Maine’s top environmental lobby is patting itself on the back for nearly a half century of billboard-free Maine.
But critics say the other side of the don’t-you-just-love the vistas coin are solar “farms” that arguably are much uglier than roadside signs that once promoted “Howard Johnson’s, Next Exit.”
“Yeah, awesome, so now 30’x60′ billboards poking up in the tree line were replaced with 100 acres of missing trees with solar panels,” said Larry Pelkey Jr. of Mars Hill.
Pelkey was among the Facebook billboard-ban detractors critiquing the Natural Resources Council of Maine’s praising itself for pushing Maine lawmakers in 1977 to just say no to “Lakeside Cottages 1 Mile.”
The sign ban, approved 48 years ago, on July 13, 1977, began phasing out Maine billboards, which were gone by the mid-1980s.
“It wasn’t easy,” says the council’s Facebook boast. “NRCM worked with lawmakers, businesses, and community members to make it happen.”
The council noted that the law “has faced challenges over the years but thanks to collaborative effort they’ve all been defeated.”
The council is a huge proponent of solar power, devoting an entire section of its website to solar arrays, if you’ll excuse the pun.
But of course the reality is solar supplies a mere pittance of the electrical needs of the Pine Tree State.
If the state has fallen behind developing solar power, as the council argues, it lays the blame partly with the Public Utilities Commission for adopting an anti-solar rule in 2017.
“Utility companies began charging Mainers who installed solar a fee for the electricity they make with their own solar panels and use in their own homes and businesses,” according to the council.
