Sen. Brenner introduces bill to fund lake protection and farmland conservation

AUGUSTA – Yesterday, Sen. Stacy Brenner, D-Scarborough, introduced a bill to direct $4 million from Maine’s unclaimed beverage container deposits toward farmland protection and lake restoration. LD 2141, “An Act to Direct a Portion of Unclaimed Beverage Container Deposits to the Lake Water Quality Restoration and Protection Fund and the Maine Working Farmland Access and Protection Program,” was the subject of a public hearing before the Legislature’s Environment and Natural Resources Committee.

“Thriving natural resources are the foundation of Maine communities’ health, economy and cultural heritage,” said Sen. Brenner. “But our farmland soils and lake ecosystems face a precarious future — and once lost, they are not easily recovered. When a Mainer pays a bottle deposit and never gets it back, that money should not quietly pad a corporate balance sheet. It should be working for the public good. If the deposit doesn’t come home to the person, it should come home to Maine — to its farms, its lakes and its future.”

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. The Working Farmland Access and 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 Maine communities to proactively prevent lake degradation, reduce nutrient runoff and restore 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. Unclaimed bottle deposits are public dollars currently retained by the beverage industry to no public benefit. 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.

In the coming weeks, the Committee will schedule a work session for the bill.

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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