Do you favor a $12,500,000 bond issue for the following purposes:

1. $7,000,000 to construct water pollution control facilities, providng the state match for $12,500,000 in federal funds;

2. $2,500,000 to protect the State’s drinking water resources by granting funds to cities and towns for the closure and clean up of their solid waste landfills;

3. $500,000 to protect the public health, safety and the environment by providing funds for the cleanup of tire stockpiles;

4. $1,000,000 to abate, clean up and mitigate threats to the public health and environment from uncontrolled hazardous substance sites or other hazardous waste discharges; and

5. $1,500,000 to construct drinking water system improvements that address public health threats, providing the state match for $7,500,000 in federal funds?

Like the transportation bond, referendums such as Question 4 historically have been strongly supported by Maine voters. For good reason. These capital improvements and pollution-control projects enhance the quality of local water supplies and the health of the state’s residents. This one merits a Yes vote as well.

The bond question spells out in general terms how the money would be spent. More specifically, money would go to the state’s revolving loan fund to help municipalities with upgrade sewage treatment plants; target money directly at rural Maine through a grant program that has helped small towns with more than 3,000 projects since the early 1980s; and it would reimburse towns for the expensive process of closing landfills.

These are the nuts and bolts kinds of projects that towns need to do to keep operating in the best interest of the public, but the bond also covers environmental problems on a statewide scale. In the last 5 years, for instance, Maine has spent $8 million making safe and cleaning up tire piles — 6.2 million of them to date have been chipped and and removed. Piles in Nobleboro and Meddybemps have been eliminated; larger ones are on the list in Bowdoin, Durham and Greenwood.

Similarly, the Department of Environmental Protection for the last 16 years has been cleaning up hazardous waste sites with the help of funds from bond issues. While private companies usually are responsible for cleaning up the messes they’ve created, the state steps in when, for instance, a company has gone out of business or no particular culprit can be identified.

The consistent support from voters for environmental cleanup has made Maine a better — and certainly safer — place to live. Question 4 continues this tradition and deserves approval.