County residents bemoan rough roads > Weight limits seem to appear earlier each year

DYER BROOK — It was standing room only Tuesday night as about 50 residents and town officials from as far away as Ashland and Reed Plantation packed into the library at the Southern Aroostook Community School to voice their concerns about the poor quality of the roads in the region.

At the heart of the matter is the deteriorating condition of Routes 11, 2 and 2A and some of the connector roads between them which has prompted the state Department of Transportation to place weight bans on some of those roads earlier and earlier each year.

Where once the roads were shut down for four to six weeks in the spring, they now are being restricted as early as December as the state tries to reduce damage in a time of shrinking state dollars.

People who live and work in towns along those roads say that when weight restrictions are put into effect for longer periods of time, the local economies and livelihoods of area people are hurt.

The occasion for Tuesday’s gathering was the regular monthly meeting of the Region 1 Transportation Advisory Committee. The committee is one of eight in the state created four years ago under the state’s Sensible Transportation Policy Act to advise the state on transportation issues in a given area.

“We feel like we live in the forgotten land,” Candy Roy, town manager of Oakfield, Smyrna and Merrill, told the committee. “Our roads don’t get much attention in this area.”

Joan Emery, town manager of Reed Plantation, said rather than fix the roads to a standard that could handle the heavy truck traffic that is required by wood products industries, the state’s solution seems to be just to put a quick asphalt covering over what’s already there.

That was what happened on Route 2A two years ago and she said the road is breaking up again.

“You say something about it and it goes in one ear and out the other,” echoed Finley Clarke of Moro, who lives along Route 11 and said the section of that road from Patten to Knowles Corner had not been rebuilt since the days of horse carts and rope-operated dump trucks.

“They just come put a couple of inches of tar on it,” he said.

Jim Brown, the RTAC representative from Presque Isle, pointed out that there was only limited funding in each of the state’s road regions to do any work each year. In Aroostook County, that is about $5 million, enough to rebuild only 5 miles of road. He said all of the RTACs were in the same position.

“I wonder if there are any other regions of the state where there is the number of people laid off like in our area because of the roads,” responded an unsympathetic Roy.

“Route 9 is being rebuilt beautiful for the Canadians, but what about Aroostook County?” asked Clarke. “They want to raise the gas tax to pay for ferry service off the coast. Why don’t they raise another cent and send it up here?”

“I think we’re kind of being discriminated against,” said Scott Nevers, a logging contractor from Dyer Brook.

Polly Hughes, the DOT liaison to the Region 1 TAC, said that in most areas where road work has been done or studied, it has been preceded by efforts of a local corridor committee.

She said such groups are made up of town officials, businesspeople and residents who lobby for the transportation needs of their areas. Such was the case for Route 9 and also for the federally funded studies done over the last few years concerning a proposed north-south highway in the County.

“The impact of a corridor committee is tremendous,” she said. “I can guarantee you that it gets the attention of the commissioner.”

Roy told the group that she would be glad to work on organizing such a committee. She said she had spoken with personnel at the Northern Maine Development Commission who also had agreed to assist in that venture.

RTAC member Ralph Cleale of Houlton also urged southern Aroostook area residents to get involved on that committee.