Maine's LePage Also Can't Be Bothered To Sign 8-State Air Quality Petition
“We don’t know why Maine didn’t join in,” said Effie Craven, campaign coordinator for the Maine Healthy Air Coalition, a group of statewide and local health care and public health organizations. “It’s important to stick together as a region ... absolutely. New England has a tradition of sticking together on air pollution. Protecting people from air pollution shouldn’t be a partisan issue; it’s a health issue.”
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Asked why Maine did not join the petition, Jessamine Logan, communications director for the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, said in an email that “the largest source of impacts to Maine’s air is actually from mobile sources – not stationary sources.” She didn’t specify in the email what she meant by “mobile sources,” but proponents of relaxed emissions controls often contend that trucks and automobiles contribute as much if not more to pollution than industrial sources.
Logan said pursuing lower emission standards from stationary sources such as coal-burning plants “would have very little benefit to the quality of Maine’s air at this time, and we are cooperating and working with our regional groups on reducing emissions from mobile sources, the largest source of emissions in Maine.”
The state itself already meets federal clean air standards, and will continue to do so, Logan said. Meanwhile, discussions between Maine officials and such groups as the Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management, the Coalition of Northeastern Governors, and the Conference of New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers are ongoing and address specific methods on how reduce various sources of pollution, Logan said.
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http://www.pressherald.com/news/LePage_does_not_join_petition_for_clean_air_.html
