Nancy Smith is the CEO of GrowSmart Maine. Francesca Gundrum is the advocacy director for Maine Audubon.

What if Maine just removed all regulations that limit where and how much housing can be constructed? An easy fix to the housing crisis? Or the end of our vibrant downtowns and valuable open spaces? Maine Audubon and GrowSmart Maine advocate for land use policies that support communities where people and wildlife can thrive, so our job is to wrestle with these questions. 

We advocate for balance, clarity and impact in local, state and national land use policies. This includes local zoning, through which residents decide where they do and don’t want different types of development and how much. Maine is making progress, with more work ahead in zoning, town ordinances and state regulations that work together to direct growth where it makes the most sense.

An early phase of the Maine Zoning Atlas was launched several months ago, as part of the National Zoning Atlas, capturing zoning in the Portland area and Washington County. Its release was followed by a Dec. 6 op-ed in this newspaper (“Maine’s zoning maze shows us reform can’t wait“). The Atlas helps people explore rules for development in any mapped community and helps developers find areas appropriate for their projects. This consolidation of rules is a significant step forward in removing barriers to building better-sited housing across Maine.

The Maine Zoning Atlas made clear that many municipalities have not yet updated their regulations to comply with recent state laws. But they’re working on it, and the state is offering resources through the new Maine Office of Community Affairs (MOCA). There is clearly more to be done, including tracking those changes, but this is work well worth doing as a service to residents, town officials and developers, particularly local property owners seeking to create small-scale housing solutions while lacking the expertise of larger firms. 

The Maine Zoning Atlas is a powerful tool for everyone who wants to see thoughtfully sited housing in Maine, even as it points out challenges. Through conversations with local leaders and communities across Maine, we understand that many municipalities are frustrated by state mandates like those recently passed, even with the additional resources made available through MOCA.

But some state-level guardrails against bad development make sense. For example, the author of the Dec. 6 piece overlooks the critical value of statewide shoreland zoning to safeguard water quality, reduce erosion, conserve wildlife habitat and protect the natural beauty of shoreland areas, ensuring that lakes, rivers, coastal wetlands and other waters remain healthy for both the people who enjoy them and the wildlife that depend on them. Without this law, Maine’s healthy waters that are famously tied to our identity and economy would not exist as they do today.

As Atlas work continues, lawmakers are voting on bills that will shape the future of development in Maine, some for better, others for worse. We celebrate the strong committee vote on LD 161, which requires MOCA to review and modernize laws guiding subdivision development. However, we’re concerned that significant changes to other laws are happening before that careful review takes place.

For example, committee members approved LD 128, to increase development density allowed for subdivisions under the Department of Environmental Protection’s “Site Law” from single-family homes up to four-unit buildings plus accessory dwelling units. That’s a fivefold increase in development pressure on any buildable land, without limiting this scale of development to locations that make sense in the long run.

This will bring more transportation costs to families and increase demand for public services, which will raise municipal budgets, all while eroding key wildlife habitat. Current law is designed to make sure large-scale development projects undergo state environmental review before they are built. It makes more sense to encourage this kind of development in locally designated growth areas and places with public water and sewer.

Ultimately, our organizations support streamlining state environmental review for denser development when we build in smart places. Local zoning and thoughtful siting are some of the best ways to avoid impacts to wildlife habitat and the cost of sprawl. Growth and conservation can coexist — and they must — but we have to be smart about it.