Save Bangor’s marsh

On June 26, Bangor takes a giant step, probably in the right direction. At 6:30 p.m. the Board of Environmental Protection will begin hearings at the Spectacular Event Center on the Widewaters/Wal-Mart application to build a supercenter next to the environmentally sensitive Penjajawoc Marsh.

As bitterly as this battle has been fought so far, a number of things have gone very right. In another time and place, this issue would have been settled behind closed doors, shielded from public scrutiny. Instead, citizens have had their rights to be heard on the issue supported by the Bangor Planning Board, which turned down the project, the Maine Supreme Court, which legally affirmed the existence of Bangor Area Citizens Organized for Responsible Development (BACORD), and now the Board of Environmental Protection. In turn, Widewaters has had its rights to property and due process validated by the courts and now gets to plead its case before the board. At long last, the scientific facts will be laid out for all to see and we can get past the rhetoric.

There have been a lot of silly rhetorical claims. My favorite is that people are only opposed to the project because it’s Wal-Mart. Environmentalists, of which I am one, would oppose this project if it were a convent. That is, if the nuns were planning to pave 25 acres of critical wildlife habitat, run semi-trailers in and out of the marsh all night, illuminate endangered and threatened species around the clock, and build a catch basin to hold the runoff poisons within the very zone that’s been designated as protected buffer by the Maine Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, we would oppose it.

My second favorite claim is that somehow Widewaters’ property rights are being abridged. None of us private citizens have the right to build a development too big for the lot containing it. This is the permission Widewaters is seeking. The project is so huge that it is literally crammed in between Gilman Road and the marsh. It takes up so much of the lot that it can’t be adjusted by so much as an acre in order to avoid violating the buffer zone. It may turn out that with enough money and lawyers, Wal-Mart has more “property rights” than you and I do, but for these hearings at least, the emphasis will be on science.

My third favorite is that birds have wings and can go somewhere else. What part of “rare habitat” did you not understand? Where are they to go, wildlife refugee camps?

In a perfect world, the Board of Environmental Protection will do as the Bangor Planning Board did – turn down the project. Bangor will still get its Wal-Mart Supercenter somewhere nearby, in addition to the one being built in Brewer. Facts entered into the record support the notion that Bangor consumers have outgrown the one they’ve got and Wal-Mart clearly has the will and money to build somewhere else. It didn’t get to be the world’s largest corporation without the foresight to keep an ace up its sleeve with options on another site somewhere.

Widewaters will still get to develop its property, albeit to a scale more befitting the lot size. Bangor will still get the tax revenue it needs. And best of all, Bangor’s city council and BACORD will realize that they each have exactly the same problem.

There are two main reasons we’re in this mess. The tax code in this state is so archaic that the overreliance on property taxes forces communities to pave their most valuable assets. And our inability to achieve regional solutions to taxation and development forces us to compete within artificial, geopolitical boundaries. We ought to be on the same side … and in the perfect world I envision, we will be.

I’m betting on this perfect world by reaching deep into my wallet and supporting Maine Audubon as an intervener in the coming week’s hearings. Given the hired guns that will be there to testify, it’s going to be very interesting.

Bob Duchesne is treasurer of the Penobscot Valley Chapter of the Maine Audubon Society.