Resolve, Directing the Governor To Renominate Penobscot Bay for Inclusion in the United States Environmental Protection Agency National Estuary Program

Preamble. Whereas,  Penobscot Bay and its coastal forests, shores and islands attract immense numbers of visitors by land and by sea every year, supporting a thriving and robustly diverse tourism industry; and

Whereas,  Penobscot Bay supports a profitable, well-managed lobster fishery that sustains coastal communities around the bay; and

Whereas,  it is possible that Penobscot Bay will host substantial land-based salmon aquaculture operations; and

Whereas,  Penobscot Bay and the Penobscot River support dozens of plant, fish, shellfish, seabird and marine mammal species, including 11 diadromous fishes: shad, salmon, alewife, blueback herring, shortnose sturgeon, Atlantic sturgeon, sea lamprey, American eel, striped bass, rainbow smelt and tomcod; and

Whereas,  Penobscot Bay faces increasing commercial, residential and industrial development pressures to replace natural forestland and farmland with buildings, parking lots, roads and other artificial surfaces, which will increase licensed discharges and stormwater runoff; and

Whereas,  more than 30 licensed outfalls pump industrial and sewage treatment plant wastewater into Penobscot Bay and more are on the way; and

Whereas,  wastes left on, in or near the shore by 19th and 20th century fertilizer and chemical factories, mining, coal gas production and poultry processers, as well as waste oils and other fluids from automobiles and from oil spills, large and small, pollute Penobscot Bay; and

Whereas,  it is impossible to protect and restore the environments that support Penobscot Bay's fisheries and scenic and forest tourism unless we treat the entire bay as a single entity when it comes to decisions on developments that could have effects on the bay as a whole; and

Whereas,  the United States Environmental Protection Agency has developed a National Estuary Program to focus research attention on special places like Penobscot Bay and provides funding to pay for local estuary programs; and

Whereas,  in 1995, Governor Angus King unsuccessfuly nominated Penobscot Bay for inclusion in the National Estuary Program; and

Whereas,  the problems and opportunities that drove Governor King to nominate Penobscot Bay for the National Estuary Program have only increased; now, therefore be it

Sec. 1. Governor to renominate Penobscot Bay for National Estuary Program. Resolved: That the Governor shall renominate Penobscot Bay for inclusion in the United States Environmental Protection Agency National Estuary Program by:

1. Identifying Penobscot Bay as an estuary of national significance;

2. Convening a management conference at which public and private agencies may develop both short-term and long-term action plans for Penobscot Bay; and

3. Committing to implementing those plans and to creating a Penobscot Bay partnership with the funds that the United States Environmental Protection Agency will make available.

summary

This resolve directs the Governor to renominate Penobscot Bay for inclusion in the United States Environmental Protection Agency National Estuary Program.