In this age of tech-speak, digital jargon and other forms of bland linguistic shorthand, the project to change the identities of Maine’s unorganized townships from incomprehensible letter/number combinations that sound like Starship Enterprise coordinates to real words with real meaning was most welcome. Hedgehog Mountain Township had a ring that T15R6WELS lacked.

Likewise Alligator Lake (T34MD) or Twombly Ridge (T3R1NBPP) or Umcolcus Deadwater (T8R6WELS). Anyone who drives Route 9 knows that Breakneck Hill would have been far more descriptive of a certain Washington County stretch than T31MDBPP.

But there was much more to this project than local color — it had to do with E-911, the statewide enhanced emergency dispatch system that will be deployed starting later this year. With this system, all 911 calls within a region will go to a central point, called a public safety answering point. The E-911 technology will allow the PSAP dispatcher to determine the precise location of the caller — an ability that becomes increasingly important with the spread of wireless communications — and then route the call to the nearest police, fire or ambulance service.

The problem with the 200-year-old township and range land survey numbering system is that its confusing nature will be amplified by E-911. There is, for example, a T3R4WELS in Aroostook County and a T3R4BKPWKR in Somerset — numbers can easily be transposed, letters misunderstood. It is unlikely that Otter Lake (Aroostook) would be mistaken for Spring Lake (Somerset), even on the scratchiest EMS radio.

Other benefits of this renaming would have been that the real names could have been used for postal addresses (the letter/number combo cannot), they would have improved service by utilities, FedEx, UPS and others, and, of course, they would have established a regional identity. Of Maine’s 423 unorganized townships, 175 already have real names; this proposal would have affected 87 of the remaining with the greatest potential for confusion. The names were developed according to U.S. Board on Geographic Names standards, using a principal geographic feature, a historical name or a local name in common use. The old survey numbers still would have been used for legal purposes. The proposal got a thorough airing at a series of public hearings sponsored by the Maine Emergency Services Communication Bureau and the relevant county governments.

So the question is why is this good idea being written about in the past tense. Legislative pique is the answer.

A similar proposal was withdrawn last session because some lawmakers thought it did not give proper deference to the Legislature’s constitutional authority to designate place names. This new proposal, crafted as a legislative resolve with advice from concerned lawmakers, supposedly did.

Until Thursday. That’s when bureau officials were told at an informal meeting with lawmakers from the various relevant committees that objections remained. It is unclear whether those objections are to a process that stresses local input and legislative efficiency or are the result of some anti-government paranoia. The message was this: Withdraw the LR or lose the bill that will continue E-911 funding from a telephone surcharge. In other words, Maine will get E-911 only if it sticks with a naming system that guarantees confusion. Capt. Kirk had an easier time undertanding the Klingons.