Governor Janet Mills may have been sharpening her veto pencil for the Passamaquoddy Tribe's drinking water bill when legislators removed the bill from her office on April 19 and amended it, in order to address the governor's concerns. The amendment that was then approved by the House and the Senate clarifies jurisdictional issues that the governor had raised. Mills then signed the bill on April 21.
      The bill, which would allow the tribe to tap into a groundwater aquifer in Perry to provide drinking water to Sipayik and Eastport, had earlier received strong support in legislature, with the House voting 103 to 35 and the Senate 21 to 11 for the bill before it was amended. The governor, though, had opposed a provision of the measure that would allow the tribe to be the primary regulator of drinking water within Passamaquoddy territory. The House amendment states that the tribe's jurisdiction over drinking water does not extend beyond tribal territory and that it cannot enforce tribal drinking water ordinances over the Passamaquoddy Water District (PWD). A Senate amendment proposed by Senator Marianne Moore of Calais would have required the approval of Perry voters before two parcels of tribally owned land in the town are placed into trust, under the provisions of the bill. That amendment failed 12-22 in the Senate.
      On April 11, a day before the initial House vote, hundreds rallied at the State House in Augusta to support LD 906 and demanding that Governor Mills drop her opposition. Passamaquoddy Chief Elizabeth "Maggie" Dana of Sipayik stated, "I took a sacred oath to protect Sipayik people and all our relations of this land. Few things are more essential to life than clean water. I appeal to Governor Mills to drop her line in the sand approach concerning jurisdictional issues between us and the State of Maine and instead allow us to provide what the United Nations recognizes as a human right clean, safe drinking water."
      During the debate in the House on April 12, Passamaquoddy Rep. Rena Newell, the sponsor of the bill, stated, "As the seasons change, so does the drinking water quality at Sipayik." She said that access to clean drinking water is "a basic human right" and that the inconsistent quality of the water supplied by the PWD is "a public health concern." From the spring to the fall, the water can be discolored, "tainted by a bad odor" and poor tasting, she maintained. The water district is currently in compliance with all drinking water regulations but has struggled for years with the issue of trihalomethanes (THMs), which can be formed during the water treatment process, being in the water. Different THMs are considered as either possible or probable human carcinogens by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
      Newell noted that the tribe pays over $100,000 a year "to receive this inconsistent quality of water" and said that "requiring consent from local municipalities is restrictive." The bill would bypass the municipal approval process by allowing the tribe to have 55 acres of land it owns in Perry placed into trust through the federal acquisition process without the town's consent and to tap into an aquifer in Perry without following the town's ordinance on large-scale water extraction. Municipal approval has been required for all other lands placed into trust for tribes in the state.
      Rep. Jeffrey Evangelos of Friendship maintained that objections to the bill centered on the 55 acres in Perry that the tribe is seeking to place into trust status. "55 acres? The State of Maine stole 15 million acres from the Wabanaki nations," he stated, adding that the amount of property taxes that the municipalities of Perry and Eastport would lose, through the PWD being tax-exempt and the tribally-owned land being placed into trust status, is very small.
      However, Rep. Laurel Libby of Auburn argued that the significant jurisdictional change that the bill would make "will not solve the water quality problem," as it's an engineering challenge in dealing with the current water source. She also maintained that the bill has not followed good due process, as the state has never changed a water district's charter because a customer asked for it. She noted that the tribe had not approached the PWD board about making the charter change. The bill would change the district's charter to make it tax-exempt, which would help provide funding to replace the carbon filters, which may need to be done every year, in the new filtration system that is expected to be installed at the water treatment plant in Perry this June. The PWD is the only water district in the state that is not tax-exempt.
      Rep. Jennifer Poirier of Skowhegan noted that the 2013 pump test of wells undertaken by the tribal government on land it owns in Perry had caused several nearby wells to go dry and that abutters had not been informed about the pump test. The tribal government was having both the water quality and quantity of the groundwater tested as part of a study to find a source of water to replace, or supplement, the water from Boyden's Lake. The federal government eventually paid to restore some of the wells of the Perry residents. The town then approved a large-scale water extraction ordinance, but the tribe has not applied for approval from the town's planning board to extract water from the aquifer under the ordinance. Placing the lands into trust would circumvent the town's ordinance, she pointed out. Also, she noted that the water distribution system at Sipayik, which is maintained by the tribal government, does not have bleeder valves, as the pipes in Eastport do, which would improve the water quality. The same water is distributed by the PWD in Eastport, where residents do not experience the same level of concern about water quality, she stated. No Eastport residents had offered testimony to support the bill during the public hearing. Rep. Poirier argued that the legislature should not pass the bill at this time and instead should see if the new carbon filtration system improves the water quality.
      Rep. Anne Perry of Calais, though, stated that Perry "has a say over what the tribe does" and that "one municipality does not do that with another." And Rep. Thomas Skolfield of Weld, who also supports the bill, noted that the tribe and town of Perry "should have been able to work out an agreement" and that it should not have been necessary to bring the bill to the legislature.
      The debate over whether the tribe, the town of Perry and the PWD should be given the chance to work on resolving the water quality issues before enacting such legislation continued in the Senate on April 13. Senator Moore of Calais urged that the legislature should pause in approving the bill and let the tribe, the town and the water district work to address the issues in a collaborative manner, "with open and mutually respectful communication." She noted that there has not been discussion with town officials about removing the land from the tax rolls, and she maintained that the tribe should adhere to the Perry ordinance in determining if the aquifer in Perry is a reliable source for clean drinking water.
      Senator Lisa Keim of Dixfield also argued that, before enacting such a bill, the new filtration system should be given the opportunity "to do its job" to improve the water quality. She said the Judiciary Committee, of which she is a member, was told that the tribe had not approached the town or the PWD about the water issues because they were "discriminatory and racist." She then read a letter from a Perry resident, who was concerned about the negative portrayal of Perry residents by some proponents of the bill. The letter writer stated that "the ties of friendship and family run deep with our Passamaquoddy neighbors." Senator Keim said the town would like to engage with the tribe and be part of the solution.
      Senator Anne Carney of Cape Elizabeth agreed that communities should first try to work on solutions before a matter is brought to the legislature, but she said that "hasn't happened." And Senator Stacy Brenner of Scarborough stated that there has been a multi-year, multi-stakeholder effort to solve the issue, but the tribe has been limited by restrictions on its sovereignty and financial constraints placed on the PWD under Maine law. Other tribes in the county "do not experience these same roadblocks."
      Senator Craig Hickman of Winthrop asked, "Why should a town be able to block the tribe's quest for clean drinking water? Why does the state require the tribe to get its permission to access clean drinking water?" He argued that the state "must set aside its painful paternalism and get out of the way."
      As for the bill's jurisdictional changes, it would remove restrictions in the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act and companion Maine Implementing Act, giving the tribe an opportunity to regulate its own drinking water under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act in coordination with the federal EPA. The tribe could pursue three possible paths for water regulation: concurrent jurisdiction with the state, exclusive jurisdiction by the tribe or treatment as a state status under the EPA, which would open up funding to the tribe to build infrastructure to obtain clean water. The governor's office had objected to this provision, as the PWD could then be regulated by two entities -- the tribe within the reservation and the state in Eastport.