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Update to “The Glass Eel”

Update to “The Glass Eel”

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 …

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Money down the drain? (Part 2)

Money down the drain? (Part 2)

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,  …

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Money down the drain? (Part 1)

Money down the drain? (Part 1)

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 …

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Long hiatus!

Long hiatus!

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 …

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The Glass Eel

The Glass Eel

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 …

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First Post!

First Post!

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, …

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