THE COST OF GREEN

Look around Maine now that textile work is all but gone, paper-mill jobs have receded, agriculture struggles and fishing has reached its limits. The places where these industries employed tens of thousands aren’t producing the same sort of work they once did but they aren’t empty either. ATVs and snowmobiles now travel where skidder trails may have been; history seekers are visiting the old mills; leaf-peepers arrive by the busload; kayak tours paddle along the coast. And anchoring this changing economy are the 100,000 acres that make up Maine’s parks and historic places, highly visible spots around which Maine can build part of its future.

Maine residents themselves are most likely to use these resources – camping at Lily Bay, hiking at Camden Hills, canoeing the Allagash or taking the kids to Peaks-Kenny. Together, the state parks, beaches, public lands and historic sites are called Maine’s “green infrastructure,” and green as in cash is one of their attractions because increasingly visitors want to come to Maine to enjoy these spots.

A study by the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center at the University of Maine estimates that visitors going to Maine state parks last year spent more than $60 million on goods such as watercraft, clothing, coolers and camping equipment and on fees to the parks.

But Maine, after years of underfunding or no funding at all for these places, isn’t ready to receive them in the numbers it could. The state hasn’t passed a bond in support of improving its parks in a decade. The capital expenditure for parks during the last four years has been zero. The bill for the backlog of work to repair historic sites, patch roads, replace bathrooms, restore crumbling bridges and piers, etc., is $33 million. And every year, the expected wear and tear from 2.2 million visitors, weather and age send that price up.

If Maine is to expand its traditional tourism economy into something more substantial, drawing more tourists from farther away, encouraging them to stay longer and see much more of the state, its parks and historic places will require broad improvements. Where the money will come from for this promising challenge is the subject of a forum today in Augusta. Called “Sustaining Maine’s Green Infrastructure,” the forum is designed to bring together various outdoor interest groups to develop long-term funding plans.

Perhaps one way to begin is for lawmakers to fully recognize tourism as the multi-billion-dollar industry that has grown steadily even as other industries in Maine have faded. And unlike many other industries, the state owns some of tourism’s fundamental resources. Just as private industry knows to invest annually in maintenance and upgrades, so too should the state take its investment role seriously in its parks.

Persuading the public to make that investment is part of what today’s valuable forum is about. That, and the harder work of actually finding sources of money.