Natural heritage

The overwhelming land-use concern of Maine citizens, the preservation of remote ponds and forestland, prompted the Land Use Regulation Commission to include in its Revised Comprehensive Plan the requirement that development be guided away from areas particularly valaed for their remote and undeveloped condition. Moreover, zoning measures are to be used where protection of these special values is not being accomplished voluntarily by landowners.

As is now well known to those who follow these matters, representatives of the paper companies approached several LURC commissioners personally, at their homes, four months after the public record was closed and presented a list of changes they wanted in the plan, including language that would protect our most valuable lands from development. The following day, LURC reversed itself and decided the Management-Natural Character Zone would be applied only when approved by the owner.

Public outrage at this unethical lobbying and LURC’s disregard of public opinion, clearly expressed in previous hearings and reflected in the June 19 draft plan, has forced LURC to reopen the public record on the plan.

A hearing is scheduled for 6 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 4, at the Bangor Motor Inn. Please, if you are interested in seeing that the best of Maine’s natural heritage is sustained and preserved, come to the hearing and let your voice be heard. Let LURC know that zoning, by its very nature, cannot be voluntary. Maine’s most valuable resource, the remote and undevelped wildlands, must be set off-limits to development and exploitation. David Kendall Dexter