Monday, August 3, 2026: Damariscotta rallies to keep local birthing unit open; rain wasn't enough to eliminate drought conditions in Maine

From Maine Public Radio and Mainepublic.org, I'm Nicole Ogrisco with the news on this day in Maine, Monday, August 3rd, 2026. The National Weather Service says a soaking rain that Maine received today is welcome, but won't be enough to get parts of the state out of persistent drought. Senior hydrologist Sarah Jameson says spring rains restored lakes and rivers, but groundwater levels remain below average. Jameson says that's especially concerning in southern Maine. with its large influx of summer visitors. And that kind of strain on an already strained water system could lead to more people seeing dry wells pop up. According to Jameson, as of 11 a.m. today, Portland had already received more rainfall than the entire month of July. Much of southern and western Maine can expect up to an inch of rain, followed by sun and heat through the rest of the week. Elon Musk, the world's richest person, is reportedly planning to spend big to help Republican Senator Susan Collins get reelected in Maine. Steve Missler has more. The New York Times recently reported that Elon Musk is planning to spend up to $120 million on several battleground races, including in Maine. Such spending would likely come from Elon Musk's America pack, which dumped nearly $300 million supporting President Donald Trump in 2024. Troy Jackson, the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, said in a social media post that Elon Musk is trying to buy the government that serves his interests. That's what Elon Musk wants. He doesn't care about us. Really doesn't care about Susan. He cares about him. America PAC is not connected to Susan Collins' re-election committee, but its spending would add to the cluster of well-heeled groups that have already spent big boosting her campaign. Democratic PACs also plan to spend big on the race, but those groups have significantly less money to do so than the Republicans. For Maine Public Radio News, I'm Steve Missler. And Mainers can now request an absentee ballot ahead of the upcoming November 3rd election. Maine law allows any registered voter to request a ballot online or through their municipal clerk three months in advance. Municipal clerks will start issuing ballots 30 days before election day. Voters must return absentee ballots to their town office by 8 p.m. on November 3rd. A South Portland man is expanding a lawsuit against two immigration and customs enforcement agents to include the entire agency. Robert Peck, a U.S. citizen, has already filed suit under Maine law against the agents for allegedly violating his constitutional rights by threatening to arrest him for observing them during the January enforcement surge.

Now, his lawyer David Webert says the lawsuit has been amended to seek monetary penalties through a federal law which provides an avenue to sue the government for harm caused by a federal employee or agent. It's a test case to try to get that really clear precedent that that is illegal. The American Civil Liberties Union of Maine is also pursuing claims, but those have not yet made it to federal court. A panel of judges at the first U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments last week in a case pitting Maine Lobsterman against the Monterey Bay Aquarium Foundation. The case stems back to 2022 when the aquarium redlisted Maine Lobsters. Citing the use of gear, it says, poses a threat to endanger North Atlantic Great Wales. The industry says the report was based on faulty science and caused financial harm. The statement is directed at the fishery. That includes the folks not just who are in the front lines fishing, but also the businesses that process and sell that lobster. Megan Barbaro, who represents the lobstermen said entanglement in main fishing gear, has caused only one documented whale death in 22 years. The Aquarium Foundation argues the case should be dismissed, citing protections of free speech. This week, the Board of Maine Health will decide on a proposal to discontinue labor and delivery services at Lincoln Hospital in Damrascada. Community members are demanding system leaders keep the unit open. They say the declining number of hospital birthing units across the state poses a threat to the health of mothers and babies and to rural communities. Patty White reports.

Dozens of Mainers rallied in downtown Portland Saturday in support of the Damrascotta Hospital's birthing unit. Jenna Marcus says she's worried its closure would discourage young families from settling in a county with the oldest population in the state. Being born and raised in Lincoln County, choosing to move back to raise my family there. It really concerns me about the long-term impact on schools, small businesses, and just the future of the community as a whole. Others here say the fate of the birthing unit has life or death consequences. Leah Hurwitz of Round Pond told rallygoers about her recent harrowing labor experience. We barely had time to figure out what was going on before my water broke and I felt a foot coming out of me. Hurwitz had been scheduled for a C-section in Portland for her breach pregnancy, but was rushed to Lincoln Hospital just 10 minutes from her home and safely delivered her baby. Regionalizing maternity care assumes labor is predictable. It is not. It assumes every mother has a reliable car, a full tank of gas, someone to watch her other kids and clear roads. In a main winter or in seasonal tourist traffic on Route 1, that is not a safe assumption. It's a gamble with someone's life. Maine has lost more than a third of its birthing units, including four just last year. The average drive time to get to a birthing hospital is now 45 minutes, the longest in New England. Tim Goltz, a family physician at Lincoln Hospital, says some local patients would have to drive more than an hour to get to the next closest hospitals with labor and delivery services in Brunswick and Rockport. And there's also abundant literature showing that when women have to travel further to deliver. their babies, bad things happen. And the bad things are moms die and babies die. But Maine Health officials say safety is one of the reasons they're considering the closure. They say annual births below 200 are considered very low. Lincoln's annual births in recent years have numbered roughly 130. And that's a birth every three days. And people delivering babies want to be delivering more babies than that. Hospital president Cindy Wade says higher numbers are needed to ensure providers maintain proficiency. And she says the hospital has been struggling to recruit staff. There are midwives and family medicine physicians, including one who can perform C-sections. But it's been. Well, we haven't recruited a full-time OBGYN doctor since before 2020. Wade says they've had to cobble together coverage with per diem OBGYNs. We are struggling to figure out an option that would keep labor and delivery at Lincoln. We can't continue to do it the way we're doing today. It has to be different. It's not sustainable the way we're doing it. Opponents of the closure say the birthing unit's safety record is stellar, but fear the decision has already been made. There's just dismissal and resignation.

In northern Maine's St. John River Valley, many families trace their lineage back to the Acadians. Members of a French ethnic group who arrived in the late 1700s after the British banished them from what are now the Eastern Canadian provinces. But a living piece of that lineage, Acadian French, is fading, as many fluent speakers grow older. One high school French teacher from Fort Fairfield, however, is racing to preserve the language for future generations. Ari Snyder reports. Earlier this summer, about a dozen French teachers from Maine, Florida, and Washington State donned period costumes for a living history reenactment at the Acadian village in Van Buren. All right, so you are going to make butter. It's the culmination of a week-long immersion in Acadian culture, language, and history, organized by Fort Fairfield French teacher, Jana Bore. Seated at a table inside a dirt floor log cabin from the 1700s, Borei says she's on a mission to raise the profile of an often overlooked variant of French. I never knew anything about Acadians. I was a French literature major, and I think that we need to expand what we know about the Francophone world. Borei says Acadian French is mostly an oral as opposed to written language, and that centuries of cultural isolation and displacement led to distinct vocabulary and phrasing. And sometimes they've really smushed together some of the words. So it's unrecognizable to someone who speaks standard French, only because their ear isn't attuned to it. She says it's also peppered with nautical terms, reflecting the Acadian's history as a seafaring people. For instance, the word for window in standard French is fenetre. They would have used chassis, and a chassis is more like a window that you have on a ship or a porthole. But she says these idiosyncrasies have worked against the language. Many speakers, Bore says, have been told that Acadian French, known locally as Valley French, is an incorrect version of French. And in 1919, the state imposed a ban on speaking French in school, which remained in effect until 1969. I remember this. I was probably in first grade, coming home crying. They won't let me speak French. I was saying this in French. Andre Morrow grew up in Grand Isle and says his first exposure to English came through TV shows like Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street. So at home it was always French or even in the town it was always French. because most of the older folks was all French. A lot of them didn't know English. Morrow says for his generation French and English would often mix into what some call Franklish. He cites one example from his childhood. I'll say it in English first. Our parents would say sometimes, go ride back on the sidewalk and be back to the house when the street lights come on. Translated in our, well, in my language, would have been...

Va-raided at Bessick on the sidewalk, and then back to the street light on. So it's both. And we still talk like that today. And Morrow says he's come to feel pride in Valley French, relishing the idioms that give it its unique character. Let's say somebody is very energetic. We'll say, he's in a canis. That means his gas can is full. But Morrow says he has fewer and fewer people with whom to share those idioms, as the younger generations, including his own grandchildren, lose touch with their ancestral language. He says that makes preservation efforts all the more important, but it also raises a question. Are we going to teach them the Acadian French of their parents and grandparents, or are we going to introduce them to a... I hate the word, a more standard French or something that might seem like international French, Parisian French, Quebec French, whatever we want to call that alternative. Patrick Laquois, director of the Acadian Archives at the University of Maine at Fort Kent, says he doesn't expect everyone to start speaking Valley French again. But he says the language can and should be preserved for those who are interested in learning it. I think it's provoked a lot of really beneficial thinking about what we can do and be more intentional about what we do to pass on the culture. Oh, there's our dressmaker. That's where the Acadian immersion tour for French teachers comes in. The boutique of Alice, Alice, is my son. Ed Michaud, a teacher from Southwest Harbor, says visiting the valley for the first time and staying with a local Acadian French-speaking family has given him a new appreciation for this unique corner of the Francophone world. It's a living cultural. entity that's happening right in front of us, and I think it's something to be respected and treasured. It's a lesson he plans to bring back to the classroom this fall. For Maine Public Radio News, I'm Ari Snyder.

And that's today's Maine news. For more stories, visit mainpublic.org. Coming up on Maine calling at 11 o'clock tomorrow morning, the impacts and reactions to last month's ice shooting in Biddeford. I'm Nicole Ogrisco. Thanks for listening.