Baileyville seeks details on easement plan

BAILEYVILLE – Town councilors want to hear more about a possible 340,000-acre conservation easement proposal that would include some 8,000 acres of the town, but a conservation group has put them off until after its June announcement.

Stephen Keith, executive director of the Downeast Lakes Land Trust of Grand Lake Stream, told Town Manager Jack Clukey that the trust and its partner, the New England Forestry Foundation, would be willing to meet with the council once the organizations have formally announced their proposal.

That was perceived as a rebuff by the councilors Monday and prompted one, former legislator John Morrison, to call the group a bunch of “land grabbers.”

“We’re almost sitting here like wounded animals,” Morrison said. “The paper business is kind of back and forth, and they are coming in like vultures, and this is a chance to grab,” he said.

The partnership of land trusts has begun to build support for a $35 million project to arrange conservation easements on the acreage, which is nearly 25 percent of Washington County’s forestland.

Conservation easements are legal interests in land that protect the property from unregulated development while in some cases allowing traditional uses, such as logging, to continue.

The effort is designed to balance protection with traditional uses. The easements would cover about 340,000 acres from Forest City to Baileyville to Cooper in eastern Washington County.

Nearly 8,000 of Baileyville’s 20,000 acres would be included in the protected area, including the town’s water system and the natural gas pipeline that runs from Nova Scotia south to Boston.

Town Council Chairman Doug Jones said that when conservation group representatives met with Baileyville officials in January, they were clear that there was little the Town Council could do. “They were telling us it was just an informational meeting, they are a willing buyer and they got a willing seller and there wasn’t much we could do about it,” he said.

More recently, Clukey sent a letter to the forestry foundation’s project coordinator, Frank Reed, and to Keith. In the letter, Clukey said the council was “formulating a public position on the purchase” and would like a follow-up meeting to “better understand the nature of the restrictions that will be put on the property.”

Just as he was ready to go to the meeting, Clukey said, he received a telephone call from Keith saying the conservation groups plan a public announcement the first week of June and would not meet until after that.

Keith did not return a telephone call Monday evening.

The partnership involves the New England Forestry Foundation, Groton, Mass.; Woodie Wheaton Land Trust, Forest City; Downeast Lakes Land Trust, Grand Lake Stream; the Passamaquoddy Tribe, Indian Township; the state; and unidentified private residents.

Backers of the project envision three purchases. Two components would involve 3,019 acres known as the Spednic Lake-St. Croix River shoreline conservation corridor, acquired last month by the state; and 27,080 acres west of Grand Lake Stream called Farm Cove Peninsula Lands.

The remainder, known as the Sunrise Tree Farm, is managed by Wagner Timber Partners.

Morrison said he was concerned that the group planned to announce in June that the purchase was a “done deal.”

But the group’s Web site says that to complete the acquisition of the land and easement, the project partners must raise nearly $35 million over the next two years.