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Fairfield Town Council moves forward with water system expansion
The Fairfield Town Council met Tuesday and discussed the 2021-22 budget and the next steps for the town s request for qualifications for the public drinking water system expansion.
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FAIRFIELD The Fairfield Town Council agreed on next steps regarding its plans to expand the public drinking water system and officials also held a public hearing for the town budget.
Councilors met Wednesday and discussed the next steps in the town’s request for qualifications process for the project to expand the public drinking water system. Submissions closed last week, and the town received responses from five firms: Dirigo Engineering, A.E. Hodsdon Consulting Engineers, Wright-Pierce, Woodard and Curran, and Haley Ward (formerly CES Inc.).
Court: Construction can proceed on hydropower corridor
DAVID SHARP, Associated Press
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PORTLAND, Maine (AP) Construction can proceed on a 53-mile (85-kilometer) stretch of utility corridor that’s a critical part of a $1 billion project to bring Canadian hydropower to the New England grid, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.
The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a request to delay construction while three conservation groups argued for a more strenuous environmental review by the federal government.
Thorn Dickinson, president and CEO of the project, called the court s decision “a victory for Maine’s clean energy future.”
“The clean energy corridor will eliminate over three million metric tons of dirty emission from the New England energy grid each year by replacing fossil fuels with clean hydropower,” he said in a statement.
What They Are Saying: Leaders Praise Governor Millsâ Budget Proposal For Fully Funding Education
May 12, 2021
âToday is a historic day for students, educators, and the people of Maine.â
âTodayâs announcement exemplifies the kind of leadership and commitment to education that Maine students deserve from their Governor.â
âIncredible news.â
Governor Janet Mills today released her Administrationâs Part 2 budget proposal for the Fiscal Year 2022-2023 biennium, which â for the first time in Maineâs history â meets the Stateâs obligation to pay 55 percent of the cost of K-12 education.
Leaders, advocates, and other experts from across Maine are praising the Governorâs proposal, which also invests in a host of bipartisan priorities, including initiatives to improve the health of Maine people; tax relief for low- and middle-income Maine people; enhanced revenue sharing with municipalities; PFAS remediation; and infras
Recycling costs have gone up for Maine communities in recent years, and that’s
Now, state lawmakers in the Environment and Natural Resources Committee are considering two bills that would help towns to safely dispose of a very common type of waste: plastic and cardboard packaging.
Both measures would force the companies that generate all that packaging to pay a fee for its disposal in Maine. That funding would then help support local recycling programs.
Rep. Nicole Grohoski, an Ellsworth Democrat who introduced one of the bills during a public hearing Monday, says that approach would pressure companies such as Amazon to use less packaging in the goods they sell to Maine consumers and in some cases, to use safer materials.
MRC towns to weigh in as sale proceeds
HAMPDEN If all goes as planned, employees could start returning to work at the shuttered waste processing facility in Hampden as soon as Monday, June 14, said Robert Van Naarden, CEO of Delta Thermo Energy (DTE), at an online meeting of the Municipal Review Committee (MRC) on April 28.
Van Naarden said he hopes to have the plant accepting full loads of waste and recycling from all 115 member towns within nine months after the company closes on the deal. It is expected to close in early June.
“We have done a significant amount of due diligence on the facility,” said Van Naarden, “to understand what we were buying … I think we have a very good understanding.”