Yes on Question 2

Do you favor a $6,000,000 bond issue to construct water pollution control facilities, to close and clean up municipal solid waste landfills and to mitigate storm water pollution through a comprehensive watershed protection program?

Consider this bond question Part II of a clean-water package.

The Department of Environmental Protection’s original request before the Legislature last year was a much more ambitious bond that lawmakers pared down, then split in two. Voters last fall approved the first half — $7 million to clean up tire piles and fund pollution-control facilities. The question Tuesday adds more for the facilities and continues a decade-long effort to close local landfills.

The DEP estimates that it needs a total of approximately $15 million to reimburse municipalities as they close their landfills. The project is nearly complete — 329 of 400 sites have been closed — but many communities are still waiting for the state to send the reimbursement money. The bond question would put $4.5 million toward the $15 million total, making quite a few town managers happy.

The bond also would send $1 million to a grant program that helps rural communities properly treat sewage. This program has one of the best track records of any regular bond question; it has been approved 12 times since the early 1980s, helping more than 3,000 towns statewide. It is valuable because it is a straightforward grant, giving small towns the money they need to act responsibly.

The bond question, a little unrealistically, uses the word “comprehensive” in describing funding for a third portion of the request, a watershed protection program. Only $500,000 of the bond would go for this purpose, which these days doesn’t pay for a comprehensive anything at the state level. Still, the money is an important start to protecting surface water in Maine. Lakeside development, use of pesticides and fertilizers in farming or large parking lots near bodies of water all contribute to runoff problems that can turn previously clear water into murky or algae-laden messes. The money would be used to begin to find some solutions to these problems.

Maine voters traditionally have supported these important protections for the environment and should vote for them again June 9.