AUGUSTA

Nearly a dozen of the state’s top environmental groups turned out at a legislative hearing last week to urge the state to revive its plan to help Maine adapt to a changing climate.

Testifying Thursday before the Legislature’s Committee on Environment and Natural Resources, representatives of groups ranging from the Nature Conservancy to the University of Maine’s Climate Change Institute asked that the state resume work on the report designed to help guide Maine through its looming climate change challenges.

The effects, according to a University of Maine study, will likely include more rain rather than snow, more storms that damage beaches and coastal structures and other changes to Maine the way residents and visitors have known it for centuries.

The study concluded the rising temperatures in Maine threaten everything from tourism to farming to forestry and that the state needs to plan for those changes.

Efforts to develop a climate change adaptation plan were halted by the LePage administration in 2011.

Patricia Aho, commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection, the agency that produced the 2010 report that contained initial recommendations, told the panel that the DEP could resume the effort if told to do so — but only at a certain cost.

The department would need to hire at least two fulltime staff, she said in her testimony; set aside enough funds to work with stakeholders (the initial study had 75); and be able to buy the data it would need to pull together a final report.

Supporters of the bill argued that the situation is urgent.

“This is one of the biggest threats to the future of our children, our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren,” declared Rep. Paul McGowan, D-York, a co-sponsor of the bill.

THE MAINE CENTER for Public Interest Reporting is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news service based in Hallowell.

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