The 2000 Census confirmed what many have feared: The lifeblood of northern Maine is draining toward the coast and south.

In the last decade, thousands of northern Mainers have migrated south seeking jobs and a better way of life. The three grown children of Linda Berube of Fort Kent are among the nearly 13,000 people who left Aroostook County. Like many other parents in northern Maine, Berube laments the fact that all of her children have moved south, but she understands their desire for better-paying jobs.

“It’s sad to see talent like that leave the area,” she said, speaking wistfully of the sons and a daughter who couldn’t find decent jobs in Fort Kent and the two grandchildren in the southern Maine town of Limington she rarely sees.

Numbers released by the U.S. Census Bureau in March reconfirmed that there are in fact two Maines: one prosperous and, increasingly, full of people; the other – heavily reliant on logging, farming and fishing – steadily declining, like the industries that support it. And the gap between the two is widening.

Since 1990 the four northernmost counties – Aroostook, Penobscot, Piscataquis and Washington – have lost 6 percent of their population, even as the two southernmost counties, York and Cumberland, grew 11 percent. Aroostook County lost almost enough people to populate the city of Waterville. Washington County has fewer people today than it did in the mid-1800s.

Bangor, northern Maine’s largest city, saw a 5 percent decline in population, erasing the gain it posted in the 1990 Census. The Bangor metropolitan area, encompassing 15 communities, also took a step backward, losing 765 people.

Overall, Maine did manage to post a modest increase in population of 3.8 percent between 1990 and 2000. However, the state is not keeping pace with a growing nation. Maine’s meager growth was surpassed by 45 other states. Arizona grew a staggering 40 percent, Georgia grew 26 percent, and New Hampshire grew 11 percent.

Maine is not riding the wave of immigration that has propelled growth elsewhere in the country. Hispanic and Asian immigrants account for much of the population increases in states in the Southwest and West. Maine, however, remains nearly lily white, with less than 3 percent of its population made up of minorities, which in this census included a mind-boggling combination of 126 racial and ethnic groups. The state’s largest federally defined minority group, Hispanics, grew from 6,829 to 9,360.

The census provides the crucial basis for distribution of federal grants and divvying up U.S. House of Representatives seats among the states. Maine won’t lose one of its two House seats now, but is expected to do so in the next census or two.

Looking for silver linings

Ask state and local planners to talk about the trends and they turn almost sheepish, looking for shreds of good news.

Richard Sherwood, a policy analyst with the State Planning Office, said slow growth might be a good thing because it gives regions time to adjust. Communities can develop plans for controlling growth before roads and schools are overwhelmed, for example.

Some who’ve left northern Maine see the population trends darkly.

“It’s going to hell in a handbasket up there,” said David Berube, who left Fort Kent two months ago. Like so many Aroostook County expatriates, Berube doesn’t expect to return. He and his older brother and sister are settled near Portland where they have better-paying jobs at Wright Express, a corporate fuel credit card company, and more to do, Berube said.

Aroostook County, which has been in decline since the 1960s, saw a huge decrease in population this decade because of the closing of Loring Air Force Base in 1994 when 8,000 military personnel and 1,200 civilian jobs left the state. The town of Limestone, home of the base, lost more than three-quarters of its population with the closure.

The population of nearby Caribou and Presque Isle dropped by 12 percent and 10 percent, respectively. Farther from Loring, the decline was more muted with Houlton and Fort Kent posting losses of just 2 percent and 0.8 percent, respectively.

Overall, Aroostook’s population dropped 15 percent, the largest decline among the state’s 16 counties. The biggest influx of people has been only temporary: Phish concerts at the former air base in 1997 and 1998 doubled the county’s population for five days.

Bob Clark, director of the Northern Maine Development Commission, said he hopes Aroostook is at a low point and soon will see slight upward trends in population. State projections show its population is expected to grow by 5 percent by 2016. That’s still a paltry one-third of a percent per year.

“There will always be people looking to move [south] to Bangor,” he said. “But, there will always be people looking to move to Aroostook County” because of its quality of life.

Industrial decline

The population of the state’s central counties remained fairly unchanged, with Penobscot County, the state’s third-largest, losing less than 1 percent of its population since 1990. Somerset and Kennebec counties gained 2 and 1 percent, respectively.

One of the most striking urban losses was posted by the state’s former textile capital, Lewiston, which lost more than 10 percent of its population. Neighboring Auburn lost 5 percent.

In Piscataquis County, where more people died than were born in the 1990s, the population declined nearly 8 percent.

Communities heavily dependent on Maine’s declining paper and logging industry took it on the chin. The northern Penobscot County communities built by the once mighty Great Northern Paper Co. saw some of the largest losses in the state. Since 1990, Millinocket has lost 25 percent of its population, East Millinocket 16 percent and Medway 23 percent, as the paper company has scaled back its production and sold off much of its land.

To remedy the problem, said Stu Kallgren, an equipment operator for Great Northern who ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the State House last year, the area could use some “sprawl,” a dirty word in southern Maine. Sprawl involves the movement of populations from city centers to outlying areas.

“In southern Maine, they may need to curb development, but in northern Maine we desperately need some sprawl,” he said.

Despite Maine’s lackluster growth, sprawl is becoming an issue. The state’s three largest cities lost population in the last decade, while nearby suburbs boomed. For example, the Bangor suburbs of Glenburn and Hermon grew 24 percent and 18 percent, respectively, while Bangor lost more than 1,700 people.

Similarly, in southern Maine, the Portland suburb of Falmouth is one of the fastest-growing communities in the state, with a 35 percent increase in population. In addition, Cumberland and Gorham gained 23 percent and 19 percent, respectively, while Maine’s largest city lost 109 people, or just 0.2 percent of its population.

The southern counties of York and Cumberland, with their high-tech industries and medical research companies, continued to draw people. Together these two counties added 45,000 residents between 1990 and 2000. That’s 11/2 times the size of Bangor’s population.

Many fast-growing communities in southern Maine have more people working in Massachusetts or New Hampshire than in Maine as Boston’s labor pool continues to spread farther from the city’s center. Eliot grew 12 percent, while South Berwick and York posted gains of 14 percent and 31 percent, respectively.

Counties in the midcoast region faired well, posting population gains of around 10 percent.

This growth is best exemplified by the “Waldo County Miracle.” Waldo County, a longtime hub of the state’s poultry processing industry, hit the skids in the 1980s when the chicken companies left town. Today, thanks to an American penchant for buying now and paying later, the county is booming because of a single employer, credit card giant MBNA America.

Since 1993, the Maryland-based company has opened servicing centers along the midcoast, which have actually drawn Mainers living out of state back home. The company now employs 4,500 people statewide. Searsmont, halfway between Belfast and Camden, MBNA’s major hubs, grew 25 percent in the last decade.

Washington County, which remains heavily dependent on logging and fishing, has not experienced the coastal boom. Its population declined 4 percent with its major communities of Calais, Eastport and Machias losing 13, 17 and 8 percent, respectively.

Franklin County, with an economy dependent on natural resources and tourism, also lagged behind the state with growth of only 1.5 percent. However, neighboring Oxford County, within commuting distance of Portland, outpaced the state’s growth with a population increase of 4 percent.

Red flags

Even as they look for a silver lining to the 2000 Census numbers, planners see red flags that demand action.

“We can’t just fine-tune the throttle and stand still,” said David Cole, director of Eastern Maine Development Corp., the Bangor-based organization that seeks to generate business in Penobscot, Piscataquis, Hancock, Knox, Waldo and Washington counties. “We need to rev up the engine and move forward.”

Moving forward, he said, means promoting controlled growth.

“We need to encourage people to come here. We need a critical mass of people [with the] skills for a healthy economy,” Cole said.

To do that, the region needs to tout its family-friendly environment, safe schools and other qualities that people in cramped suburbs and cities with increasing crime rates are seeking.

To be sure, there are some recent positive developments. GE Power Systems announced recently it would add 160 jobs to its Bangor operation. The Jackson Laboratory, a Bar Harbor-based research facility at the forefront of worldwide genetic research, has been expanding and said it will build a new facility in the central Maine town of Fairfield.

None of this is expected to bring a crush of moving vans past the sign at the border that proclaims “Maine, the way life should be.”

If U.S. Census Bureau projections hold true, Maine’s population will grow just 13 percent, to 1.4 million, by 2025. Meanwhile, the nation’s population is predicted to grow 23 percent during the same time period.

“We’re not going to have a stampede at the Kittery bridge” any time soon, Cole said.

And, don’t expect the Berubes, including 26-year-old David, who has two degrees from the University of Maine at Fort Kent, to be among the numbers, albeit small, of people predicted to move north.

“I love the area, but there’s nothing to go back for,” said David Berube.