The Maine Monitor Radio Hour is a monthly program in which reporters and editors from The Maine Monitor discuss the newsroom’s recent reporting. This month, deputy editor Stephanie McFeeters was joined by health care reporter Emily Bader to talk about Bader's reporting on two unique approaches to recovery — one in Machias and one in Millinocket.  Bader first told listeners about the work that went into her story on Safe Harbor Recovery Home in Machias, including her fact-checking process. Of the approximately 80 homes in the state certified by the Maine Association of Recovery Residences, Safe Harbor is one of just two that allow women and children. Maine’s Office of Child and Family Services identified substance use as a risk factor when removing a child from their parents’ care 55 percent of the time in 2022, up from 53 percent in 2021, according to a report released earlier this year. That’s well above the national rate, which was 42 percent in 2021. She also spoke about her story on the Healing Lodge in Millinocket, a center for Indigenous people recovering from substance use disorder and healing from trauma. The Healing Lodge is one of several treatment and recovery facilities run by Wabanaki Public Health and Wellness, an organization that works to provide culturally sensitive health care and social services to the four federally recognized tribal nations in Maine. According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, an estimated 1 in 10 Mainers 12 and older struggled with substance use disorder in the past year. You can listen to the episode here. Tune in to listen live the first Thursday of every month at 4 p.m. on WERU 89.9 FM.

This story was co-published with Sanford Springvale News. Farmington and Sanford lead the state in solar development, according to the Governor’s Energy Office, a result of their proximity to high-voltage transmission lines, municipal advocacy and the relative availability of large undeveloped blocks of land. Farmington has the most solar installed in the state with 94.2 megawatts, followed by Sanford, with 62.6.  Farmington’s dominance is largely due to a 76.5 megawatt array on a farm along the Sandy River — reported to be the largest array in New England when it came online several years ago. The project was a joint venture supported by Bowdoin College in Brunswick and partners in Massachusetts. The panels were erected on roughly 300 acres of farmland and woodland after dairy farmer Bussie York lost a contract with Horizon Organic in 2018 and was forced to downsize his herd, according to reporting by Maine Public. In Sanford, the prevalence of solar is partly the result of more than a decade of advocacy on the part of City Manager Steven Buck as well as the city’s sweet-spot location, said Dale Knapp, head of Walden Renewables, which has developed several projects in the area.  Sanford is near enough to multiple 145-kilovolt transmission lines that it’s relatively convenient to wheel large amounts of power onto the grid. But it’s distant enough from congested urban areas that large blocks of land (50 acres or more) are still available for development.  “Sanford is uniquely positioned,” said Knapp. “It’s kind of a balance.” Knapp added that Sanford’s “development-friendly” business climate facilitates solar development, although that is less important. “It really is about transmission capacity and available land, then land use ordinances.” When Buck became the Sanford town manager in 2011, the solar industry in the United States was still in its infancy. Prices for panels, which had been prohibitively high, were on a downward slide, ushered along by a federal push to bring large-scale solar costs in line with other forms of energy.  At the time, Maine had few incentives for solar development. The first community solar development was still several years away from coming online, and the state was governed by Paul LePage, who spent much of his tenure battling with advocates over net metering programs, which paid homeowners for installing panels and sending electricity back into the grid. The project envisioned by Sanford officials seemed straightforward: 5 megawatts on a closed landfill just off Washington Street.  “That’s all we wanted to do,” said Buck. “In my mind I had hit the easy button.” Thirteen years later, the landfill project has yet to be built. But Sanford’s push for it helped bring about impactful changes in state and federal regulations, and ushered York County to the top of the solar heap, neck-and-neck with Kennebec County. As of July, the two counties had 136 megawatts and 138 megawatts of installed solar capacity, respectively, according to figures from the Governor’s Energy Office. An economic win Maine’s net energy billing program, in which solar owners are paid for the energy they send back into the grid, has been criticized for its cost to ratepayers. Bill Harwood, the Maine Public Advocate, has estimated the projects will cost ratepayers roughly $220 million annually for 20 years; roughly $275 per ratepayer per year.  Many of the state’s community solar projects have wound up bundled and sold to some of the world’s largest corporations and investment firms, according to reporting by The Maine Monitor. But advocates for solar projects say they’re an economic boon to municipalities. In Farmington, the array on York’s property is expected to bring in roughly $20 million in tax revenue to the town over the course of the 30-year lease agreement, according to reporting by the Sun Journal.  Sanford’s solar projects bring in more than $1.2 million in gross tax revenue each year, according to Buck. At a current valuation of $74.6 million, said Buck, the projects — including the 50-megawatt array at the Sanford Seacoast Regional Airport, one of the largest airport arrays in the nation — bring in $1,214,000 in gross tax revenue. Buck said the city expects two more projects to come online in the next year. “There's a multitude of ways to get an economic benefit out of a well-designed alternative energy project,” said Buck. Between lease payments, a maintenance and construction agreement, environmental offsets and other benefits, the airport project alone brings in an average of $16,279 per megawatt, more than $800,000 annually. Buck and Jim Nimon, the economic development director at the time, saw the economic promise of solar more than a decade ago. They envisioned a 5-megawatt solar project on the dormant landfill, with a power purchase agreement in which Sanford would lease the land to a solar developer who would sell the electricity from panels back to the city at a fixed price. Ambitions grew as the city looked to expand the project to 10 megawatts, with 5 on the landfill and another 5 on a Brownfield site across the road.  But building solar on old landfills is 10% to 15% more expensive than on undeveloped land – construction practices must be altered to ensure the site’s protective cap isn’t compromised, which can increase labor costs. The presence of the cap also means posts typically can’t be driven into the ground but must be stabilized with ballast or mounted on long concrete footings, an additional expense. Landfills and brownfields, which often have remnants of industrial infrastructure and environmental hazards, may also require more in-depth review than putting posts and panels in an empty field. Landfill projects must be monitored to ensure they do not compromise the site’s integrity in the long term.  “So from a cost perspective, it didn't pencil out,” said Buck. “It was too expensive.” Undeterred, Buck delved into legislative advocacy, pushing for state approval for a pilot that would have allowed the proposed project to benefit from net metering, in which solar owners are paid for some of the energy they send back into the grid. The gambit failed; opponents argued that the bill was too broad and would have impacted ratepayers across the state. In the meantime, however, Buck, Nimon and the airport manager, Allison Navia, courted a small developer who expressed interest in putting panels on the Sanford airport, a roughly 1,200-acre parcel that had 420 acres authorized for non-aviation use. Just as the city was entering into an agreement with the company, Ranger Solar, the Federal Aviation Administration announced a temporary halt on putting panels around airports, citing concerns about glare that could impede a pilot’s vision.  Apart from the glint and glare issue, the project encountered hurdle after hurdle. Environmental regulations meant the city and developer needed more land to accommodate the number of panels that would be necessary to make the project economically viable. The size of the proposal also required a new $8 million substation to handle the amount of power being generated.  “There was always something cropping up — real estate issues, regulatory complexities, state environmental concerns and technical hurdles,” Navia told the trade publication Airport Improvement in 2021. “The project almost died on a monthly basis for about five years.” The project's magnitude and innovation drew the attention of NextEra Energy, one of the largest solar investors in the U.S., leading to the project’s acquisition in 2017. The 50-megawatt project that went live in November 2020 is one of the largest airport solar projects in the country. But Knapp said Sanford may soon reach its solar generation capacity. “There’s a limit to the number of farms because transmission capacity is being used up. Each farm chips away at transmission capacity. The (proverbial) highway will be full. That day is not too far off,” he said. A chart showing solar development in Maine since 2009. Courtesy the Governor's Energy Office. Sanford’s pursuit of solar developments comes as other Maine communities are slowing the rush, instituting temporary pauses on development and banning larger commercial arrays. More than a dozen municipalities have paused solar development in recent years, according to reporting by News Center Maine. The city continues to pursue more solar, however, and has partnered with Walden Renewables to develop a 5-megawatt community solar project on a remediated Brownfield site expected to be online in the coming year. It is also negotiating a tax increment financing district and a credit enhancement agreement with Walden on another 20-megawatt project to make the project more financially attractive to developers. “It is much easier” for the city to engage with developers on projects now, said Buck. “We know how to value them … it's just second nature for us now. We've conquered all of these elements.” Correction: This story has been updated with the correct version of an image showing solar capacity in Maine.

The Maine Monitor has compiled the most recent data on compensation at Maine’s private colleges and universities, finding that Colby College president David Greene was paid more than $2 million in fiscal year 2023.  The data is based on 990s from fiscal year 2023 examined through the ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, and includes the top three earners at each school.  Compensation figures include base compensation, bonus and incentive compensation and other reportable compensation; non-taxable benefits are not included. 

On the morning of Dec. 19, 2023, Norridgewock Town Manager Richard LaBelle felt the Route 201A bridge sway beneath his feet as a surging Kennebec River lapped up against its bottom span.  One of the few Kennebec River crossings in Somerset County not yet closed from that day’s disastrous inland Maine flooding, the Cpl. Eugene Cole Memorial Bridge had become a chokepoint for evacuees heading south. LaBelle scrambled to get ahold of officials from the Maine Department of Transportation to determine whether he should shut off bridge access. But he and then-deputy fire chief Todd Pineo were told that the agency’s engineers were tied up elsewhere. “‘Use your judgment.’ That was largely the response we got out of the DOT,” said Pineo, now the department’s chief. It was a tough call: close the bridge and send evacuees to another river crossing, or risk the chance, however slim, of the bridge failing with people on it. LaBelle decided to close the bridge. “It was better to deal with loss of time than loss of life,” he told The Maine Monitor.  Paul Merrill, communications director for the Maine DOT, said that the department sent a team to the bridge later that day, after it had been closed off, and disputed the water level seen by LaBelle. “The water had not reached the bridge beams as it did at the bridge downstream in Skowhegan, which MaineDOT did close that day,” Merrill wrote in an email. “We performed an underwater inspection on the Norridgewock bridge in July and found no signs of distress.” “ ‘Use your judgment.’ That was largely the response we got out of the DOT,” said Todd Pineo, now the fire department chief. Photo by Garrick Hoffman. The bridge wasn’t the only challenge the town had to navigate on its own. In the flooding’s immediate aftermath, LaBelle was tasked with setting up an emergency shelter for Norridgewock and nearby Fairfield — without staff members able to access Somerset County’s cache of emergency resources. Trees and power lines were down, roads washed out; coordination was bogged down by a lack of internet and cell service. LaBelle relied on connections with local contractors to clear obstructions when the fire department couldn’t reach them. One obstacle after another reinforced to LaBelle and Pineo just how isolated and vulnerable Norridgewock is during extreme floods. It’s a position the two don’t want the town to be in again, so they are purchasing equipment and pursuing flood resilience projects — as well as making emergency plans with other officials across the county as they navigate the bureaucracy of state and federal assistance.  “What we learned from December is that all emergencies are local until they're not,” Pineo said. “You have to be prepared as a town.” ‘There was so much water’ The Kennebec River had already crept up near the base of Norridgewock resident Susan Millett’s house before she woke that morning. It wasn’t until Millett, who lives alone with her five cats and dogs, received a call from her daughter warning that officials were closing bridges in Skowhegan because of the flooding that she peered out her windows into the dim morning light.  “I looked outside … and the river was just racing by,” Millett said. “It was scary. There was so much water.” Panicked, Millett drove to the town’s center to buy drinking water when she came across LaBelle and some firefighters on the bridge.  She asked the firefighters at what point she should evacuate, but was told they couldn’t provide specific advice — the water was rising unpredictably. “I really had a hard time accepting that this is the place where I live and it could happen again,” said Norridgewock resident Susan Millett. Photo by Garrick Hoffman. Millett returned home to see the water climbing further and quickly made arrangements to stay at a hotel in Waterville with her pets. She ferried supplies across the icy water in her driveway to the car, grabbing dog food, kitty litter and whatever else she might need for the next few days. “It was so cold, that water,” Millett recalled. “And when I came in, I changed my clothes because I'm like, ‘I'm gonna freeze to death.’ ” Millett swapped pants for shorts so the soaked fabric wouldn’t cling to her legs. When she finally made it to the hotel, she found out it was also without power. She then drove to Portland to stay with her daughter. The evacuation experience scarred her, she said, but the realization that Norridgewock is so vulnerable to flooding is even more painful. “It has taken me months and months to get over,” Millett said. “I really had a hard time accepting that this is the place where I live and it could happen again.”  Her father had the house built in 1960 for the family when Millett was 15, just up the road from the Skowhegan paper mill where he worked. The structure has survived numerous floods, including the historic April Fool’s Day flood of 1987, which sent water halfway up the first floor. Each flood carves a sliver of the bank between the back of her house and the Kennebec. A black bucket still hangs from the lower branches of a small maple up a slope from the river’s edge, marking how high the waters reached in December. “I know the river keeps getting closer because I keep losing riverbank,” Millett said.  Search and rescue Norridgewock is positioned just under the confluence of two historically flood-prone rivers, with its northwestern limits hugging the Sandy and its population center wedged below a bend in the Kennebec.  Town officials are used to the Sandy River overtopping during smaller floods, but the scale of the Kennebec’s recent flooding was surprising, reminding locals of that 1987 rising. “We're inarguably seeing an extreme shift in intensity of weather events,” Pete Rogers, director of the Maine Emergency Management Agency, told the state commission reviewing Maine’s response to last winter’s flooding in June. “Maine people have been forced to confront the consequences of climate change, not as a future hypothetical, but as a present reality.” In Norridgewock, LaBelle said, the number of floods has increased. ”And unfortunately we have two rivers: the Sandy River, which almost always takes out a road,” LaBelle said. “Now the Kennebec River is posing a threat to people and property.” The town’s fire department felt that heightened threat on Dec. 19.  Norridgewock’s only two full-time firefighters, Kyle Mullin and Andrew Dexter, used a nearby town’s rescue boat during the December flood. Photo by Garrick Hoffman. After a morning of knocking on doors and warning residents of the rising waters, Norridgewock’s only two full-time firefighters, Kyle Mullin and Andrew Dexter, received a call from a couple trapped in a house near where the two rivers meet. Mullin and Dexter coordinated with the Madison Fire Department to use the neighboring town’s rescue boat and bolted to the house along Father Rasle Road on the northern bank of the Kennebec.  When they got there, water was halfway up the house’s main door and rising fast. The firefighters reached out of the boat to rescue the couple from the icy brown water, shocked by what they were seeing. Unlike much of the region at that point, the couple still had power and cell phone service. The firefighters said they would not have thought to search that area without receiving a call. “We never expected that to flood because we have never seen it,” Mullin said, not even during the 1987 flood.  “Inconceivable,” added Pineo, the fire chief. The fire department’s reliance on the Madison rescue boat exposed one of the town’s vulnerabilities. Norridgewock’s own boat, an older metal skiff with an outboard motor, sinks too low to navigate through shallow debris, while its sides are too high for firefighters to effectively lean out and pull people in. Had Madison been tied up with its own rescues that morning, Norridgewock would have had trouble getting to the couple and rescuing other people stranded in vehicles.  Mullin hopes the department will be able to get a new boat with an inboard motor capable of navigating confined areas, but that’s not an immediate priority. Funding dilemmas In the wake of the December storm, more than 2,000 Mainers applied for federal disaster relief funds, according to Anne Fuchs, director of mitigation, planning and recovery at the Maine Emergency Management Agency.  The Federal Emergency Management Agency has disbursed $11.7 million to those applicants, with 12 receiving the agency’s maximum allocation of $42,000. “When you go through something like this, that's not enough,” Fuchs told the state commission. “And if people don't have (flood) insurance, which many don’t, that’s barely anything.”  Millett, who evacuated her home with her pets, has spent nine months going back and forth with FEMA and insurance adjusters over disaster relief and her flood insurance claim, which only covered a fraction of the value of the appliances ruined by floodwater in her basement.  Norridgewock is positioned just under the confluence of two historically flood-prone rivers, with its northwestern limits hugging the Sandy and its population center wedged below a bend in the Kennebec. Photo by Garrick Hoffman. The experience was especially challenging when Millett visited the FEMA outpost in Skowhegan and officials had her use their phone to call an agency supervisor.  Millett, who is hard of hearing, wasn’t able to use the transcription app on her phone during those calls — making it difficult for her to understand what the supervisor was saying. “It was humiliating,” Millett said.  (A FEMA spokesperson did not comment on Millett's experience but said the agency provides various accessibility services.) Meanwhile, the 207 municipalities and private non-profit organizations that applied for FEMA funds are just starting to meet with officials, Fuchs said.  As federal funding slowly unfurls, state grants can only go so far in covering costs for more immediate climate-resilient infrastructure projects. Gov. Janet Mills allocated $60 million for storm recovery in a supplemental budget approved by the legislature this year. Bob Carey, who sits on the state commission and is the superintendent of Maine Bureau of Insurance, said he was daunted by the costs to both rebuild and bolster damaged infrastructure.  “The town manager of Kennebunkport mentioned that raising one mile of road would cost $3 million and I thought, ‘Well, the state just appropriated $60 million, so we can do 20 miles of road, and that would be the end of the $60 million,’ ” he said. Only $25 million of the state’s allocation was earmarked for infrastructure projects like roads and culverts, though there are funding sources elsewhere, including the DOT’s Infrastructure Adaptation Fund. More proactive work outlined in county-level hazard mitigation plans to reduce vulnerability to natural disasters would cost around $205.8 million, according to an estimate in the state’s own hazard mitigation plan from 2023. Between 2020 and 2023, Maine received about $300,000 per year through the FEMA grant that would fund those projects, according to the plan, which states: “Even if no new projects were added to the list, it would take over 100 years to address all of the previously identified needs!” Local fixes In Norridgewock, town officials understand the urgency of the problem and are taking matters into their own hands.  The town has spent $8,200 to buy an emergency management trailer and another $6,000 on cones, barricades and road signs. A little way upstream from Norridgewock’s center, near where the Sandy River bends and flows into the Kennebec south of Madison, the town plans two bank stabilization projects for an anticipated cost of $475,000, with help from a $2.5 million federal grant.  In August, the Norridgewock Water District received $1.05 million from Mills’ infrastructure resilience grant to replace a critical section of water main especially vulnerable to flooding because of its position right along the Kennebec. The town also spent $37,500 to patch the stretch of road the water main travels under. Years of flooding have whittled away the bank between the river and Upper Main Street, eliminating an embankment that once had a 25-foot-wide plot of corn. “I've got guardrails slumping into the river,” LaBelle said. LaBelle hopes to strengthen the road beyond the temporary fix, but it would cost around $1 million and so far conversations with FEMA have only focused on the patch.  Norridgewock Town Manager Richard LaBelle, who also serves as the town clerk and emergency manager, is still meeting with FEMA to show the need for additional funding. Photo by Garrick Hoffman. LaBelle, who also serves as the town clerk and emergency manager, is still meeting with FEMA to show the need for additional funding. Disaster funds from the May 2023 flood event only arrived in Norridgewock earlier this summer and the overall process has felt drawn out for him. “It's a burden, especially for a small town,” he said. Such delays aren’t typical, according to Sunny Cyr, management analyst for MEMA, though they can occur “due to the volume of payment requests relative to staffing levels throughout the chain of approvals.” Natural boundaries Since the storm, the town has launched an emergency texting service to distribute flood warnings and other critical information, and has begun working with officials throughout Somerset County to think more strategically about coordinating efforts in future emergencies.  Cots and blankets from the Somerset County Emergency Management Agency have been moved to a location near Norridgewock, meaning the town will have greater capacity to take on evacuees from neighboring communities if needed.  Meanwhile, Pineo, the fire chief, has coordinated with other Somerset County chiefs to determine where to stage generators, fuel pumps and rescue coverage when rivers block off local infrastructure. “Forget the town boundaries for a minute,” Pineo said. “What are the natural boundaries?" Todd Pineo, the fire chief, has coordinated with other Somerset County chiefs to determine where to stage generators, fuel pumps and rescue coverage when rivers block off local infrastructure. Photo by Garrick Hoffman. While much of that coordination happens town-to-town in Maine, members of the state’s infrastructure resilience commission heard from Vermont officials about its statewide resource-sharing program called VTWARN, which pools resources and formalizes connections between Vermont wastewater districts. Jay Town Manager Shiloh LaFreniere, whose town was still grappling with the wreckage from a June 2023 flood before the December storm hit, acknowledged that Maine values the independence of municipalities, but that shouldn’t get in the way of regional cohesion. “These communities don't have the capacity,” LaFreniere said, “ and those relationships that (Vermont is) trying to build there, where people can borrow against each other … that's something that we found we absolutely needed.”

Editor’s Note: The following story first appeared in The Maine Monitor’s free environmental newsletter, Climate Monitor, that is delivered to inboxes every Friday morning. Sign up for the free newsletter to stay informed of Maine environmental news. Fall is in the air, though we have a couple weeks left of astronomical summer. It's a transitional time not just for our wardrobes, schedules and outdoor activities, but for the climate.  We know that the overall warming trend of human-caused climate change is reshaping and shifting the timing of our seasons — all anchored around the fastest-warming season, winter. The shortening cold season, with fewer days of snow cover, is reflected in later falls and earlier springs — affecting plants and animals, the water cycle, outdoor recreation, energy use, infrastructure and more.  Here's some evidence: The state climatologist's office reports Maine has seen above-normal temperatures in September (where "normal" is the 21st-century baseline) almost every year since the late 1990s, with a peak at 6.9 degrees Fahrenheit above normal for September 2015.  Last fall was one for the record books — September 2023 was 5.9 degrees above normal (second only to 6.9 degrees in 2015), and October 2023 was 7.3 degrees above normal (behind 7.7 degrees in 2017). We also wrote in this newsletter a couple years ago about record November warmth. Remember that week around Election Day in 2022 when the weather was much like it has been in Maine this week?  Federal data shows that the fall season has warmed the most in Maine after winter, unlike in many other states, where spring or summer are second in line.  National data analyzed by the nonprofit Climate Central shows that the average fall temperature in parts of Maine has increased by about 3 to 5 degrees since 1970, more than the national average.  The analysis found fall warming in 97% of the 242 locations they studied, with increases above 3 degrees in a third of those places. The fall warming signal is strongest in the Southwest, and parts of Maine are seeing a comparable level of change.  Climate Central says that Portland, Bangor and Presque Isle are now seeing at least two to three more weeks' worth of above-normal temperatures each fall as they did about 50 years ago. ("Normal" here is the 1991-2020 baseline.) A few degrees of warming might not seem like much. But ecosystems — including their human inhabitants — have evolved to respond in complex ways to minute changes in temperature, light and other factors. A small shift in climate can have big ripple effects, and we're only at the start of a long-term trend.  Among the impacts for people: more energy demand for cooling, including at the start of the school year in buildings that may be ill-equipped to provide it; a longer and more intense allergy season; and more smoke from deadlier wildfires drifting cross-country in hotter weather, increasing respiratory risks.  Parts of Maine have seen more than 4 degrees Fahrenheit of fall warming since 1970, according to this analysis of federal data. Graphic courtesy Climate Central. Warmer falls, winters and springs are also a boon for disease-carrying ticks, which can emerge earlier and feed longer in milder temperatures.  One climate impact that's less clear is on fall foliage. The factors that affect its timing and color are complex. Some aspects of warming cause leaves to drop later, but droughts can have the opposite effect.  Scientists know more about how climate change is affecting signs of spring — leaf-out, bird migration and more. More research is still to come on the autumn side of the calendar, to determine not just how much this season is warming, but what that warming will mean for nature and the built environment.  Correction: This story was updated to reflect we are approaching the end of astronomical summer, not meteorological summer.