Voices for Calais

For years, the people of Calais have spoken loudly in support of a new, modern international border crossing to Canada as an important economic development tool for their struggling city. For the last several months, those voices have turned from advocacy to alarm as a project conceived as a benefit turns into a bypass eight miles away, at Route 9 in Baileyville.

Despite the vigorous protests of individual citizens and small-business owners, the Maine Department of Transportation continues to prepare its final economic analysis of this project, an analysis based upon a grievously flawed consultant’s study. Now, another voice has been added to the mix. It is a powerful voice the state must not ignore.

It is the voice of Domtar, the new owner of the former Georgia-Pacific mill in Baileyville. In a recent letter to the Calais Bridge Committee, Deborah Feck, the general manager of the renamed Woodland Pulp & Paper, states without equivocation that the best location for this new crossing is in Calais, at the industrial park.

Mrs. Feck writes that, while self-serving interests might lead her company to prefer the Baileyville site (the commercial development that would grow up around the crossing surely would ease her company’s tax burden), “we instead choose to look at the overall benefit to the region.” Of specific benefit to the region, she observes, is that the Calais Industrial Park is adjacent to existing rail lines; new businesses attracted to the park could increase freight-rail activity, generate competitive rail services and boost cargo activity at the port of Eastport.

Instead of following Mrs. Feck’s lead and looking at the overall benefit to the region, MDOT continues to look at that consultant’s study when it should be demanding a refund. Done by a Pennsylvania firm, the study is little more than a cut-and-paste job based upon bypass-effects studies done in other states. In concluding that most bypassed communities are not harmed and often prosper, it utterly fails to note that most bypasses are built in communities that already are prospering. It does not distinguish between bypasses that are close to downtown and those that are eight miles away.

Worst of all, it blatantly misrepresents Calais as an industrial city with a stable

population. Calais is a retail and service

city and its population, according to Census 2000, fell by nearly 14 percent during the last decade. If MDOT doubts the Census Bureau, it merely needs to check with the Maine Department of Education – Calais’ new middle project is in the process of being downgraded to an addition to the high school because of drastic decline in enrollment.

MDOT’s response to the objections raised regarding the study is to defend it vigorously as it attempts to persuade the people of Calais that their opinions and insights are important. Just not important enough, apparently, to justify a new and credible study. The shallowness of the state’s concerns about the economic well-being of Calais are amply demonstrated by the suggestion made in the departmental review of the study that the ill-effects of being bypassed by eight miles could be remedied by highway signs. What hungry traveler, after all, wouldn’t make a 16-mile round trip to get a burger?

One need only look at a map to understand why MDOT is so clearly leaning toward the Route 9 site – it’s easy. There, Maine only has to pay for half a bridge (roughly $9 million minus the 80-percent federal share) and it’s done. The Calais Industrial Park site would require some improvements to the six miles of Route 1 that lead to Route 9, although it should be noted that major improvements will be necessary only at such a time when the state commits to building a modern high-speed highway through Eastern Maine, another bit of economic development that’s easier not to do.

Recently, MDOT has suggested an option it says could assuage Calais’ concerns about being left a bypassed ghost town – put the new crossing at Route 9 but make it a trucks-only bridge to keep the passenger traffic so vital to Calais’s service economy coming through town. Since this new crossing is a joint effort of state, provincial and federal governments of two countries, this option would require nothing less than an international treaty.

It is an option only in theory. In response to a recent inquiry from this newspaper about the trucks-only option, New Brunswick Transportation Minister Margaret-Ann Blaney responded that, although her government will continue to work with Maine toward mutually agreeable solutions to many issues regarding the new crossing, “the issue of the Baileyville Option being a truckroute only is clear. Any piece of highway that we build on the NB side of the border must be for both cars and trucks. Highways in New Brunswick are funded out of taxpayer dollars and we could not limit the use of such a highway to trucks only.”

Nothing equivocal there. Unless MDOT can provide evidence to the contrary, the trucks-only option it suggests is not an option at all and the hope it offers Calais is false hope.

The government of New Brunswick has every right to advocate for its citizens – given the $2.5 billion investment the province is making in its highway system, it has an overwhelming obligation to its taxpayers. American Customs and Immigration officials prefer the wide-open spaces of the Route 9 site and have every right to state that preference.

Ultimately, the decision on the location for this new crossing will be made by the Federal Highway Administration. Thus far, the only voices heard in behalf of the Calais region are coming from the people of that region. It is long past time for the government of Maine to recognize its obligations to its citizens and to join the chorus.