Category: In the news

On Earth Day — Saturday, April 22 — Belfast Bay Watershed Coalition and Rockland’s Island Institute will host a screening of four short films that show how accelerating climate change dramatically changes the ocean’s environment. The free program will begin 6:30 p.m. in the Abbott Room of Belfast Free Library, 106 High St.

Residents at the annual Cranberry Isles town meeting on March 11 voted overwhelmingly to borrow up to $1.2 million to build a fiber optic network for broadband internet service.
The network would provide broadband internet service to the town’s three inhabited islands: Great Cranberry, Little Cranberry (Islesford) and Sutton. The vote was 52-4.

Reaction in Maine to President Donald Trump’s proposed $1.15 trillion budget has been swift – and critical.
Democrat Chellie Pingree, Maine’s 1st District representative who serves on the House Appropriations Committee, says the plan to slash many domestic programs to finance a significant increase in the military and make a down payment on construction of a U.S.-Mexico border wall is “foolish, shortsighted…and will make America less healthy, safe, and economically secure. “

The John T. Gorman Foundation is helping to back a new program from the Island Institute to fund coastal and island businesses.
The Island and Coast Business Launchpad program, which was announced in the Working Waterfront publication on March 8, aims to help entrepreneurs in “geographically isolated communities.” The program will include an “innovation fund,” to provide flexible and community-focused loans, as well as business support, microgrants, digital and financial literacy classes and an aquaculture business-development program.

A Trump administration proposal to slash funding for the federal government’s principal marine agency and eliminate the national Sea Grant program is prompting alarm in Maine’s marine sector. President Trump wants to slash the budget of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – the agency responsible for fisheries management, weather forecasting, nautical surveys and assisting marine industries – by 17 percent, The Washington Post reported Friday, April 4th.

Former Island Scholar and Island Institute intern, Julia Maine, was recently interviewed about the allure of aquaculture and the opportunities it offers.
The Chebeague Island native and science educator wants to show community members the bounty that can come from sea farms and is the driving force (along with her mom, geologist Carol White) behind the first Chebeague Island Aquaculture Festival, slated for this summer.

Congresswoman Chellie Pingree has reintroduced bipartisan legislation with Republican Congressman Rob Wittman of Virginia to protect the kind of waterfront access and infrastructure that many businesses—and thousands of jobs—depend on in Maine. The objectives of Pingree’s bill, the Keep America’s Waterfronts Working Act (HR 1176), are two-fold.