New England Policy Chronicle
Updates from Around New England
Editor’s Note: A key goal of this publication, along with sharing information and stories about the relationships between society and nature, is to inspire readers to engage with local advocates and policymakers in support of a future that reflects the values of equity and diversity in our society, in our landscape, and in the ecosystems where we live. We hope the Policy Desk section of From the Ground Up becomes a useful repository of inspiring actions and opportunities for readers across New England. This effort extends beyond our quarterly publication in the form of a new policy program hosted jointly by Wildlands, Woodlands, Farmlands & Communities and Food Solutions New England. Our work seeks to increase impact and effectiveness in developing and amplifying solutions that advance land and water conservation, and that transition food, forestry, and fisheries systems justly toward sustainability and resilience for the benefit of Nature and all in society. For more information, contact Alex Redfield (alex.redfield@unh.edu), policy program co-director, and stay tuned for future opportunities shared in upcoming issues of From the Ground Up.
Maine
Though relatively modest in its ambition, LD 993 (“An Act to Facilitate Stakeholder Input Regarding Forest Policy in Maine”) provides an opportunity to inject new and important perspectives into the conversation about how the Maine woods is managed. The bill would create an advisory board tasked with providing academic and on-the-ground perspectives on how stewardship might shift on the 18 million acres of working forests in Maine. With representation from the forest products industry, woodland owners, fishery and forest ecologists — and seats on the board reserved specifically for a working logger and a member of one of Maine’s tribal nations — the Forest Advisory Board would provide a diversity of perspectives and a range of professional expertise to the Maine Forest Service in the development and evaluation of its statewide management plans. Creating a formal pathway for external guidance to shape state-level plans and programs might help steer the management of the Maine woods more towards a resilient future, or at least create a forum in which the current state of affairs might be examined more closely. Despite strong support from the conservation community and powerful allies in the Maine Legislature, advocates for LD 993 are skeptical of its chances for success, citing the Maine Forest Service’s testimony that claims this type of Board would be both reductive and redundant. For more information, see LD 993 Fact Sheet from the Maine Environmental Priorities Coalition, or contact Eliza Townsend, Maine Conservation Policy Director for the Appalachian Mountain Club.
An industry cut leaves a herringbone pattern of extremely young forest and clearcut areas on privately owned timber lands (Above), whereas Penobscot tribal trust land shows evidence of a lighter harvesting approach (Below). Photos © Lynda Mapes.
New Hampshire
The New Hampshire Legislature is currently considering HB 1484 — An Act Relative to Current Use Taxation for Certain Forested Lands. This bill is a measure designed to exclude land from the property tax benefits of the state’s Current Use programs if those forests are also generating and selling carbon credits. Challenges in the interaction between Current Use programs and carbon markets have emerged throughout northern New England, with both Maine and Vermont lawmakers addressing the issue in 2023. Current Use programs are designed to create property tax incentives for landowners to keep their lands in their “current use,” i.e. keeping forested land forested or keeping agricultural land in agriculture, rather than converting those lands to a more “valuable” use like commercial or residential development. New Hampshire’s unique taxation structure leans heavily on property tax revenues, and a significant portion of those dollars are allocated back to New Hampshire cities and towns. To offset the impact of the program’s tax reductions, New Hampshire’s Current Use statute reimburses towns for their loss by diverting a portion of proceeds from the state’s 10% tax on timber harvest proceeds back to municipalities. If forests are enrolled in a carbon credit program, they are harvesting less wood and thus contributing less revenue to the local reimbursement pool. The Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests is testifying in opposition to this bill, noting that if forests remain forests, they are very much in line with the goals and objectives of the Current Use program, regardless of whether they are being managed for carbon or for timber. Two other bills this session also seek to limit the ways in which carbon credit and Current Use programs interact: HB 1709 would tax proceeds from carbon sales, and HB 1697 would prevent all New Hampshire forest owners from entering into forest carbon offset sales on their land for the next two years. The Ways and Means Committee will revisit HB 1484 again as soon as early February. For more information, see HB 1484 Policy Alert or contact Matt Leahy, Public Policy Director, Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests.
The new owners of the Connecticut Headwaters Forest in northern New Hampshire intend to dramatically reduce timber harvest and to generate income on the carbon markets. Similar shifts in management have sparked a flurry of bills seeking to limit enrollment in carbon credit programs or to otherwise penalize taking forests out of active timber harvests. Photo © Charlie Levesque.
Vermont
Often hailed as the reason the state has held on to its small-town look and feel, Vermont’s Act 250 has outlined how land use decisions are handled across the state since 1970. This law is very much in the public eye for 2024 as Vermont tries to strike a balance between expanding opportunities for housing development and protecting the natural resources and sensitive habitats across the state. Recognizing that the nature of community planning and ecosystem resilience continues to change dramatically as social, economic, and climatological factors push people and creatures in new directions, the Vermont Natural Resources Board (NRB), which administers Act 250, is leaning into the need for change with the recent release of an analysis outlining Necessary Updates to Act 250 for consideration by the Vermont Legislature. The report proposes a tiered approval program, allowing municipalities to apply for exemption from Act 250 review in areas suitable for development (Tier 1), while retaining NRB review powers for projects on properties that don’t qualify for exemptions (Tier 2), and expanding protections for properties that play critical roles in forest connectivity and ecosystem integrity (Tier 3). The recommendations in the NRB report also include governance and fee structure reforms, and call for the state to develop and codify new maps and inventories of the natural resources in critical need of legal protection. The immediacy and relevance of the national, regional, and local housing crisis, combined with the ambitious biodiversity and conservation goals adopted as Act 59 in 2023 (read our interview with Rep. Amy Sheldon on new biodiversity protections), puts Act 250 squarely in the spotlight for this legislative session. For more information, see this Act 250 Primer from VNRC or coverage of Act 250 from VTDigger.
As this image of Barton, Vermont, illustrates, the blend of small downtowns and rural landscapes is central to Vermont’s identity. The effort to streamline development processes while continuing to protect the character of the state and its natural and working lands is underway through updates to Vermont’s Act 250. Photo © King of Hearts under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
Massachusetts
Massachusetts has been busy! In addition to the Commonwealth’s ambitious Climate Action Plan, a new commitment to conserve 40% of Massachusetts forests by 2050, and the recent release of the Climate Smart Forestry strategy discussed elsewhere in this issue, the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources (MDAR) released a new Farmland Action Plan to outline the next 25 years of farmland protection strategies. The plan makes the case for significant expansion of its current suite of protection programs while recognizing that keeping up with development pressure will require new tools and new funding sources as well. Some of the strategies contained in the plan focus on 1) providing additional technical assistance and wrap-around support for aspiring farmers; 2) creating better alignment with federal funding opportunities; and 3) developing new and nimble pools of capital available to immediately protect properties on short notice. One of the more immediately useful elements contained in the Farmland Action Plan is a recommendation to provide MDAR with the statutory authority to hold land itself, allowing the State to utilize an increasingly popular Buy/Protect/Sell model of protection that allows for land to be re-sold at a below-market price to farmers who might otherwise struggle to find permanent tenure. For more information, see this Overview of the Farmland Action Plan from the Donahue Institute at UMass Amherst.
The Massachusetts Farmland Action Plan outlines the State’s strategy for agricultural protection and farm viability through 2050.
Connecticut
The South Fork Wind project, a new utility-scale wind farm off the coast of Connecticut, has come online this winter with two additional ambitious installations already underway. This reflects a major milestone in the implementation of Connecticut’s Offshore Wind Strategic Roadmap and towards the state’s commitment to a net-zero energy grid by 2040. Once complete, the three wind farms constructed by Danish energy developer, Ørsted, and New England’s largest electric utility, Eversource, will supply enough power for approximately 2 million homes in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New York. Though energy generated by the South Fork turbines is slated to serve New York customers, the State of Connecticut has positioned itself as an onshore hub for offshore wind installations up and down the New England coast with the transformation of the State Pier in New London into the largest staging site in the region for wind farm construction (see the scope and size of these installations in this Tour of the New London State Pier from The Day).
In October, the energy and environmental state agencies of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island signed a tri-state memorandum of understanding to outline a new collaborative process for soliciting wind farm development bids. Integrating the three states’ procurement processes is intended to facilitate coordination and collaboration across state lines, opening up new markets and opportunities for developers facing currently unfavorable economic conditions. With several major offshore wind projects pulling the plug in the summer of 2023 due to rising costs, the three southern New England states are hoping to attract new development through this partnership. The three states currently have open requests for proposals for the production of a combined 6.8 gigawatts of electricity from offshore wind farms, with bids due at the end of January. For more information, see coverage of the South Fork Wind Project from The New York Times and analysis of the new multi-state solicitation process from Utility Dive.
A dozen wind energy projects are in operation, under construction, or are well into the planning and permitting process across New England, with 10 out of the 11 projects launching off the State Pier in New London, Connecticut. Map courtesy of New England for Offshore Wind.
Rhode Island
The forests of Rhode Island, specifically the 100,000-plus acres of forest land owned by state and municipal agencies, are in the hot seat this year. Though regional trends point to a slight decrease in “wildfire weather” across New England, a 600-acre brush fire last spring near Exeter, Rhode Island brought forest management directly into the state’s political spotlight. Grassroots organizers, legislative officials, and state administrators are engaged in at least three different approaches to the issue as we begin 2024. The fires sparked the creation of a Forest Management Commission in the Rhode Island House, tasked with evaluating state forest management practices and approaches to wildfire prevention. This work runs in parallel with the relatively new Forest Conservation Commission, created in 2022 to first officially define and identify the state’s “most important forests,” and subsequently, to preserve those forests by expanding conservation mechanisms and creating a more lucrative forest product economy. As these two Commissions discuss what forests are worthy of protection, and how those forests should be managed, the Old Growth Tree Society of Rhode Island is behind the reintroduction of the Old Growth Forest Protection Act (OGFPA) for the 2024 session. Building on stalled efforts in the previous two legislative cycles, the OGFPA seeks to allow for wilderness as a management goal on public lands (vs. actively managed or harvested lands) and to split off biodiversity protection initiatives from the state’s Department of Environmental Management, along with other elements of a more comprehensive protection plan for Rhode Island’s old-growth forests. Each of these initiatives provides unique spaces for conversations on how the state’s increasingly threatened woodlands will be managed for overlapping objectives in the years to come. For more information see the Forest Conservation Commission website, read coverage of the Forest Management Commission, and see an op-ed on the OGFPA at EcoRI.
The Oakland Forest in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, is a 20-acre ecologically unique old-growth American beech forest, protected permanently by the Aquidneck Land Trust. This is the sole property meeting the definition of Wildland in the 2023 report Wildlands in New England, but the Old Growth Tree Society of Rhode Island is continuing to identify smaller stands of old growth forests. Photo courtesy of the Aquidneck Land Trust.
Alex Redfield is the Co-Director of the Integrated Policy Program for Wildlands, Woodlands, Farmlands & Communities and Food Solutions New England. He previously managed the farm viability and farmland protection programs for the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry. Prior to his time in government, he was Director of Farmer Training for the New American Sustainable Agriculture Project at Cultivating Community. He lives in South Portland, Maine.