Earlier this week, I was pleased to visit the University of Maine in Orono to announce the 2023 Northern Border Regional Commission Catalyst Awards. This year marks the largest single round of grants that Commission has ever distributed to the inventors and innovators who are driving the economic success of our region.
Hello, this is Governor Janet Mills and thank you for listening.
The Northern Border Regional Commission – or NBRC – was created by Congress back in 2008. It’s intended to spur economic and community development along the northeastern border of the United States, focusing on rural counties in particular. The Commission has five co-chairs, including me, the governor of Maine, and the governors of New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York – along with a federal co-chair appointed by the President.
Since its creation, the NBRC has distributed 387 grants, amounting to more than $114 million in direct investments and attracting another $416 million in additional investments, across Maine and the other Commission member states.
Thanks to the advocacy of Maine’s Congressional Delegation, this year, Maine is receiving $11 million in federal funding and $36.5 million in other matching funds, or leveraged funding, through the NBRC Catalyst Awards. Sixteen awardees in Maine will use these funds to make sure that Maine people can live in healthy communities, have safe roads, clean drinking water, and good housing.
For example, the University of Maine will use its million dollar grant from NBRC to create the “GEM Gateway” within its Green Engineering and Materials Factory of the Future.
The “Factory of the Future” is a manufacturing space at the University that uses sustainable, bio-based materials from Maine timber – things like CLT, or cross laminated timber. It is revitalizing our forest products industry and our rural Maine economy, it’s reducing carbon emissions, and helping us combat the effects of climate change to protect our environment.
I am very pleased the NBRC recognized the importance of funding the “GEM Gateway” in the University’s Factory of the Future. Among other benefits, the “GEM Gateway” will provide an immersive learning experience for young people to interest them in advanced manufacturing and careers in that area. The “GEM Gateway” is just one of sixteen projects in Maine funded by the NBRC Catalyst Awards this year.
The Town of Greenville will use its grant to expand public roads and parking, and sewer and water lines, and storm water systems to help with the development of 26 units of new workforce housing near the CA Dean Northern Light Hospital. That investment will attract health care workers and their families to the beautiful Moosehead Lake region.
The Towns of Anson and Madison will use their joint grant to improve the water district’s wastewater treatment system and remove PFAS from treated waters.
And organizations in Oxford County will upgrade trail systems and trailhead parking, and establish miles of new mountain bike trails and purchase snow guns for Black Mountain ski resort in Rumford.
These investments will strengthen Maine’s heritage industries, and enhance our outdoor economy, increase our resiliency to climate change, and create good-paying jobs in our rural communities.
I thank the Northern Border Regional Commission for its continued support of rural Maine, and I thank the Maine Congressional Delegation—all four of them—for their work to secure the funding that made these projects possible.
On behalf of the state of Maine, I congratulate the University of Maine and the 15 other 2023 Catalyst Award Winners from Presque Isle to Washington County and everything in between, and I look forward to celebrating these projects as they are completed in the years to come.
This is Governor Janet Mills and thank you for listening.