 increased between one-third and one-half of what was expected before the pandemic.  Even though business closures were not as bad as the pre-pandemic predictions, Brown writes, “Saying ‘It could’ve been worse’ is cold comfort for business owners who lost their life’s work and the millions of workers who lost their jobs.”
Factors such as no exit plans and the type of business contributed to many business closures.  For example, businesses offering personal services and food service closed more frequently than businesses like construction and home improvement stores.
Even businesses that survived the pandemic are still struggling. In October 2021, Census data confirmed that nearly 60 percent of Maine’s businesses are still facing moderate to severe negative impacts from the pandemic. Many businesses are still behind on at least one bill, such as rent, loan, and supplier bills.
Because of this, Brown and others who work with businesses have seen an increase in retiring business owners looking to make an exit plan.
Here is Brown’s perspective, “In my work throughout the Northeast providing introductory exit planning education for business owners and consulting on transitions to employee ownership, I have seen a tripling of requests for assistance and attendance at workshops. Lawyers, accountants, and others who communicate directly with businesses, have told me that they are seeing the same thing—older business owners, already thinking about how to retire before the pandemic, want to develop a plan now.”
Rob Brown argues that, “If anything, the pandemic’s impact on job security and stability and its acceleration of income and wealth inequality has strengthened the argument for promoting and supporting employee ownership transitions. Helping business owners sell to employees could be a key to an equitable economic recovery.”
What could this transition look like for businesses on a national scale?
Brown offers a prediction: “An article in the Harvard Business Review calculated that if 30 percent business ownership were extended to all workers through employee-ownership models, household wealth would more than quadruple for the bottom 50 percent of workers, for all Black workers, and for all workers with only a high school degree.”
This kind of large-scale action cannot happen without the help of public policy. What have public policy officials been doing to help businesses shift to employee owned businesses?
Public policy like President Biden’s American Rescue Plan and the Mills administration’s 10-year economic development strategy could provide benefits for local business owners seeking retirement.
These benefits include things like exit planning outreach; education and technical assistance for business owners; expert financial advice for employee ownership transition; assistance in designing and executing a transition; and education and training for employee groups in business management, finances, and strategy so they can succeed.
Many states are also offering or considering tax and other incentives for selling a business to the employees. Around 18 states have employee ownership centers to provide education, training, and technical assistance for businesses considering employee ownership.
In the past, Maine offered a tax credit to encourage private citizens to contribute to Family Development Accounts programs, so matching funds are available to support low-income workers’ savings, but this incentive was eliminated by the previous administration. Restoring this funding could leverage substantial additional private funding. These funds would be helpful to employees saving to build equity for a worker cooperative transition.
These policy examples are a sampling of ideas and resources that could be part of a larger project that is effective in the short and long term. In the short term, these policies can help by preserving small businesses and jobs while building wealth for communities and individuals in the long term.
Rob Brown concludes with a hopeful message:
“From a public policy perspective, it is oftentimes much cheaper to save existing businesses and jobs than to replace them once they’re gone. Throughout Maine, there are grocery stores, cafés, coffee roasters, construction companies, energy companies, farm businesses, manufacturers, insurance agencies, and many other types of businesses that are owned by their workers. They are a model for how an economy, even in the face of unprecedented threats, can be made to work for working people and their communities”
What you just heard was Rob Brown’s perspective on how employee ownership transitions can be an answer to saving retirement age business owners from having to sell or close down theirr businesses. Maine Policy Review is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center.
The editorial team for Maine Policy Review is made up of Joyce Rumery, Linda Silka, and Barbara Harrity. Jonathan Rubin directs the Policy Center. A thank you to Jayson Heim and Kathryn Swacha, scriptwriters for Maine Policy Matters, and to Daniel Soucier, our production consultant.
In two weeks, we will be covering Frank O’Hara’s piece entitled, “The Great London Plague of 1665 and the US COVID-19 Pandemic Experience Compared.”
We would like to thank you for listening to Maine Policy Matters from the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine. You can find us online by searching Maine Policy Matters on your web browser. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow us on your preferred social media platform to stay updated on new episode releases.
I am Eric Miller–thanks for listening and please join us next time on Maine Policy Matters.

S2E6 Maine Food System and the Pandemic: Interview with JG Malacarne and Jason Lilley

On this episode of Maine Policy Matters we are joined by scholars Jonathan Malacarne and Jason Lilley to discuss how the pandemic shocked the Maine Food System and how it recovered. 
You can find their article here: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mpr/vol30/iss2/5/
Transcript
Eric Miller: The early days of the Covid-19 pandemic quite literally shocked the Maine food system economically affecting many individuals and sectors in different but interconnected ways. Many households, budgets were disrupted as people lost income, which led to acquiring food in two different ways, all while concerned over the availability of certain products.
Maine food producers faced multiple stressors as the demand for food at home rose, the restaurant market disappeared, and the availability of labor and the tourist market became uncertain. In response to these shocks, policymakers were forced to innovate and adapt in order to support farms, protect consumers, and ensure the food security of the people in Maine.
What can we learn from these shocks of those early days of the pandemic in order to help food consumers, producers, and policymakers deal with the next big shock? This is the Maine Policy Matters podcast from the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center. I'm Eric Miller, Research associate at the center. On each episode of Maine Policy Matters, we discuss public policy issues relevant to the state of Maine.
Today we will be covering JG Malacarne, Jason Lilley, and Nancy McBrady's Maine Policy Review article entitled "The Response of the Maine Food System to the Onset of the Covid-19 Pandemic", which argues that reflecting on how the Maine food system weathered shocks early in the pandemic can help us prepare for future crises.
This article was published in Volume 30 number two of Maine Policy Review, a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the center. We will first briefly summarize that article and then speak directly with Dr. Malacarne, Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Maine, and Jason Lilley, Assistant professor of sustainable agriculture and maple industry educator at the University of Maine Cooperative Extension about where the food system is now, two years later, and what the future of food in Maine might look like. Malacarne, Lilley, and McBrady offer data on how the pandemic shocked consumers, food producers, and policymakers in different ways. For example, before the pandemic, Maine was already the most food-insecure state, and the pandemic made this issue worse.
Food insecurity in Maine rose to 14.6% in 2020, compared to 12.4% in 2019. This rise was not related to the unavailability of food, but rather the surge in unemployment and underemployment during the pandemic's early days. Food distribution outlets thus increased their efforts. Good. Shepherd Food Bank of Maine, for example, distributed 31.7 million meals during the first year of the pandemic as part of the USDA's Farmers to Families Food Box Program.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP waived their three month eligibility limit and made it easier for applicants to apply, update, and use their benefits with the pilot programs for online food purchasing. To help curb food insecurity, the USDA announced the Pandemic Electronic Benefits Transfer Program, which allowed households with children facing school closures to access resources through the state's EBT card system.
During the early pandemic, there was also a rise in the demand for local products. Hannaford reported that purchases from Maine vendors went up by 33.5% in March 2020 compared to March 2019. Local vendors were partly able to meet this demand via direct to store deliveries and safe direct to consumer sales.
Maine farmers, however, also experienced challenges that complicated their ability to plan for this growing demand, such as, as Malacarne et al. wrote: "The disappearance of the restaurant market restrictions on face-to-face marketing and extreme uncertainty about labor availability and the tourist market. To help address this issue, a farmer led effort led to the creation of the main farm in seafood directory, which opened on March 19th, 2020."
By the end of March, 337 farms and seafood vendors listed their operations and available products on the directory. In under a month, the directory received 47,000 views by consumers who were interested in safe, local, and direct shopping. At the end of September of 2020, the Maine Farm and Seafood Directory had gathered 483 farmers, fishermen, and other producers, and received 91,910 views.
What did consumers and farmers alike learn from the pandemic in these shifts and how do we move? Malacarne et al. conclude their article with two points. The first is the vital need for investments in agricultural storage, processing, and packaging infrastructure in the state. The second is the need for packaging and processing infrastructure to be flexible enough to shift across the restaurant, institutional, and consumer-facing markets.
Having the ability to shift markets when needed will be more sustainable and effective. Malacarne et al. conclude: "Resilient systems include a measure of flexibility and redundancy. Maine can maintain, even enhance its integration into the broader food system while increasing the prominence of its own agricultural products by investing in local agricultural infrastructure, Maine can provide market opportunities to its producers, increase the reliability of the supply of important stable goods for its consumers, and provide sources of employment and income to its workforce. Now we will be talking with Malacarne and Lilley about what the future of the Maine food system might look like.
Thank you both so much for joining us today.
Jonathan Malacarne: It's my pleasure. Thanks for having us.
Jason Lilley: Thanks for having us.
Eric Miller: Before the pandemic, what aspects of the main food system are unique strengths and weaknesses relative to other states? Has the pandemic and other shocks changed these attributes at all? And if so, how?
Jason Lilley: So I'll jump in on that one. I would say that from the farmer perspective, the production side of things, Maine has really been ahead of the game and has had a leg up in relationship to the diversity of production types here in the state. So there's a lot of different types of agricultural production that happen.
And not all, but a lot of that agricultural production is marketed through local channels. So there's a lot of good relationship building that happens between the clients and, and or the consumers and the farmers as well as loyalty on the consumer's part to either specific farms or to just supporting the Maine food system as a, as a whole. And I've spoken with many folks from the Ag Service provider network, so people from Cooperative Extension and various organizations. And it, it really is a kind of out-of-state Maine is really known for the style of agriculture that we have.
Jonathan Malacarne: I think that's a great description of some of the strengths on the, on the challenges side and moving a little bit to kind of viewing it through the consumer's eyes. Maine's a very rural state. People are pretty spread out and in certain parts of Maine, one of the challenges is the distance to places to go and buy food. It's often hard to support traditional grocery stores in areas with low population density, and that means that you either have to travel farther to buy food or you have a more limited set of options from which you can buy food, and maybe you need a car to get there. and so as particularly for vulnerable populations, both of those can can make it hard to access food, even if food exists and is offered at an affordable price somewhere.
Eric Miller: Yeah, those excellent insights. It reminds me of a couple of facets of Maine in terms of social relationships in that it's like a big small town in that you can get to know everyone, but at the same time you can't get there from here. So it's going to be a struggle to maintain the supply chain connectivity. And both of those strengths and weaknesses are reflected there, and that's really, really interesting to me. You suggest in your article that there's a need for investment in agricultural storage processing, and packaging infrastructure in Maine. You also stress the need for packaging and processing infrastructure to be flexible enough to shift across restaurant institutional and consumer-facing markets.
Have you noticed any evidence of these shifts occurring in Maine over the past two years?
Jonathan Malacarne: Yeah, I'll start. So I think the first thing to note is that these are really long-term issues. And while it feels like a lot of time has passed in terms of infrastructure changes, we're still very much in the early stages of making use of what we learned during the pandemic.
At the same time, I think there has been some great movement In infrastructure investment both on kind of through private sources, farm businesses, realizing what they need and starting to make those changes as well as support from, from the state through access to grants. I think we're just finishing up the Department of Ag Conservation and Forestry administering about $19 million in grant funding specifically for increases in processing infrastructure on farm businesses.
I believe they made 64 grants totaling just under $19 million—that finalized maybe this past month. And so it's great to see that happening. And it's also important to acknowledge that that's really just the tip of the iceberg. In terms of needs for infrastructure investment, there were many, many more applicants proposing much-needed upgrades to the system and to their own operation that remain to be funded in the future. So definitely moving in the right direction, but it's a slow process.
Jason Lilley: Adding a little onto the Ag Infrastructure Investment program that Jonathan was mentioning, those 60 some awardees they were awarded the grant funds due to the strong agreement and plans to build out the infrastructure on their farm in a way that would help with distribution and processing, not only for their own farm, but for other farms that they're collaborating with. Or other farms in, in the network with, you know, similar types of production. So that was, yeah, really exciting to see.
That's gonna have some huge impacts. That's anywhere between 250 and $500,000 per awardee. And as Jonathan, I was also mentioning there were almost 800 applicants. So that really from my perspective shows the immense amount of need for additional funding into these types of improvements.
Eric Miller: Yeah. On one hand, it's very encouraging to get so much interest and the fact that this kind of programming and funding is, is, is rolling. But yeah, the, it definitely highlights the, the, the need which hopefully will be addressed as soon as, as feasibly possible, whether it's through the state, federal programming, what have you.
So can you talk a bit about the consumer demand for local food markets? Uh, is that demand still increasing? What progress and or setbacks has the local food market faced since you wrote this article?
Jason Lilley: So, in my role with Cooperative Extension, I spend a lot of time driving around visiting farms, primarily in the southern part of the state. And one of the, as mentioned in the article, one of the big benefits, I guess, of the pandemic was this big turn towards local food and a huge amount of interest. And um, that has really carried over for the majority of producers. So not only have they built relationships with local people in their communities.
Um, but now the restaurants have started open back up and are really trying to, to, to push hard to support local businesses and all that.
Jonathan Malacarne: Like Jason mentioned earlier, Maine has long had a strong consumer demand and strong consumer interest in local food. And I think that that has continued for lots of people and for, for lots of you know, businesses that make it their goal to provide food that matches well with what consumers want. But now, like always it's not everyone and it's not a continual upward path. Some shoppers have gone back to previous behaviors. Some businesses have gone back to business as usual.
Others, you know, found that they liked what they were doing. When it came to food procurement during, during the pandemic and consumers have, those consumers have continued to prioritize local purchases, and a lot of businesses as they reopened and recovered, have identified that being more integrated with local producers can be something that differentiates them in the eyes of consumers and have, have really doubled down on that.
Eric Miller: Yeah, it's really interesting to think about benefits coming out of Covid, but one thing that was really almost like special to see was how much more engagement people had, both what was on their plate and, and how it got there. And I find that to be something that I mean this goes into my, my personal biases, but I'm very happy to see how that transformation happened because prior to Covid, I, you see the grocery shelves and, and most of the calories people were getting were not necessarily from, they were from a longer supply chain. And so it's nice to see maybe some, some nudging toward engagement with local producers. and a more diverse set of types of food is nice to see.
Jonathan Malacarne: Yeah, I think it's a little, I know, we all, a lot of us who work in this space and who have these conversations we spend a lot of time you know, being, being happy about that. I think it's important to, to realize, and this is a point that we make in the article as well, that the goal, especially if we're talking about resilient food systems, isn't necessarily to, to make them hyper-local.
Eric Miller: Right.
Jonathan Malacarne: There are lots of things that we can't produce here, or lots of things that would take many more resources to produce here.
And so don't actually kind of have that desirable, say, environmental impact or that desirable impact on sustainability broadly that we might think because they're local. I think the goal is, as you mentioned, to diversify and to really take a little bit more holistic view of the food system and figure out what we can do well here and make sure that we're doing that. And at the same time recognize that there are many ways to ensure access to affordable, high-quality food for, for everyone. And that involves making use of our resources here, but then also integrating in a smart way to kind of the broader national and global food system.
Eric Miller: This is why I appreciate having folks like you studying this so carefully because it's so nuanced. There's no silver bullet solution. It's not too industrialized nor hyper-localized. So how would you describe the situation that the main food system is in now, two years in the pandemic and at a point where food costs have been rising for various other reasons?
Have any lessons from the early days of the pandemic helped the food system, whether these new shocks?
Jonathan Malacarne: Yeah, so there's, you know, one of the things that's more salient now is that We're always facing, there are always shocks to the food system, the, the pandemic, the early days of the pandemic, especially where a sudden, large, unexpected and kind of unprecedented shock.
What we're facing now with rising food costs happens repeatedly, right? Food costs go up, food costs go down. and I think that a few things make this different. and consumers have some, some experience now from the pandemic that can help them face rising food costs. And the first is we all have a little bit more practice being flexible.
And so whenever the cost of, I'm an economist, and so I imagine that whenever the cost of one thing goes up, consumers decide whether or not they wants to continue purchasing it or whether they want to switch to a similar, but maybe cheaper or good. and we have a lot of evidence that that's actually what consumers do.
So I work with a group at the University of Maine and at the University of Vermont that's part of the National Food Access and Covid research team. and we run some ongoing surveys and rising food prices is one of the questions that we asked about. and so in our most recent survey 62% of respondents reported that the rising food costs has made them alter their behavior.
But then at the same time, there's a lot of work that's done, and in particular I'm thinking of the Consumer Food Insights report that runs out of Purdue. That happens at a much, much higher frequency. and they see similar things that consumers are changing their food purchasing behavior in response to rising food price.
But what they find is that some of that is seeking out more sales and discounts, or some of that is swapping between name brands and generic brands. and so it doesn't necessarily mean that there's a one-for-one association between rising food prices and rising food expenditure in every household.
And that is not at all to say that rising food prices are not challenging, it's just that we have a little bit, everybody has a little bit more practice now responding to challenging situations when it comes to procuring food, and so I know that the system itself is dealing with that and is using that experience very wisely. And I'm confident that consumers are doing the same thing.
Jason Lilley: I would say that the farmers who again, have more of a direct to consumer outlet um, have, have been able to maintain those relationships and that. A lot of the early structures that they set up in order to, to market safely in the face of, of Covid.
So their online sales platforms, their increased, you know, newsletters, all of that have really carried over and not only allowed them to continue to market to these new customers, but have allowed, have allowed them to improve their businesses as a whole. So they've got better tracking of what they're producing and what they're selling and, and what market outlets their products are going through.
So there are a lot of benefits and kind of on-farm lessons learned that are definitely going to be carried over from the perspective of the farmers who sell wholesale and who have less control over their pricing, they're, this has been a very challenging season. farm inputs have gone up, you know, between 60 and 120%.
So while farmers' cost of production is going, is essentially doubled their, what they're getting has, has really not increased at all. I've spoken to several farmers who work with some grocery chains and, and they haven't seen any increase since 2019. So it's really tough for them to figure out, you know, how they're gonna continue to make the farm viable if what they're selling their product for doesn't match that cost of production.
So that's a serious hurdle that needs to be addressed.
Eric Miller: Yeah, it's, it's fascinating how this, this practice and flexibility has, has carried over. and it's also, it blows my mind how in the span of two and a half years we have experienced two historic global shocks, One being pandemic and the other, of course being the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
So, to, I, I'm glad you are keeping tabs on how this, how input costs, is changing and negatively affecting folks and how that's going to shape policy coming up. And so to transition to little policy talk so there are policy initiatives that help support the food system at the onset of the pandemic.
Now that most of those have expired, have there been any new policy initiatives to aid with ongoing food and financial insecurities due the pandemic or even gas price increases? Uh, what kind of food policy do we need at the present moment?
Jason Lilley: Yeah, I think that you know, unfortunately I don't have any specific, you know, silver bullet policies that would really solve some of these crises.
But I think that, you know, going back to the previous question, my response in that farmers need to get paid more to match the cost of productions is kind of counter to Jonathan's response of the consumer's ability to pay for food and, and rising food costs. So I don't know if, if there is a solution of stipends for food or, you know, offsets for, for the cost of production. I don't know in what form that would come in, but that is something that does need to be addressed. So.
Jonathan Malacarne: Yeah, this is actually what Jason just highlighted is often at the top of my mind. I teach a class called the Main Farm and Food Economy and we really engage with this directly like this, this challenge of supporting farmers and wanting farmers to get paid for their effort and for the products they produce and the service that they provide. And at the same time, trying to manage the cost of food so that everyone has access to sufficient quantities and qualities of food to live a healthy lifestyle. and it really is, it's one of those challenging questions to answer and then put on top of that.
You know, having to, to realize and recognize that anything that we do that affects the price of, of fuel or affects the price of chemical inputs, you know, may also have undesirable impacts for, for emissions and for our kind of ongoing needs to address climate change. and all of these things are connected and, and that makes it really hard.
I think it is important to note that, you know, while some of the specific programs and policies that were designed to address needs at the beginning of the pandemic may have expired. There were lots of organizations and lots of uh, departments and divisions within organizations like the USDA that this is just what they do. And supporting, supporting both farmers and supporting consumers has been their mission since long before the pandemic and will continue to be their mission long after the pandemic, as they administer and run programs to support both farmers and food insecure households every day.
And here it's the same, the same is true here in Maine, right? There are organizations and there are many people who get up and go to work every day. And this is just, this is their job, and we are going through a moment where that's been a little bit more in the public eye. And I would love that to be true all the time so that we acknowledge their efforts and support funding for their program even when we're not dealing with a new acute crisis, right? Access to sufficient quantities and quality of food is an ongoing and always pressing need, and as Jason mentioned, supporting farmers is similarly and, and ongoing and always present pressing need and to, to deal with it. We need to pay attention, not just when something new and exciting and big happens, but every day.
Eric Miller: I really appreciate you both entertaining such an easy question to toward the end of the interview here, and I also appreciate how you're able to communicate these challenges of consumer prices as well as farmer income as that is very, very challenging problem to address. To finish things off, is there anything else you'd like to share about the Maine food system that we haven't covered already?
Jason Lilley: Yeah, I'll, I'll just jump in as kind of a cherry on top here and remind folks of, you know, the scenario we were in at the onset of the pandemic. Everyone was you know, fully stressed out, confused, didn't know what was going to happen.
And farmers took a moment, you know, pivoted, you know, almost immediately, and, and really worked on figuring out how to continue to support our community and our local economy and our local food systems. And I would argue that they did that in a way that was wildly successful. And, you know, not at I mean definitely at their own expense and risk to their own health.
And you know, it was financially burdensome, but they all stuck with it. And they were, they were here for the state. And now, you know, the tables have kind of turned, like things have kind of leveled off. We're seeing inflation kind of in our general economy. I've heard numbers of eight to 13% for the average American.
Um, and to pair that with farmers, increased cost, cost of productions being, you know, 60 to 120% in increases. So, I think it's now a moment to, for the, you know, general consumers of Maine to just really kind of step back and think, you know, if we have the means at all, it's really, it goes beyond just the food that we're putting on our table. Us taking that effort to support our local farmers has that ripple effect at supporting a whole economy, the ecosystem you know, and our communities. So that's what I would leave us with.
Jonathan Malacarne: I can't do better than that, so I'll give Jason the last word there.
Eric Miller: Yeah, that was very well put. Thank you, Jason, and thank you Jonathan as well for joining us today on Maine Policy Matters.
Jason Lilley: Thank you for the opportunity to be here.
Jonathan Malacarne: Yeah, it was a pleasure. Thanks.
Eric Miller: What you just heard was JG Malacarne's, Jason Lilley's, and Nancy McBrady's perspective from their article, "The Response of the Maine Food System to the Onset of the Covid- 19 Pandemic." Maine Policy Review is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Margaret Chase Policy Center at the University of Maine. For citations for the data provided in this article, please refer to the original article in Maine Policy Review. The editorial team for Maine Policy Review is made up of Joyce Rumery, Linda Silka and Barbara Harrity. Jonathan Rubin directs the policy center. A thank you to Jayson Heim and Kathryn Swacha, script writers for Maine Policy Matters, and to Daniel Soucier, our production consultant.
In two weeks, we'll be reading a summary of Rob Brown's article entitled "How to Save Jobs and Build Back Better: Employee Ownership Transitions As a Key to an Equitable Economic Recovery." We would like to thank you for listening to Maine Policy Matters from the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine.
You can find us online by searching Maine Policy Matters on your web browser. If you enjoyed this episode, please follow us on your preferred social media platform and stay updated on new episode releases. I am Eric Miller. Thanks for listening and please join us next time on Maine Policy Matters.