Bangor panel defers action on marsh preservation plan

BANGOR – Before Wal-Mart looked to build its Supercenter near the Penjajawoc Marsh, there weren’t too many people interested in saving it.

Now front and center in a debate over future growth around the Bangor Mall, however, the once-obscure wetland has caught the attention of developers and environmentalists, both of which are now waiting in line to protect it.

“This is a wonderful area back there and it would be nice if people could get back there to see it,” Jeffrey Allen of the Old Town-based James W. Sewall Co. told the Bangor City Council’s infrastructure and development support committee Tuesday night.

The local engineering firm, on behalf of the New-York-based developer The Widewaters Group, presented to the committee a plan that would protect about 30 acres at the northern end of the marsh as part of an effort to place the 224,000-square-foot Wal-Mart near the wetland’s southern tip.

But with Widewaters and the Department of Environmental Protection still wrangling over the exact wording of the conservation easement, councilors were unwilling Tuesday to sign off on the plan.

“If these were two friendly neighbors it would be one thing,” City Councilor John Rohman said of the fierce debate surrounding development around the 350-acre marsh. “But there are two parties here who are looking at every word of this.”

The Board of Environmental Protection would still have to approve the mitigation plan as part of Widewaters’ pending application to build the Wal-Mart Supercenter.

The board is expected to hold public hearings on the project in June.

Members of Bangor Area Citizens Organized for Responsible Development, a group opposed to the Wal-Mart project, listened closely to the council’s deliberations Tuesday. They left happy that the councilors delayed a decision until at least May 13.

BACORD spokeswoman Valerie Carter said that while the Widewaters mitigation plan could provide much-needed public access to the marsh, it could not compensate for the destruction of the valuable wildlife habitat near the proposed Wal-Mart.

“The idea of conserving it is a good one,” said Carter said before Tuesday’s meeting. “But if it’s trying to make up for the destructive impacts of the Widewaters project, it doesn’t.

“You can’t just transplant everything [at the proposed Wal-Mart site] and hope it will take somewhere else.”

The mitigation plan would prohibit development on 27.4 acres of farmland west of the marsh and north of the old Veazie railroad bed. Under the agreement, the land could be used only to grow crops or as pastureland and would be closed to all motor vehicles except snowmobiles or agricultural vehicles.

More appealing to city officials, however, is another aspect of the plan that would limit development on a 1-acre parcel on the eastern edge of the marsh and allow public access to the site from an easement on Stillwater Avenue.

And Rohman made it clear Tuesday that, once the DEP and Widewaters ironed out their differences over the exact wording of the easement, he would be quick to recommend that the city agree to enforce the terms of the conservation agreement.

“I think this has some real benefits,” he said, noting that the access from Stillwater could provide a long-sought link with the nearby City Forest to the east.

Even if the board were ultimately to approve the new Wal-Mart, its future is anything but certain.

The project remains hung up in the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, which in February declined to rule on BACORD’s appeal of a lower court’s decision that allowed the plan to go forward.

In its decision, the appeals court requested that the city’s planning board offer written reasons for its earlier denial of the project.