ORONO – With Republican President Bush’s energy and environmental policies as touchstones, Democratic U.S. Reps. John Baldacci of Bangor and Tom Allen of Portland held an environmental forum Monday at the University of Maine.

Points raised at the meeting touched upon Bush’s energy policy and air pollution, arsenic in drinking water, the politics of the environment, and methods of swaying lawmakers.

Bush’s recently unveiled energy policy – and its advocacy for new coal- and oil-fired power plants – has raised alarms with the two congressmen.

Allen said Vice President Dick Cheney is misguided in his assertion that while conservation is a private virtue it does not provide a foundation for public energy policy.

While conservation is not the end-all, it should be part of the mixture that lays the foundation for a comprehensive energy policy, Allen said.

Baldacci said that in the president’s plan there is an “imbalance” among the three necessary ingredients: conservation, increased supply of traditional fuels, and development of renewable energy sources.

The environmental hazard for Maine, Baldacci said, is that when it comes to weather patterns and wind direction the state is the “tailpipe in terms of the country.”

Pollutants from upwind coal- and oil-fired plants in the Midwest are borne to Maine on the prevailing winds, he told the audience of about 75 people.

Jim Brooks of the Maine Department of Environmental Protections Air Quality Bureau, one of five health and environmental experts at the forum, said that recent data collected in the Dover-Foxcroft, Ashland and Holden areas indicated that pollutants have blown in all the way from Chicago.

Dr. Paul Lebow of Maine Physicians for Social Responsibility and an emergency room physician in Bangor said that it has been estimated that each year in Maine, 2,500 asthma-related emergency room visits are triggered by air pollution.

The other Bush environmental initiative that impinges on health concerns acceptable levels of arsenic in drinking water.

Bush has stopped a process to reduce the acceptable level from 50 parts per billion to 10 ppb, a standard that the World Health Organization backs. Bush has called for more research.

Baldacci noted that the current acceptable level of arsenic was set in 1942.

Andy Smith, the Health Bureau’s toxicologist, said that over half of Maine’s population gets its drinking water from private wells. Water from 10 to 20 percent of these wells has arsenic in excess of the 10 parts per billion standard, while the water from at least 5 percent contains 50 ppb or more, he said.

Members of the audience and the experts at the meeting said that the economic benefits of environmental protection must be emphasized to sway lawmakers.

Steve Kahl of the Sen. George Mitchell Center for Environmental and Watershed Research at UM said ensuring that all 6,000 lakes in Maine are swimmable and fishable would have a favorable economic impact greater than Bath Iron Works.

Jay Hanes, an assistant professor of art education at UM, said he was disgusted by the profligate waste of energy by corporations, exemplified by advertising in New York City’s Times Square. The advertising both wastes energy and encourages consumption, he said.

Baldacci said that government policy and research should be encouraging companies to head in environmentally sound directions by offering incentives and by finding alternative ways of doing business.

Politics also popped up at the forum, as one member of the audience said that the Democratic Party had “lost the hearts and minds” of voters on environmental matters.

Allen noted that “outside the Northeast and outside this room” the environment is a much lower priority among voters.

He agreed that for Democrats to succeed they need to pay more attention to environmental matters, in part, to regain those voters who went with Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader last November.

Sally Jacobs of Orono, a member of the Sunrise Trail Coalition, which wants to create a multiuse biking trail from Brewer to Calais along old rail beds, wanted to know the best way to get policy-makers’ attention.

Baldacci said that what doesn’t work for him are form letters. He said he prefers personal handwritten notes.

Most effective, Allen said, are letters to the editor that get published in Maine newspapers. These appear on congressmen’s desks and “get read, especially by those whose names are mentioned.”