Committee advances Sen. Brenner bill to fund lake protection and farmland conservation

AUGUSTA – This week, the Environment and Natural Resources Committee advanced a proposal from Sen. Stacy Brenner, D-Scarborough, to direct $4 million from Maine’s unclaimed beverage container deposits toward farmland protection and lake restoration. When Mainers don’t return their beverage bottles to redemption centers to reclaim the 5- to 15-cent deposit paid per bottle at the time of purchase, current law directs those unclaimed deposits to beverage manufacturers, totaling an estimated $10 to $16 million annually.

“Healthy farmland soils and lake ecosystems are public goods we simply cannot afford to lose. And if we don’t invest in their protection now, we will lose them,” said Sen. Brenner. “As I see it, unclaimed bottle deposits are a natural and indeed necessary place to turn. Those dollars belong to Mainers and yet they continue to flow to corporate pockets. Deposits should come home to the Mainers who paid them — if not directly, then by protecting the natural resources on which all our communities’ health, economic vitality and cultural heritage hinge.”

Soaring land values and development pressures are threatening agricultural viability across the state. Farmland conversion is occurring faster than conservation can respond, with more than 82,000 acres of agricultural land falling out of production between 2017 and 2022. Maine’s Working Farmland Access Protection Program (WFAPP) is poised to combat this trend by leveraging voluntary, market-based conservation easements to ensure Maine’s most productive farmland remains available for commercial agriculture, but the program has never received funding.

Meanwhile, the Maine Department of Environmental Protection reports ongoing declines in lake water quality statewide, driven by nutrient runoff, warming temperatures and harmful algal blooms. Compounded by cuts to federal programs supporting water quality monitoring and improvement, these pressures pose real threats to fisheries, tourism, property values and local economies. Investment in the Lake Water Quality Restoration and Protection Fund would enable communities to proactively protect the $14 billion asset that Maine’s lakes represent, preventing degradation, reducing nutrient runoff and restoring water quality.

LD 2141 proposes to remedy documented declines in farmland retention and lake health — and the cascading environmental, social and economic repercussions that result — by directing $2 million to the WFAPP and $2 million to the Lake Fund annually from unclaimed beverage deposits.

Following the precedent set by neighboring states, LD 2141 aims to fund these critical natural resource programs within existing law, requiring no new tax and redirecting only a portion of existing, unclaimed revenues. In line with the deposit system’s original environmental promise, this bill would enable immediate action to protect our natural resources from crisis-level degradation by ensuring that unredeemed deposits are working for Maine’s people, lands and waters.

LD 2141 now faces votes in the full Senate and House.

Sen. Brenner is serving her third term in the Maine Senate, representing Gorham and most of Scarborough. She sits on the Environment and Natural Resources Committee.

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