 Thank you everybody for joining us. My name is Sarah Leighton. I'm chapter director for Sierra Colt Maine. I use she her pronouns and I'll be facilitating today's virtual event. Just starting off see if you want to go to the next slide. So we recommend that you turn off your camera if you don't wish to have your, your face recorded. We also ask that you keep your microphone on mute when you're not speaking. If you have questions or comments and you want to just pop into the chat, you're welcome to do that. This screen just shares a little bit about how to do all those different things. We've been living in a zoom world now for over a year. So if you do have any questions, don't feel free to message me directly and I'm happy to go through those instructions with you. And so now it's my pleasure to introduce Sierra Club Mains Executive Committee chair Sue Levine who will be giving our official welcome today. Hi, hi everyone. I'm Sue Levine. Thank you, Sarah for the nice introduction. I just want to thank you all for coming and for the volunteers and the staff who are on this call. Thank you for all you've done in this past six months or past year or past COVID type. I can't believe it feels so nice to be out of COVID and moving on. And so I just want to start us off. More people are going to be talking about all sorts of important things. But before we begin, I just want to acknowledge that here in Maine, this is the homeland of the Wabanaki people, the people of the dawn. And as we enjoy ourselves on this beautiful land to honor honor them and their ancestors and their future generations, as we learn how to work together and live together in peace and harmony. Thank you. And I'm going to move on and we give it back to Sarah and we're going to continue on with the program. Awesome. Thank you for that. As Sue mentioned, we've done a lot so far this year. So we're going to hear from some staff and a lot of volunteers on everything we've been able to accomplish so far. And first off is our legislative trainings. We created an advocacy training series this year that was free and open to the community. It was the first of its kind. And it was, it was a great success. So I'd like to introduce our campaign and policy associate director, Matt Cannon, who is going to tell us more. Thanks Sarah. Hey everyone. Yeah, as Sarah mentioned, we were lucky enough to have some funding for these trainings and post 2020 election. So we're excited and want to get engaged in the process here in Maine. And so we put together the slides. I don't know if I share my screen here. Okay, thank you. Sorry. So we put together kind of a group of trainings that would get pretty much anyone up to speed on how to understand and influence the legislative process in Maine. And it was very exciting. We had a lot of people participate and many of them continued on with the legislative team. Most of these are on our YouTube page as well so we don't need to duplicate too many more those first few are really basics and help anyone understand and get up to speed and then we did move through more advanced lobbying and grassroots efforts into how to build and maintain relationships with decision makers, which Bob how our lobbyist was really helpful in several of those. And then we actually used an example of the mid-coast gas pipeline project that we helped to stop in its tracks to kind of go through a power analysis of how we understand power dynamics and advocacy. And we ended with actions a letter to the editor and op ed training. Many of you were there, and that really helped build that last link of the legislative advocacy process from understanding bills talking to legislators and then actually mobilizing the public. So, yeah, it was very exciting I'm glad we could offer and I'm really excited that so many of you can. Please reduce Jen Armstrong who participated in these trainings and then became a member of our legislative team. So, Jen, take it away. Up your own mute. Thanks Matt. Hi everyone. Thanks for having me tonight. As Matt said my name is Jen Armstrong. I am an artisan and gallery owner in Kenny bunkport. I have had the fortunate opportunity of volunteering with the Sierra Club legislative team this session. My involvement with the team grew out of a desire to learn more about the legislative process here in Maine. I knew I wanted to get more active and influencing the decision makers of my state on topics that I'm passionate about. And I wasn't exactly sure how to get started on that path. But at the time I saw posting for the first workshop that I attended with Matt and Robert how in January of this year. I believe it was through Sierra Club email blast or newsletter something like that. The workshop was all about the legislative process and committees. I found it extremely helpful. As an introduction and overview of how the legislature is set up and how it operates. I gained tons of knowledge on the basics and the process of various committees as well as guidance in navigating the legislators website which is the legislators website which is a task. This led me to the next helpful and in depth bill analysis workshop. I really wanted to do more than signing group petitions from what seems like a million organizations that I'm connected with through emails. These workshops were stepping stone to being more active with my local reps and committees that are focused on so many of the environmental environmental bills that I care about. I was also able to attend David Gibson's green bank webinar, which systematically broke down and explained the ins and outs of how a clean energy accelerator actually works. That information that I gained in his presentation has assisted me in sharing and explaining it with others, which is great. Throughout this educational process, Matt Cannon has been a kind and patient advocate for involvement in so many ways. He encouraged me to sit in on the legislative team meetings where I've been informed and inspired by many thoughtful and knowledgeable veteran members of the team. Certainly a huge learning curve for me these past months, and I'm grateful for the opportunity it has afforded me to get more involved. In a few short months, I've written personal testimony on numerous bills presented live testimony to the main state legislature and have gained confidence in expressing my views to the people that are making decisions for us all. I'm a member of the planet tears of southern Maine grassroots environmental group in the Kenny books. Being a part of the Sierra Club legislative team as an able me to share concise targeted and timely information and action steps with our members and followers. I've been inspired to compile a weekly post and email. I have contacts down here in southern Maine through encouragement and simple links folks have been able to easily contact our reps, as well as various committee members and submit testimony on a multitude of bills throughout the session. Very cool. This has been an unexpected bonus result of me soaking up the legislative teams knowledge and foresight and I thank them for that. As so many have thanked me for keeping them informed about ways in which they can actually make a difference. I continue to be impressed and inspired by the wisdom hard work and dedication of the Sierra Club's main legislative team. I am not an attorney. I'm not a writer, but I want to impact crucial decisions that are made every day in August on behalf of us all. I truly believe we each have a unique role to play and creating not only a sustainable, but a thriving future for all mainers. Thanks for having me tonight. I'm listening back to Sarah. Wow. That's amazing. It sounds like you have a lot of natural talent for giving testimony as well. I'm glad we've been able to help you for that whole process. So, now, while the legislative session is not yet over, we have had some incredibly big successes that we'd like to share with you, largely because of our amazing volunteer legislative team. Thank you for coming to introduce. I had to write this down because it's such a long time executive committee vice chair of policy, David Gibson to tell us more about that. Yeah, thanks Sarah. We can go to the next slide to. Yeah, so this year we had the largest legislative team ever with 23 active volunteers. There was 23 different people that each came to at least two of our legislative team meetings and I, my understanding is that all 23 of them submitted testimony on at least one bill as well. So very active, engaged volunteers. We had a overwhelming Google document with 200 bills in it that we were tracking out of the 1700 total in the legislature. We closely followed 61 that we had ranked in terms of our priority, some that we were opposed to and most that we were supportive of. And we submitted at least 61 pieces of testimony, more than the Sierra Club main ever has in a legislative session before. Close to an order of magnitude more than we have submitted in past years. So really, really engaged because of those 23 active volunteers. And then we also hosted webinars and community conversations on some of those topics like Jennifer just mentioned, we can go to the next slide. And of the of the priority of our highest priority bills, four of them have been passed and three of these have been signed into law that we want to highlight. And Sierra Club was very, very involved with all of these for LD 437 and act to establish the main healthy soils program. One of our volunteers Andrew blunt came to the committee very early on and was like, Hey, this would be something cool to have a bill on how do we make that happen. And Matt and Becky and others help direct him to a Moscow and connect with others in state government. So we were able to organize and find a sponsor for the bill and get co sponsors. And that has now been passed into law. So very exciting for the first time Sierra Club volunteer to have essentially drafted legislation that is passed into law. LD 1659 is the green bank bill, which creates the main clean energy and sustainability accelerator. We led a coalition with 15 or 20 different nonprofits and businesses participating every other week throughout the legislative session to organize behind this bill. I work closely with my representative page Ziegler to introduce the bill and use the main sponsor and the legislative team help line up co sponsors to the bill. And the Sierra Club has really been the driving force behind this clean energy accelerator, which will create a new initiative under efficiency main helping them to partner with local banks and credit unions, so that they can better provide financing, particularly for low income households and small businesses for efficiency and clean energy projects. LD 1682 requires the public utilities commission to consider climate and equity impacts. It was led by the Acadia center, but we participated in in all of the coalition calls and submitted testimony and support and we're very active in supporting this one and it has also been signed by the governor. And LD 99 requires the public employee retirement system to divest from fossil fuels. And this bill was introduced by representative Maggie O'Neill. After she had talked with main youth for climate justice and 350 main volunteers. When I learned about this bill I dove right in. I've done a lot of analysis of the main purse holdings, and I hope to identify that they had over a billion dollars invested in fossil fuels. And then I worked with the bill sponsor and in a variety of other stakeholders to help revise the bill language and draft a new amendment that strengthens a bill to include encompass all $1.3 billion that main purse has invested in fossil fuels, rather than just a much smaller than that. And there's a number of other bills that we were very involved with these were just some of the top priorities that have have passed, and most of them have been signed into law except the clean energy accelerator. There's several other bills that were carried over to the to the next session that that were some of our top priorities such as the tribal sovereignty bill. The Juniper Ridge bill that will prevent out of state waste from going to the Juniper Ridge landfill outside of Bangor. And the main generation authority that will help consolidate and manage new clean energy generation. Those have been carried over to next year. And there's at least three more bills and probably more than that that are still active in the legislature. The appropriations and financial affairs committee is meeting over the next week week and a half. And then the legislature is going to reconvene on June 30. So we're waiting to see what happens with the appropriations committee. But the land for main futures bond package is still in consideration and is probably going to pass. The consumer utility bill to create the pine tree power company. They're working on reversing. There were two senators that flipped in the last vote and there's some procedural work around where they're going to bring it back up for a vote in the Senate so we're hoping to be able to rescue that legislation and pass the consumer utility. And then another one that Sierra Club has really led on is creating the constitutional amendment to establish a right to a healthy environment. I'll be 489. And that one is still also in the works. So while most of the legislature legislation has concluded for the year, there's still a few things that are in progress that were that were very hopeful for. And with that, I will pass it back to you, Sarah or to Patricia. Okay, so I'm going to pass it to Patricia. Patricia, Robert Mason to speak next. Thank you, David. And thank you for giving us the synopsis of where everything's at it's always really helpful. So my name is Patricia Robert Mason. I'm a mom, a researcher and a consultant and I live way up in Fort Kent. So I've actually appreciated the zoom meetings because this would be a little inaccessible to me otherwise. So as you heard from David we had a busy and productive legislative session this year, like Jen this is my first year on the legislative team or really being active with the Sierra Club at all. And I kind of dropped in in the middle of things but it's been a really positive experience. I started like I think maybe a lot of volunteers do I showed up at multiple different committees, basically shopping to see what felt like a fit. I really liked the legislative team because there was a lot going on and it felt like we were actually accomplishing something. My testimony has been something concrete that I could do. And it seemed to really make a difference. In one case in fact a bill sponsor essentially adopted my testimony as an amendment to the bill. So that was really cool. Another nice thing about working on the legislative team is like Jen it's helped me better understand the legislative process here in Maine. Although there's still a few mysteries and get a better feel for the players. Before I started, I knew, let's be real, almost nothing about the legislative process, or really what was going on in the legislature and what kinds of bills were being considered like I wanted to know, and I wanted to reach out to my representatives. When something important was being considered I wanted to get beyond those petition drives I really did. But I didn't know where to start. So the legislative team provided trainings which Jen talked about, which helped me understand the basics are very handy bill trader tracker that David mentioned ie a big spreadsheet. So that I knew what was being discussed and when, and a structure in the form of our weekly meetings to help keep me up to date and support when I didn't understand something frequently. So I started out by just watching for a couple of weeks and getting a feel for things and then when a bill came up that I thought was important and no one else had signed up to work on, I decided to give it a go. Took a few fits and starts, but I had my first submitted pieces testimony. And once I got my feet wet, I kind of got into a rhythm and I tried to submit one to two pieces of testimony every week. Most of the high priority bills already had multiple people spending time on them and with their energy focused on them. So I focused on some of the less publicized bills around energy and climate action which are areas that are interesting and important to me and then I know a little bit about. So there are lots of little bills that add up to make a big difference. And unlike legislation at the federal level, most of the bills moving through the legislature in Maine are only a page or two long. So you can actually read them and understand what they're doing and make informed comments, unlike 1000 page buses, the federal level where it's anybody's guess what's actually in them. So for each bill that I wrote testimony for I tried to tell basically a short story in a few paragraphs I would walk the reader through what issue is the bill addressing, why is it important, and how does that the bill make a difference. And then finally, what will we like them to do, for instance, did we want them to vote ought to pass vote ought not to pass amend the bill, etc. So who like me didn't know the process. Really, this is at the committee stage that we're submitting testimony so they're not voting to pass it yet they're just voting to recommend that it be passed. And finally, I always tried to support all my statements with data. I'm a researcher so finding information is something I'm good at, and I want to make sure that what I'm saying is true, and I want the legislators to be confident in that as well. So I always tried to back things up with high quality sources. And sometimes in the process of doing my research, I changed my position, because the data pointed in a different direction than my preconceived notion, and I think that's important that we follow the evidence. We effectively deployed personal stories in their testimony, and that's definitely important as well that can be super powerful, especially when you have personal experiences with something. I'm just personally maybe better at marshaling data telling stories. So I wasn't able to present most of my testimony at the hearings due to my work schedule, but I still had an impact, especially on issues that didn't get a lot of press or a lot of other testimony. So I still have a lot to learn. And I'm hoping to get a better understanding of what happens after the bills get out of committee, which can be a little obscure, and to learn how to be the most effective at moving main towards our climate goals, where to focus my energy, what actions are most effective and how to follow through and push those important bills, all the way through until they are signed from the governor, signed by the governor, but it's been a really positive experience and I hope to continue working with the legislative committee moving forward and continue to learn. And I guess I pass it back to Sarah with that. That's awesome. Tresha, you said you're not as good at telling stories as you are researching but you fooled me so thank you for sharing that and David as well. So when COVID hit last year, we quickly decided to create this weekly virtual talk called community conversations and we've continued those and really strengthen them and our communications and outreach manager, Marina Bach, is going to tell us more about those. Thanks Sarah. So part of my role here at Sierra Club main is to help lead our events team which puts on our community conversations. And as Sarah mentioned, we developed these events back in April of last year as a means of gathering virtually getting together and engaging during the pandemic. What we do is we partner with individuals and community organizations whose work is related to our mission, and we invite them to give a talk. And if you could go to the next slide please. So so far this year we've had 11 conversations with over 300 participants which has been huge and a great way to reach people all across the state. So we've had presentations on a variety of topics, the consumer and utility green bank permaculture and offshore wind just to name a few. All of these conversations are recorded and then put onto our website, which I encourage everyone to check out and I will actually put the link in the chat. If you want to view those. The events have been a really great way to engage with the public and bring in volunteers that we haven't had before. One of those volunteers is mine it well to I'm happy to introduce you all to mine it has been a wonderful addition to our chapter and has become involved in a number of ways. So mine it I will pass it on to you to talk about your volunteer experience. Thank you. Yeah, like, Jen and Patricia, I am a recent volunteer I think I started last December, and attended the various meetings which introduced the different committees and pretty much decided that I wanted to participate in all of them. Of course, came January and the tsunami of legislative bills that were posted. And I discovered that perhaps getting involved in all of them wasn't entirely feasible. On top of that, I thought it would be interesting to, to work with dot and participate as a as an intervener in a rate case before the Public Utilities Commission, and that's certainly an interesting rabbit hole to go down, but requires knowledge persistence and stamina that I think dot uniquely possesses. At the same time, of these bills coming up I became aware of a proposed fish farm in Frenchman Bay, right off of Bar Harbor between Bar Harbor and Gouldsboro, a massive facility 66 million pounds of fish per year, which will dump just tons and tons of, they say, partially treated waste into Frenchman Bay and got really concerned about that and wanted to understand how as a Sierra volunteer, I could, I could work on that to some effect. Even after Jim Merkel and Jonathan gave their talk on the Nordic facility in Belfast, which is a little further down the permitting pipeline. And that put me in touch with Jim which has been just a terrific opportunity to learn with someone who has done the homework who has the knowledge, and has been in the trenches fighting that particular project for the last two and a half years. Across the board in Maine right now there are five industrial scale fish farms in various stages of proposal permitting and development. Four of them will produce salmon. The proposed output, all together of those four facilities will be six times the amount of salmon produced in the entire United States four years ago which was the more recent most recent year I could get figures for for the governor's office to, as far as I can tell champion these efforts and really roll out the red carpet. You know in the name of job creation. For me is just disastrous. And I find it really telling that in the climate initiative and various discussions of how the grid needs to evolve to accommodate, you know, an electric future. The Department of Economic Development really hasn't been at that table and seems to be given free reign on an all on an alternate course to bring large carbon emitting businesses into the state. So, I'm really concerned about this and think that we need to find a way to put the brakes on, and I can find no better place to try to gain traction than here at Sierra. And that's my experience over the past six or seven months, you know what I've gained what I've learned, it would be a sense of agency, which I didn't really have before. I mean I get partially informed and totally pissed off and not know what to do. So Sierra has brought together the expertise as represented by its extraordinarily capable and committed staff. And this amazing group of volunteers who, while entirely self selected, couldn't be more committed and more capable and really more extraordinary. And this has been just a fabulous learning opportunity. And I want to thank you for it. Not sure what else I can add to that. I'm still really good at getting partially informed and pissed off so if you want to point me in any direction let me know. Thank you and back to you, Marina. That is awesome. And thank you. I wear your huge asset as well as all of our volunteers so we're so we're so incredibly happy to have you. So the next topic is product gas. If you didn't hear earlier this year we were threatened by a possible expanded track gas line that was proposed to run from Belfast or Thomaston. And we were able to spray spraying into action and with the help of the incredible community we were able to stop it. So I'd like to introduce executive committee member and legislative team leader Jonathan Jonathan full third to tell us more. I think it was really good to see folks. This was something that as Sarah said was unexpected that I don't know anybody who was seeing this coming. And all of a sudden there was announcement, but that here is this natural gas pipeline proposed for the mid coast area. Which the last thing we need to do is invest more in a fossil fuel infrastructure and lock people into another 20 or 30 years and natural gas, you know a crack natural gas so Yeah, I'll try to drop the natural part crack gas. And so I think one thing I love about the CR club is the ability for us to really quickly pivot. And even though we are in the thick of the legislative session. And we were, you know, trying to make sure we were identifying priority bills and all the things that takes to kind of like respond to the legislative session successfully. The staff and volunteers all within a few days realize that if we are committed to climate change. Interrupting climate change, we have to take this on. And I think really, I believe there was no other statewide environmental organization that really took this one on, we kind of like saw it and said, let's, let's go now. And there was an unfortunate statement made by the Belfast and Mayor, which was quite upsetting that kind of helps start this whole kick this into gear. And, and I think the grassroots organizing and the connections that Sierra Club already had in place, really proved to be very helpful as really the entire community. As the community up and down the proposed pipeline from Belfast or Searsmont through Belfast all the way down to Rockland and Thomas and people just arose up and kind of said, wait a minute, this doesn't seem like a good thing at all. And it came together and we're very, very quickly, we had a huge victory which I will pass it actually the Nate Davis who as the city council member of one of the city council members of Rockland. And what they did there proved to be the pivotal point on stopping this, this gas pipeline within 30 days I believe of when it's announcement, you know, hit the airwaves. So, Nate, I want to send it to you and what you and your colleagues did where was phenomenal and galvanize an entire community. Thank you very much. Though it wasn't just me and my colleagues and of course you are all my colleagues as well. It wasn't simply what we did on the city council in Rockland. But thank you very much. My name is Nathan Davis, I serve on the city council of Rockland as Jonathan mentioned. I went through my municipal email this morning to try to reconstruct the chronology of all this. And I failed because it was so compressed and there were there was so much happening. And as Jonathan mentioned this announcement by some natural gas, which is a subsidiary of much larger company which itself is owned by a much larger private equity firm. They made this announcement. We were taken back by it. The first thing I did was I co-wrote a polemic I suppose against it in the free press which is a mid-coast alternative weekly with my friend Becca Shaw Glazer. And that got got some wide circulation. And after that I was invited to a radio show on our local radio station. I couldn't go but one of the guests on that show was Becky. I met Becky from a number of years ago, maybe five or six years ago. I don't know if we had actually met them. But back when there was another another natural gas proposal in the area, Becky was one of the leaders of the opposition and I, I assisted from the sidelines but and I recognized your name Becky but I don't think we'd ever met. So we got in touch by email, and then I quickly got in touch with the many of the other people on this call the leaders of the main chapter of the Sierra Club. And we started strategizing and organizing in particular for a meeting that Jonathan alluded to that was conducted by the city of Rockland. So we were the first municipality and the path of this pipeline to organize a public meeting about it. Some had approached Belfast and Rockport and seemingly got at least some of the city government on board without any public discussion. So we organized a public meeting, and we knew it had to be not just for Rockland but for the really any communities touched by this. So we, the city council set a date and the Sierra Club. As Sarah said spring into action and really immediately started organizing to get people excited about this meeting and informed about this meeting and about the issues around this pipeline. So through a combination of outreach and education and signmaking as much as that could be done on zoom but I remember the Sierra Club created these background tiles saying something like no to frack gas and tried to get people to display those during the meeting. So a combination of all those things we got really an incredible turnout at this meeting. In fact, through the turnout we discovered that our city account was limited to 100 people at a time, which we had not encountered before, because our previous zoom meetings were not particularly well attended. So we max out on the zoom meeting and we had people waiting in the, the waiting room of the, the live stream broadcast site we use. And I think we ended up all told with between 150 and 200 people attending this meeting and offering testimony lasted for two weeks. Public sentiment was overwhelmingly opposed to the pipeline. Many of the people there had been informed and turned out by the Sierra Club and so we owe the Sierra Club, a great debt of gratitude for that. And summit was at the meeting as well I think it's safe to say they were taken aback. I mean, maybe too, too militant but we kind of punched them in the nose and I didn't expect it, and about a week and a half later they were through their plans. And so, we still might want to revisit the issue by passing some some local ordinances to address this type of development maybe preemptively if it happens again because it could happen again hopefully the odds will decrease as time passes. And I think something local community should explore. That's not the topic of this meeting though so I won't talk about that at length, but we were up against a very well funded and well represented opponent, and we beat them, and that is largely due to the activity and organization of the Sierra Club. So thank you. And I will pass it back to Sarah now. Thank you so much for sharing that it was amazing working with you and all the committed folks in the community was a true testament to the power of community organizing and it's, I mean I haven't been here for too long it's one of my favorite stories so thank you for sharing that. So next we're going to talk about the Sierra Club climate action teams, which are community led groups throughout the state that are working on different goals in the Sierra Club helps to help make this possible. So, they're doing some amazing work and we're going to hear a little bit about that work this evening and first I'd like to introduce our grassroots climate action organizer on your right to start us up. Hi, thanks Sarah. Yeah, Sarah said my name's Anya, I she and her pronouns I'm located up in Bar Harbor. And really excited and honored to help out with organizing our climate action team program as part of my work here with the chapter. Our climate action teams are all over the state. So if you wouldn't mind going to the next slide. This is a list of all of our active and past teams. I'm excited to announce that Fort Kent has recently started a team thanks to Tricia and some other folks up there in the county. Yeah, like, like Sarah mentioned, we work on community led programs and projects that help the help communities directly. And we'll hear a little bit more from Alyssa and Alan in a moment about about some of the work that's going on in in the Portland climate action team. Before I go over to them, I wanted to talk a little bit about one of the interns that we support through our grassroots grant that we, we help out with through the climate action teams. This past year we helped to support an intern named Megan Collins who was going to speak tonight but she's leading trips in Baxter State Park and couldn't get away. So I'm stepping in for her, but she's a recent graduate from the University of Maryland, who interned with the town of Milanocket through a stipend program funded by our chapters grassroots grant. And she was working on food sovereignty issues in Milanocket. And as part of that work she created an action plan for the town moving forward. She's working on issues of food sustainability food insecurity and economic opportunities from for the town. And the research that she produced in this plan came from direct contact with with community businesses and food banks. During food support programs that she helped to organize and through collaborations with organizations in the region and all over the state. One thing that she found was that collaboration is essential when addressing social issues in order to create an effective and personalized plan to the region. And so, like many small towns in Maine, they've lost some businesses and revenue in the past years due to grease population from milk closures and resulting economic struggles. So we have one grocery store in town, which is owned by the chain Hannaford. And the town is defined as being a food desert so that's an area where people have decreased access to fresh food. And they tend to be more common in rural settings or urban settings where there are few grocery options and an absence of public transport. So, what Megan found were that there were there are a lot of opportunities in the milanocket region to increase food access for folks. She saw opportunities in encouraging more small vendors and farms in hydroponic farming compost services and expanded fresh produce at local markets. And she came up with a very amazing list of recommendations for the town including different grants they could apply for. Recommending that they adopt food sovereignty and animal policies to encourage local food producers and give residents the ability to produce their own food. She recommended coordinating community programs. She recommended developing a community garden and promoting healthy eating. And so, this plan is really incredible it's about 13 pages long and pending approval from the town of milanocket it'll be available on the climate action team page of our website which I can put in the chat. One example of what a town in Maine is is doing in terms of climate action and how we're supporting it and I think what's really exciting about this report to is that it's definitely really applicable to other food deserts and other rural rural areas in Maine and is exciting moving forward how we can collaborate with some of our different climate action teams. So with that I will pass it on to Alyssa and Alan Armstrong for two of our amazing volunteers who have been a part of the cat program since the start. And they're both leaders of the Portland climate action team, and I'll pass it over to them now. Thank you, Anya. Well, the Portland climate action team got started in February of 2015 when Glenn Brand, who was then the main chapter director. Let's slide up please. Yeah. Invited, there's Glenn invited his contacts to a brainstorm meeting to try and come up with munitions municipally focused climate action group, and that was the first cat, the Portland cat. So we decided to focus initially on community solar farms. We had the idea to build a solar farm on a close Portland landfill. And so we interviewed installers and met with the city manager, and he said no. And the inquiries led one of the installers to propose a much larger 650 kilowatt slide. Sorry, array, please next slide. And when the project encountered obstacles, we had to push. But the array got completed in 2018 and it saves 560 tons of CO2 per year and powers city buildings including Merrill Auditorium. Glenn left Portland. I don't think I'm. Can y'all hear me. Yes, yes. Glenn left Portland in 2018. After that array was up and running with success there and success in our neighborhood outreach efforts promoting solar farms. We're ready to take on new projects. In January 2019, our organizational structure morphed into a photo in from a focus solely on solar power to include various projects all under the umbrella of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. So some of our members chose to focus directly on influencing the city council and staff. And so one example of that was when the city's planning department had to come up with a new comprehensive plan. They basically said nothing about climate change. And when we read it over, we realized that we need to write a stronger version of that so we wrote a strong vision statement and 10 actions that the city could take to deal with climate change. So our concluding statement reads, ensure that all municipal decisions taken to account the necessity of essentially eliminating carbon dioxide emissions within 30 years. The city council passed our wording over the planning department's objection by a seven to one vote. Another thing we did was to ask the city council to update a 2008 climate action plan, which had been basically shelved. So we came down to do a professionally researched and produced plan. So we provide examples of other comparable cities and what they had done. And we set up a conference call with the most similar city, Somerville, Massachusetts. Portland joined with South Portland to retain consultants for a plan that's now called one climate future, which was adopted last year. PCAT is now writing a summary to introduce Portland residents to the coming changes that will be needed to address our greenhouse gas emission goals. And at PCAS suggestion, our state senator introduced a bill to allow cities to adopt a more stringent building energy code known as a stretch code. We provided the draft text for that and Governor Mills assigned, Governor Mills assigned LD 1543 in 2019. PCAT also wrote a protective tree ordinance adopted by the city and is currently currently strengthening it to include more trees. With Sierra Club's help we are developing an educational component for on trees for schools. Some PCAT members have focused on partnering with other organizations. Next slide please. PCAT has run three window dressers workshops engaging the community to make hundreds of insulating window inserts, saving many tons of CO2 from the atmosphere. A fourth workshop is in the works with a focus on insulating rental properties for immigrant families. PCAT has a monthly column in the West End news where we promote our activities and provide information on issues relating to climate change. For the past couple of years, we've been promoting idle free Portland with newspaper ads, handouts and strategically placed banners. So far, PCAT structure change made in 2019 is working. We have a few projects going at any one time that one or more of our, that one or more of us is passionate about. We formed relationships with our city government staff and other climate organizations. Together we have saved hundreds of tons of carbon from the atmosphere. And you can drop that slide now. Thank you. So Alyssa and I have highlighted a few of PCAT's achievements. We've a dozen or so faithful members who meet monthly and after every meeting we sort of say to ourselves, boy, we really value the work that we've done and the relationships we've made with and the value for us in our community. So thank you Sierra Club for getting us going and supporting us along the way. So back to you, Sarah. Thank you so much, Alyssa. You know, we call them climate action teams and you're really living the action component of that you've done. You've accomplished so much. It's amazing to hear all of your success. So thank you. And then the last thing that we want to share with you today is talking about our lawsuit that we've been engaged with for a little while now regarding the CMP corridor. So I like to say that this is a true David and Goliath story, and we've seen some success. So I'd like to introduce our volunteer leader Becky Bartovex to share more on that. Thank you, Sarah. And boy, this is an inspiring group of people to listen to. I hope I will follow suit. So the Sierra Club has been opposed to hydro Quebec's flooding of the boreal forest for a long time. And actually Joan Sacks reminded me today that the first opposition was more than 35 years ago, fighting the Great Whale project that was going to flood the boreal forest and damage indigenous Cree land. It was successful in keeping that power from coming to Maine. So it wasn't a surprise that it would be something that we'd be concerned about the CMP Carter and the, the power generated by the mega dams in in Canada. So in the course of the last few years, I mean, we first protested in front of the New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Eastern Canadian Premiers meeting called Conig, I think it was in September of 2018. And so we, there was there was plenty of warning that we were going to be opposing this project. And during the course of the public hearings that were held over and over again, we submitted testimony that requested an environmental impact statement from the Army Corps of Engineers. The Army Corps of Engineers in Maine is, you know, we have a division of the Region One Army Corps of Engineers that is run by Jay Clement who is proud to say that they have never done an EIS. And that's an environmental impact statement. And this just was too much. So when, you know, we, we were presenting information about why we felt that with the need for an environmental impact statement there are 215 streams and 115 wetlands including wetlands of urinal pools of significance. There, you know, there's a lot of material I could go into about, you know, why this is, you know, a very damaging project. And, you know, and then in addition to that we were in communication and brought some of the Indigenous peoples from Labrador and from from Manitoba to come talk about the impact of the dams on the local communities. Maybe many of you may not know the amount of methane that some of these reservoirs produce is equal to coal-fired power plant. And not all of them, but, but some of them are. And in that they additional, in addition, they also infect the water with methylmercury that is naturally present in the materials but becomes diluted into the water and then it becomes part of the food chain. So everything, you know, from the diatoms on up is, you know, concentrating methylmercury. And so people who live, for instance, in along the Grand River in Nova Scotia have been advised by the Nalcor, which is building that particular dam that they should no longer eat anything that they could harvest from the ocean. And that has been their food source. So the food source that is provided for them, you know, the Indigenous people and the local community people is flown in. And so it's excessively expensive. Their livelihoods have been badly, you know, have been destroyed. As one of them said to his mother, you know, you all, everyone in our community had a job. We all year long, we were moving from one thing to another, harvesting what we needed and taking care of our locale. And now we are 20% employed, and everyone else is unemployed. And that's a, you know, it's caused huge social, you know, it's a horrible equity and inclusion and justice problem that, you know, that aside and, you know, the Army Corps doesn't care what's happening in Canada. So, but that is one of the reasons that we have been opposed to it. So moving forward, because the Army Corps was, you know, deciding not to, you know, to move forward with an EIS, we filed a lawsuit against the Army Corps, and largely lack of transparency and because they were not following through on the Clean Water Act. And we are continuing to follow through with that lawsuit. When they, when CMP decided to start work, even though there was a lawsuit against them, we filed a preliminary injunction and that was last end of October beginning of November. And we, you know, succeeded in having the preliminary injunction for a short while, then the judge found it found against us and so we filed an appeal. And the judge for the appeal actually created an injunction effectively so that they were not allowed to cut during the course of the winter until the very beginning of April, yeah, April 15, they began cutting and there was a, they were not allowed to cut after a month, so after two weeks. And so, at least we were very successful in preventing them from doing the entire cutting. And that's, that's one of the success stories. It's a lot of work. Following, reading all the documents, looking at the documents that are not being provided. And during the course of this, because we needed to see what the Department of Energy, as opposed to the Army Corps of Engineers was, was what their documents were saying, we filed over and over again new FOIA requests from for both of them. The Army Corps of Engineers, I mean the Department of Energy did not provide us any documentation at all until last September. So it was more than nine months of refusing to give us documentation. So therefore we have actually added them to the lawsuit. Because we wanted to see what the information, what, when information was passing between the two of them. And, and so that has been added to the lawsuit and the lawsuit is likely to move forward sometime in the fall. We will, once we receive, we still have not received all of the reports. Once we receive all the ports reports from the Army Corps and the Department of Energy, and we look over them we will decide whether or not there is missing information and once we know whether there's missing information or not. We will either file a summary judgment, judgment request to the judge or we will, we will make a request for further information so we believe that the lawsuit will actually go to court sometime in the latter part of the fall, not in time for the citizens initiative. So that's we're still going to be waiting. There still will be this lawsuit as there is an in-state lawsuit against the Department of Environmental Protection. So there even though, you know, CMP is spending millions and millions of dollars trying to persuade us that, you know, this is the best thing since sliced bread. It really is not going to benefit the state of Maine. It is not going to reduce our energy consumption and the damage to the corridor, which is a, you know, it has some of it has already happened, and it will continue after the end of July. Thankfully, the long-year bats has prevented, you know, more cutting. There is a currently a DEP or there's a lawsuit against the DEP that or an action against the DEP. I don't know if it's gotten to a lawsuit because they were in their permit. They were required to stay or they propose to stay within 54 feet rather than the 150 feet wide corridor. And apparently they have cut in the, they have gone past that. So that was one of their, the requirements from the Army Corps of Engineers. Unfortunately, the Army Corps of Engineers lead Jay Clement said to me when I asked how they were going to enforce their contingencies, he said, Well, their can their enforcement was haphazard. And I asked him, were they going to be going to how were they going to be watching what was happening along the card and you see he said to me, I haven't been invited. So, you know, it is a it's a mess. And we just have to keep going, you know, on with it but I have to say that it is it was really rewarding to be able to, you know, have the preliminary injunction, you know, prevent, you know, this cutting until now and now we have a you know, as part of the planning process, you know, we still we have a window until the end of July. So that's where we are with that. That's a very fascinating to be part of a lawsuit. We may have to do it again. It is extremely expensive and but it's also really rewarding to, you know, sit in and listen. So anyway, thank you to see our club for that. Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing one of the things that is remarkable about the story is, is the length of the commitment like Becky you've been working on this as a volunteer years, and you just are not going to stop so that so the delegation and commitment I can't thank you so much for for sharing that. So first, actually, so if you want to take it off just for a quick second, I just like to start, or start conclusion of this event by having everybody just give a virtual round of applause for everybody who spoke it's such amazing stories. I'm so inspired after this evening I just want to like go out and have all these volunteer outreach events and get more volunteers to continue doing this work so so thank you and thank you to our volunteers and our donors who helped make all these accomplishments possible. So we have noticed that it is June 22. We still have six months and several days ahead of us in the year. So we have more work to do. You know, as you previously mentioned, we are legislative session is not over. And we're going to be working until the very next day and prepping for the, for the legislature to reconvene towards the end of this year so that work continues. Equity and justice is critical to our work, and we are in the process of putting together a three year plan to better understand what is our role and how can we center equity and justice, and everything that we do. And COVID our outings work has been put on hold but we're really excited that this coming August we're going to go back outside and get people outdoors and and have hikes and walks and whatever it may be so you know we have. These are just a couple things that we have in store for the rest of the year. And you can put it back up Sue if you want and go to the the contact slide but if there was, if there's anything that you want to get involved in that you heard about today. On the next slide, you can follow us on social media if you are already go to our website. And on the next slide we have email addresses of the different folks who have spoken so if you're really interested in getting getting involved in contact Alan and Alyssa whoever it is that you're interested in. And if you don't know who to contact about something you're always welcome to reach out to us at the main dot chapter at your club or email and we will point you in the in the right direction so thank you again, and we won't keep you any longer than we have to and we look forward to recording out on our success at the end of the year so thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much everyone you're such an inspiration. So inspiring.