Governor Mills made headlines this week with a proposal to spend $9 million fighting PFAS contamination around the state. PFAS has been linked to cancer in humans. Cleaning up contaminated areas and restricting usage of dangerous chemicals has been a top priority for Governor Mills since taking office. Her work reverses the eight years Paul LePage spent in office obstructing efforts to protect Mainers from exposure to dangerous substances.

While in the Blaine House, LePage:

  • Prohibited Maine communities from enacting tougher regulations governing the spreading of leftover products from sewage treatment plants in their communities as fertilizer—a process further that spread PFAS across the state.

  • Launched an “assault” on Maine’s environmental regulations that critics said would “increase [Mainers’] exposure to toxic chemicals.”

  • Tried to preemptively repeal a proposed ban on Bisphenol-A (BPA)—a chemical which poses risks to developing children and fetuses—and minimized the risk, saying that “the worst case is some women may have little beards.” He then refused to sign the nearly-unanimous bipartisan ban into law.

  • Proposed a system where taxpayers would be more likely to shoulder the cost of cleaning up pollution and environmental violations than the polluters.

  • Vetoed funding to protect children from lead poisoning and a bill creating a program to help low-income Mainers test their wells for the dangerous chemical arsenic.

“There is perhaps no better encapsulation of how little Paul LePage cares about Mainers than his steadfast refusal to crack down on dangerous chemicals in our products, soil, and water, ” said Drew Gattine, Chair of the Maine Democratic Party. “Now that Governor Mills and Democrats in the legislature have been working tirelessly to clean up our state, we can’t let LePage back in the Blaine House just to put our lives and our childrens’ lives at risk again.”

Since taking over from LePage in 2019, Mills has worked with the legislature to:

  • Require the world’s first phase-out of PFAS and implement strong drinking water standards against the chemicals.

  • Invest nearly $30 million total, not including the recent proposed supplement of $9 million, in the effort to identify and clean-up PFAS around the state

  • Ban other chemicals which posed risk to the health of Maine people.

###