March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Rejection of AES plant tops 1990 county news

One of the top news stories of 1990 in Hancock County was the rejection of the Applied Energy Services Inc. permit application to locate a coal-fired energy plant in Bucksport.

The Bucksport Planning Board voted 6-1 on Oct. 19 that AES had not shown that its 180-megawatt co-generation plant would meet two specific criteria in the town’s shoreland zoning ordinance.

The board said the company had not proved that the project would not create unhealthful or unsafe conditions or that it would not cause damage to spawning grounds, fish and aquatic life, waterfowl and other wildlife in the area.

Much of the board’s discussion centered on insufficient information concerning the air emissions and the effect the emissions would have on air quality in Bucksport and the surrounding area.

Some board members expressed concern that the project would affect Kennedy Brook, a prime spawning area for rainbow smelt, and noted that the Environmental Protection Agency also had expressed concern about the effect of the plant on the short-nosed sturgeon.

Wild applause from the crowd of opponents greeted the board’s vote. The bleachers at the high school gymnasium were filled with people applauding and hugging each other. Some wept with joy. Caroline Brennan-Alley, president of State Taxpayers Opposed to Pollution, which fought against the plant, said her group was always convinced the AES plant was “not the right thing at the right time.”

The conflicts between city administrators and the city council and the eventual departure of the Ellsworth City Manager Herbert Gilsdorf ran a distant second as the county’s top news story.

The following news briefs reflect some of the memorable events of 1990 in Hancock County:

Jan. 2 — Pat’s IGA in Ellsworth closes to make way for the new L.L. Bean store on High Street.

Jan. 17 — A tractor-trailer destroys the H.O.M.E. chapel in Orland on Route 1 while attempting to avoid an oncoming car.

Feb. 2 — Jackson Laboratory opens a temporary mouse breeding facility after its catastrophic 1989 fire.

March 7 — Twelve-year-old Joey Morrison helps to save a woman’s life in Bar Harbor. While delivering the Bangor Daily News to neighbors near his Snow Street home, Morrison heard the cries of a woman from the door of her residence. The boy ran to the emergency room at Mount Desert Island Hospital, about a block from the woman’s house, to get help.

March 20 — At his first regular meeting, newly elected Ellsworth City Councilor Philip H. Shea attracts about 100 vocal followers who cheer the councilor’s efforts to slash what he termed rampant city spending.

March 24 — The Public Citizen, a Ralph Nader consumer advocacy group, identifies the Hancock County Mental Health Association as one of the most seriously out of compliance mental health centers in the country.

March 28 — A new two-town Schoodic Community School District is created after residents of Franklin, Sullivan and Sorrento vote 474-413 to dissolve their 15-year-old association.

April 23 — About 1,000 people climb Cadillac Mountain to greet the sunrise and join American Indian representatives in celebration of Earth Day 1990.

April 25 — Street lights, directional signs or flashing beacons, traffic islands and an enforced speed limit are ordered for the intersection of Route 1 and Upper Falls Road in Orland after a public hearing at the H.O.M.E. Learning Center.

April 30 — A hundred people gather at Ellsworth City Library for the ground-breaking ceremony for an $800,000 addition.

May 10 — The five-member Class of 1990 was supposed to be the last to graduate from the financially troubled Rural Educational Alternative Community High School, but the town of Bucksport and school officials reach an agreement to keep the school open.

May 25 — L.L. Bean factory store opens in Ellsworth.

June 12 — Liz Hooper, Ellsworth city planner, resigns claiming that increasing hostility toward planning from the City Council and residents, the continued references by Councilor Phil Shea regarding the need for her job and salary, and “the fact that council meetings have turned into events at the Roman Coliseum” had made it impossible for her to continue.

June 27 — After many months of intense public and professional scrutiny, plans for an 84-berth marina at the site of the former Underwood Packing Co. factory were approved by a 4-1 vote of the Tremont Planning Board.

July 4 — The members of the Hancock County Creamery — the only dairy cooperative in the state wholly owned by the farmers who produce for it — agree to sell the Ellsworth dairy to Oakhurst Dairy of Portland.

July 10 — A fugitive from justice for more than six months, William Berkley, 49, is arrested in Belmont, Mass. Berkley was convicted in the 1984 fire that destroyed Adm. Richard Byrd’s Tunk Lake summer retreat.

July 12 — Bar Harbor Police Officer Kevan P. Corson, 32, is shot and wounded by an unidentified motorist. The officer’s assailant is never found.

July 17 — A tense helicopter rescue is played out before 200 tourists as a Massachusetts teen-ager is elevated to safety after falling more than 80 feet from Cadillac Mountain. David Bevacqua, 15, recovered from the accident and returned to Andover, Mass., later in the summer.

July 26 — Jackson Laboratory returns to its mouse-breeding capacity to within 79 percent of production rates reached before the devastating fire on May 10, 1989.

July 28 — A Superior Court jury awards a Miami lawyer $675,000 in compensation and punitive damages in a civil suit filed against Bangor District Court Judge David M. Cox and Stonington lawyer Emily Fuller Watson. After the weeklong trial, the eight-member jury ruled in favor of Milton Ferrell. The jury found the plaintiff had proven that Cox committed fraud, and ordered the judge to pay $250,000 compensation and $75,000 in punitive damages.

Aug. 24 — The Maine Maritime Academy schooner Bowdoin returns to Castine after an eight-week training cruise that took it north toward Arctic waters — the region where the ship spent most of its working life.

Aug. 28 — A would-be robber finds himself on the wrong end of his own knife after a female assistant manager of the Ellsworth Pizza Hut overpowered her assailant and foiled the holdup.

Aug. 30 — Ellsworth City Manager Herbert T. Gilsdorf announces that he will move to the top administrative position in Ypsilanti, Mich., after more than four months of frequently heated confrontations with Ellsworth City Councilor Phil Shea.

Sept. 3 — The 365-foot Russian sailing vessel Druzhba sails into Castine Harbor carrying 60 Soviet and 41 American cadets from maritime academies around the country concluding the two countries’ first joint training cruise.

Sept. 7 — The fishing fleets in Corea, Gouldsboro Bay, Dyer Bay, Prospect Harbor and Winter Harbor tie up their boats in protest of plummeting lobster prices that dropped to $1.75 a pound.

Sept. 24 — The $1.5 million Down East Family YMCA facility is dedicated during ceremonies before several hundred people in Ellsworth.

Oct. 1 — A fire that started in a trash can destroys Cards Tideway Market in Hancock.

Oct. 3 — An effort by a group of Tremont residents to file an appeal against a controversial Planning Board decision fails. Residents were appealing the Planning Board’s June 25 decision to grant a permit to Mount Desert Realty Trust for an 84-slip marina in Bass Harbor.

Oct. 5 — William Berkley, 49, of Belmont, Mass., is discharged from a Cambridge, Mass., hospital where he has sought refuge against extradition attempts by Maine. Convicted of starting a fire that destroyed Adm. Richard Byrd’s Tunk Lake retreat, Berkley was behing bars in Maine the next day.

Oct. 8 — Staffing and services at Acadia National Park are curtailed sharply after federal budget negotiations fail. Tourists found the visitor centers closed, but all toll roads open.

Oct. 31 — A group of Tremont residents file an action in Superior Court calling for a review and reversal of a recent decision by the town’s Board of Appeals. The complaint alleged the Board of Appeals erred in its Oct. 1 decision, which denied the individuals legal standing to file an appeal.

Oct. 31 — The AIDS crisis comes home to Ellsworth with a conference for caregivers. It was the first gathering of its kind in the eastern coastal area of Maine. Sponsored by the Down East AIDS Network, the conference attracted more than 100 people.

Nov. 27 — Timothy J. King receives a unanimous vote of approval by the Ellsworth City Council and will start work as Ellsworth’s fifth city manager in a decade.

Dec. 1 — Ellsworth prepares for three new malls with the approval of the Downeast Outlet Mall, the Ram Development Co.’s 32-unit mall and the planned renovation of the Ellsworth Shopping Center.

Dec. 12 — Hancock County’s sardine canning companies in Prospect Harbor and Stonington brace for the possible decrease of tariffs for their Canadian competitors that threaten the Maine plants’ security.

Dec. 15 — The Jackson Laboratory opens a new $7 million clean-processing plant in Bar Harbor, the first permanent building constructed to replace facilities destroyed by fire in 1989.


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