Aga Pinette (2012)

Fellowship Year: 2012
Academic Background: University of Maine School of Law - JD - (Law)
Aga Pinette is completing her law degree at the University of Maine School of Law, where she is Editor-in-Chief of the Maine Law Review. After graduating from Dartmouth College with a degree in Environmental Earth Sciences, Aga worked as a senior land use planner for the State of Maine, where she coordinated regulatory reviews of significant and controversial land use proposals in Maine’s North Woods, wrote agency rules, developed policy on a range of complex rural land use planning issues, and conducted public proceedings involving constituents with diverse interests and objectives. Just prior to attending law school, Aga led a contentious five-year regulatory review of the largest development project in Maine’s history—Plum Creek’s long-range planned growth and conservation scheme encompassing 400,000 acres in the Moosehead Lake region. While in law school, Aga has studied a broad spectrum of legal issues that offer insights into ways of thinking about local, regional, and global problems and solutions. For example, applying her tax law and land use background, she recently analyzed the feasibility of applying certain Maine-based tax incentives and programs related to working waterfront preservation to other coastal states. The analysis was part of a broader effort by the Maine Sea Grant and National Sea Grant Law Center to address the disappearance of water-dependent fisheries and marine trades caused by the conversion of working waterfront land to other uses such as vacation homes. Aga is currently researching the legal frameworks that facilitate the incremental privatization of some of Maine’s most cherished coastal beaches, rivers, and lake shores through the purchase of shorefront and the installation of expansive docking structures for private use. Her legal analysis on this issue will be published in the next volume of the Maine Law Review. As Editor-in-Chief, Aga is also organizing a colloquium, scheduled for Spring 2013, focused on legal issues confronting food systems and local food movements in the United States.
Expertise: Environmental Policy & Law, Sustainable Ag / Food Policy, Land / Open Space / Smart Growth