Since I was away on vacation, there have been many things going on that have implications for both the economy and the environment in Maine. As it turns out, the very area where I and my family were camping is actually Ground Zero for one of the most potentially important invasions in Maine’s local history: …
The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI, pronounced “Reggie” for short) holds its next auction on March 11th. I’m going to devote this post (and possibly the next one) to what RGGI is, the economic theory behind it, and what it means for the state of Maine. (A little caveat is in order here: like all …
Like everyone else in Maine, I’ve been distracted by the winter storms, Valentine’s Day, etc., so I missed this little bit of information: On Tuesday (Feb 12, 2015), there was a hearing at the Department of Marine Resources on regulations around the harvest quota for the upcoming elver season. As I said in one of …
My last blog post was about combined sewer overflows (CSOs) and how in Portland, Maine, millions of gallons of stormwater and raw sewage combined can flow into our rivers and bays after a heavy rain. In this blog post, I’ll talk about some of the ways in which municipalities can “fix” CSOs, and in particular, …
Image from the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (mwra.org). Photo taken without permission, but I don’t think they’d mind. At least I hope not. In the women’s bathroom on the fifth floor on one of the buildings in which I used to teach, there was a sticker on the wall: “I am not a trashcan! The …
I’ve had a very long hiatus from this blog, and I apologize to my faithful readers (all 4 of you)! Without going into too much detail, my (tenured) position at the University of Southern Maine was eliminated, along with the positions of about 50 faculty members. So the last six months have been a bit …
Sounds like the title of a children’s book, doesn’t it? A glass eel (or an elver, another wonderful evocative name) is a baby eel. These creatures are tiny and almost translucent. A few weeks ago I was at the beach with my daughter and nephew . There’s a stream that flows Into the ocean from …
Hi there! Welcome to my first ever blog, “Maine’s Riches.” The idea here is to write about the connection between Maine’s economy and its environment. For those of you familiar with Maine, you know that it is a place of both spectacular beauty and rural poverty. Some say that there are “two Maines”: northern Maine, …