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Newsroom: For the Media 

 

Portland Harbor Prepares for Potential Oil Spill

Being the second-busiest oil port on the East Coast is not without its hazards.  To prepare for a possible oil spil in Portland Harbor, the Coast Guard is planning a large-scale oil spill exercise off the coast of Maine in spring 2010.  Casco Baykeeper Joe Payne commented on this planned "Spill of National Significance" drill at a recent news conference.  Learn more:

Portland Press Herald: Valdez Anniversary Highlights City's Risk, Preparedness

WCSH-6: Oil Spil Exercise to be Held in Portland

Waterkeeper Alliance Launches "The Dirty Lie" Campaign

The coal industry and their lobbyists want you to believe coal is clean.  The truth is that coal pollutes our water, devastates our communities, forests, and mountains, kills wildlife and contributes to climate change.  Coal has poisoned our drinking water and our fish, contaminating our bodies and babies with mercury and other toxins.

 

Waterkeeper Alliance (of which Friends of Casco Bay is a founding member) recently launched The Dirty Lie, a fact-based online campaign debunking the clean coal con.  The campaign’s hub is a website that exposes the lies perpetuated by the coal industry, including the dirtiest lie of all: that coal can ever be clean.  The site shows scientific and legal facts, videos, and graphics, revealing the shocking truths about the destructiveness of the entire coal cycle—from its role in propping up an antiquated fossil-fuel-based economy to its adverse effects on our watersheds, our health, and our communities.  Find out what the coal industry doesn't want you to know.

 

Polluted Snow Can Degrade the Bay

While snow may appear to be as pure as, well, the driven snow, it is anything but.  Plowed snow can contain pollutants like road salt, motor oil, trash and grime gathered from city streets, even air pollution scrubbed from the atmosphere by falling snow.  As the snow melts, these pollutants can end up in Casco Bay, damaging water quality and marine life.

 

Click here to watch an interview on the problem of “dirty snow,” with Doug Rafferty of "Doug's Discovery" and Friends of Casco Bay director Cathy Ramsdell (aired on Channel 13 on Feb. 11th).

      

 

Casco Bay on "Aqua Kids" TV Show

Cast and crew of the popular TV program "Aqua Kids" visited Casco Bay this summer to shoot a special episode -- and several Friends of Casco Bay got a taste of stardom! 

 

The Aqua Kids segment features Friends of Casco Bay's Mike Doan and his son Josh searching for juvenile lobsters (featured in the clip, below), Captain Helen Mattsson demonstrating marine-toilet pumpouts, and Citizen Stewards Andy and Maggie Bertocci testing water quality.