Climate change has already cost Bath taxpayers millions of dollars, from paying to elevate oft-flooded roads to replacing low-lying pump houses, and those costs are expected to grow as the sea rises and extreme weather intensifies.
Enough is enough, said Bath City Councilor Jean Guzzetti. She was the lead speaker at a rally Tuesday at the Maine State Capitol on behalf of a proposed bill that would make big polluters, like Mobil or Shell, help fund Maine’s climate-related infrastructure projects.
“It’s time for polluters to pay because we have already paid,” said Guzzetti. “We paid with our flooded downtowns. We’ve already paid with our washed-out working waterfronts. We have already paid to elevate submerged roads and to upsize culverts.”
The bill would launch a climate “Superfund” cost recovery program like those created by New York, Vermont and recently Maryland that would impose penalties on big oil — or companies that produced over 1 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions between 1995 and 2024.
About 100 people from groups like Third Act, which mobilizes older people to advocate for climate action, and Maine Youth for Climate Justice attended the Make Polluters Pay Day of Action. They carried hand-painted banners and photos of Maine’s storm-damaged shoreline.
The state has spent $60 million in the 2024-25 supplemental budget for storm relief and spent $39 million last year to fund a storm preparedness bill passed in the wake of back-to-back-to-back winter storms that caused an estimated $90 million in infrastructure damages.
“That’s almost $100 million the state and we have already paid,” Guzzetti said. “And it’s not enough.”
In between “Make Polluters Pay” chants in the rotunda and the statehouse lobby, the activists asked passing lawmakers to pass the bill, which has lingered in legislative committee since last spring while lawmakers waited to see how other states defended their climate superfund bills.
The committee will take the bill up again on Wednesday, but advocates say it is unlikely to get a vote until next week at the earliest. Committee members are considering whether to split the bill into parts, and adopt it in phases, to see what changes first-adopter states might make on their bills.
Vermont was the first state to establish a climate superfund in 2024, followed by New York. Maryland passed a bill last month to commission a study to assess the cost of climate impacts, which is considered a first step in holding oil companies accountable.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute have filed a lawsuit challenging New York’s law. The U.S. Department of Justice filed its own lawsuits against Vermont and New York. Both sides have pleaded their case and are waiting for court action.
This wouldn’t be the first time Maine has held an industry responsible for harm it knowingly inflicted, including tobacco, opioids and hazardous waste, said Sean Mahoney, vice president with the Conservation Law Foundation.
Opponents have said climate superfund bills will hurt business and drive up gas prices. But Mahoney said no Maine-based company emits enough greenhouse gas to qualify as a super polluter, and that studies show that gas prices are driven by supply and demand, not lawsuits.
“The basis for this bill is a simple truth,” Mahoney said. “You make a mess, you clean it up.”
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