Gov. Janet Mills (D) announced Tuesday that Maine will receive $6.6 million in federal taxpayer funds to reinforce its power grid in the wake of a devastating December storm that left more than half of the state without power.
“These six projects across Maine – from Vinalhaven to Van Buren – will receive grants to address critical energy infrastructure needs. These investments through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will protect the health and welfare Maine people by advancing important upgrades to our electric grid that will reduce the frequency and duration of power outages in the future,” Gov. Mills in a statement.
The grants, which come as part of the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, are intended to increase the resilience of Maine’s power grid to prevent any future power outages on the same scale as the outages caused by the December storms.
The majority of the funds will go toward replacing existing electrical lines and poles with newer infrastructure.
Some of the funds, $689,737, however, are assigned to the Penobscot Nation and are intended to help give them an independent “community microgrid,” which will focus, in part, on solar power.
Mills used her announcement as an opportunity to discuss her fears that climate change will lead to increasing numbers of severe storms and will leave more Mainers without power for even longer periods of time.
Mills drew widespread criticism at the onset of the December storms as she was conspicuously absent from the public stage as wind and rain raged across the state.
Unlike previous governors and governors in other states, Mills did not preemptively declare a state of civil emergency prior to the storm, but instead only made the declaration nearly 72 hours after the flooding and power outages began.
In her first public address, laid blame for her administrations lack of preparedness on the National Weather Service (NWS), claiming that the agency had failed to provide her with accurate information about how extensive and extreme the storm would be.
The NWS subsequently issued a rare and unusually sharp rebuke to the governor, detailing the three-days of warnings it had issued to local, county, and state officials about the anticipated flooding and severe wind the storms would bring.
Mills has never publicly explained why she falsely claimed that the NWS did not provide her with the information that the NWS did, in fact, provide her with. Nor has she disputed the NWS’ response to her initial remarks.
A spokesperson from the Mills Administration has declined to answer questions about why Mills provided false information at her initial press conference.
Editor’s Note:
Following the December storms, the Maine Wire submitted a Freedom of Access Act request seeking to obtain the governor’s schedules from the days surrounding the statewide emergency.
Although the governor’s deputy counsel, Timothy Feeley, initially said in December that those records would be made available within two to three weeks, the administration failed to turn over the records for more than seven months.
As a result, the Maine Wire filed a complaint in Kennebec County Superior Court alleging that Mills was in violation of Maine’s Freedom of Access Act, which requires the timely and good-faith production of public records to those who request them.
In response, the Mills Administration has turned over redacted versions of her schedules. Those schedules, and other records related to the Mills Administration’s storm response, will be the subject of Maine Wire reporting next week.
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