Maine’s struggling hemp industry would benefit from relaxed rules on potency limits.
Penelope Overton
Staff Writer
Penny Overton is excited to be the Portland Press Herald’s first climate reporter. Since joining the paper in 2016, she has written about Maine’s lobster and cannabis industries, covered state politics and spent a fellowship year exploring the impact of climate change on the lobster fishery with the Boston Globe’s Spotlight team. Before moving to Maine, she has covered politics, environment, casino gambling and tribal issues in Florida, Connecticut, and Arizona. Her favorite assignments allow her to introduce readers to unusual people, cultures, or subjects. When off the clock, Penny is usually getting lost in a new book at a local coffeehouse, watching foreign crime shows or planning her family’s next adventure.
Posted inMaine, News, Politics
Committee backs pay raises for state psychiatric hospital workers
The Health and Human Services Committee voted 8-4 along party lines, with Democrats in favor and Republicans opposed.
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Posted inMaine, News, Politics, Schools & Education
Panel endorses bill to train teachers in climate science despite Republican opposition
Opponents worried that the bill, which has huge support among Maine science teachers, would give environmental groups too much influence.
Posted inBusiness, Maine, News
Maine predicts a steep price to fight forever chemicals
Soil and water testing, bottled water and filtration systems at farms, factories and landfills where PFAS chemicals have tainted the well water could cost up to $20 million a year, says DEP Commissioner Melanie Loyzim.
Posted inMaine, News
Forever chemical risk identified throughout Maine
The Department of Environmental Protection will test for PFAS contamination at hundreds of licensed sludge and septage dispersal sites across the state, but some people aren’t waiting.
Posted inMaine, News, Politics, Schools & Education
Teachers asking state lawmakers for climate education training
A bill to establish a $3 million training grant program drew praise from teachers and students, but a tepid response from the Maine Principals’ Association.
Posted inMaine
PROTESTS AND PRAYERS
The suspense was finally over. Now the lobstermen of Vinalhaven had to face new federal rules that could threaten their livelihood. Despair came first, then decision time.
Posted inMaine, News
THE LOBSTER TRAP
The plentiful catch that brought wealth to fishing families is at risk, as climate change warms the Gulf of Maine. A way of life is on the line, but lobstermen can’t, or won’t, imagine another.
Posted inMaine
Federal judge blocks lobster fishing ban in stretch of Gulf of Maine
He says regulators relied on ‘markedly thin’ statistical modeling instead of hard evidence to show the roughly 967-square-mile area they had planned to close was really a hot spot for the imperiled right whale.
Posted inBusiness, Maine
Farmers lose hope – and money – in race to build Maine’s hemp market
Marijuana’s non-psychotropic cousin was supposed to be a cash crop for Maine farmers, but it hasn’t worked out like that for most.