The Maine Permanent Commission on the Status of Racial, Indigenous & Tribal Populations (PCRITP) has released an interactive map that shows where minority populations live in the state, with additional overlays indicating various other data, such as the distribution critical infrastructure, hospitals, schools and environmental hazards.
The project, entitled “Mapping Maine Communities,” is a prototype based on publicly available data from the American Community Survey, an ongoing yearly survey done by the U.S. Census Bureau.
In the Commission’s budgetary documents, the project is called “Mapping Maine’s Diversity.”
An updated version of the interactive mapping tool is expected to be released by the summer of 2025.
“At the Permanent Commission, our goal is to study, understand, and address racial disparities across Maine so that all people – regardless of their race, age, income, or place of birth – can live life ‘the way it should be,’” the Commission wrote introducing the map.
“To do that, we need to understand how opportunities and risks are distributed around our state, and who is most impacted by them,” they wrote.
Below is an example of how the interactive map tool looks, when only the filter for demographic (race and ethnicity) data is selected. Notably, white populations are excluded from the map.
The additional data overlays for the map related to infrastructure include the distribution of hospitals, child and elder care centers, parks and conserved land, and food and retail locations.
For environmental hazards, the mapping tool is able to show landfills, brownfield and Superfund sites, flood zones and major roads and highways.
The map also includes overlays related to social and economic data fields, such as housing costs and poverty rates.
The Permanent Commission on the Status of Racial, Indigenous & Tribal Populations (PCRITP) is an independent state agency established by the Legislature in 2019 as a result of a bill sponsored by former House Speaker — and now State Senator — Rachel Talbot Ross (D-Portland).
In June, PCRITP approved a $538,168 taxpayer-funded budget for fiscal year 2025, which earmarked over $100,000 for office space, nearly $65,000 for research initiatives and about $180,000 for contract and temporary staffing positions.
That budget came in addition to a $1 million grant in federal COVID-19 relief funds awarded to PCRITP by the Mills Administration that must be spent by the Commission by the end of this year.
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