Three options remain for I-395-Route 9 plan

HOLDEN – They tweaked some route options and ditched others completely, and by the end of a packed two-hour meeting Wednesday night an advisory committee for the proposed Interstate 395-Route 9 highway project had three options left to consider.

The options, narrowed from 70 considered by the 20-member committee over the past two years, appear headed for a final selection process to be complete by early summer.

About 200 people filled the gymnasium at the Holbrook School to witness the advisory committee’s 16th formal meeting on the topic. Many elderly residents of the Pine Cone Trailer Park in Holden left the meeting greatly relieved when they learned one connector option that would have bisected the 80-family trailer park on Route 1A had been taken off the table. Yet Sandra Burns of the Levenseller Road in Holden voiced dismay at the suspected impact the new highway will have on noise levels and the definite impact it will make on property values in her area.

The connector will not touch the Levenseller Road, but an overpass will be built to enable it to go over the roadway, a fact that angered the new homeowner.

Burns said her family had moved to the Levenseller Road last April and had bought a $160,000 home. She and her husband sought a quiet neighborhood, Burns said, because one of her four children has special needs and cannot tolerate loud noises. Burns claimed she was “lied to” by unnamed officials who assured her the new highway project would not affect her in any way. Now she has seen her property value drop by 35 percent, and Burns said she couldn’t afford to sell her house and take such a loss.

Emotions ran the gamut at the meeting with about a dozen residents showing up with placards that said “No 2C-2,” a route option that would run through the Holden business district and possibly shave back yards and come perilously close to a cemetery at the Clewleyville Corners area.

Project engineer Bill Plumpton assured the group the protested option was no longer viable.

Left on the table are the so-called “2-Routes” – 2B-1, 2C-1 and 2C-1/2B-1. All begin where I-395 ends in Brewer and head northeast along the Holden-Brewer line. They each would end beyond the intersection of Routes 9 and 46 near the Eddington-Clifton line. It appears the DOT favors the last option – 2C-1/2B-1 because it leaves intact a large farm that otherwise would have been bisected and has the least amount of wetlands.

A fourth option pushed by committee members Rick Bronson of Brewer and Sandi Duchense of Clifton, and supported by the towns of Bucksport and Ellsworth, resurfaced briefly, and Department of Transportation officials agreed to study it. However, the option, the most costly of all, was similar to one rejected last summer and appeared headed for the chopping block.

The advisory committee will meet again next month in Brewer.