Road to Nowhere

Potentially facing legal action for building a road on land they do not own, it would behoove Bangor officials to be cautious when again considering construction through wetlands that they don’t own. This is not the case, however. With little objection, city councilors and planning board members have endorsed plans to begin work on a road that will roughly parallel Stillwater Avenue near the Bangor Mall. Building portions of the road now is premature given the fact that the city has yet to apply for permits to cross the Penjajawoc Marsh, the very wetland that did in plans to build a Wal-Mart Supercenter in the mall area.

As one councilor has suggested, the whole process should be slowed down and more thoroughly considered. The city is now in a rush to build a portion of the road near the Crossroads Plaza because it had an agreement with a developer that it would build a public street through the parcel within 10 years to preserve the right of way. The 10 years are about to expire.

At the other end of the proposed road, the city is set to approve realignment of the proposed road to conform to the wishes of the property owner and a developer. Although city officials have repeatedly said that these are isolated issues and should be considered on their own and not in the context of the entire parallel road plan, this is faulty logic. It does not make sense to build such a supposedly important road in a piecemeal fashion.

Councilors should reconsider the need for this road given changes that have occurred since the road was added to the official city map in 1998. Most importantly, the value of the Penjajawoc Marsh has only recently been discovered. The Board of Environmental Protection last year denied an application to build a Wal-Mart Supercenter on a parcel near the marsh. Although the developer had proposed offsetting the loss of 28 acres of field habitat adjacent to the marsh by preserving a similar amount of high-quality grassland in a conservation easement, a plan the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife deemed sufficient, a majority of BEP members did not believe it went far enough to protect the habitat.

In addition, laws regarding wetlands and other environmental issues have changed in the intervening six years. As President Bush highlighted in his Earth Day visit to Maine this week, wetlands protection has taken on new significance, so building in a marsh will face intense scrutiny.

Councilors, who will be presented with a portion of the road project Monday, may very well decide that the new road is still needed. If this is the case, they should proceed with a more formal location for it. Once this has been established, they should move ahead with obtaining the necessary permits for the entire route. The city engineer says this is premature. However, this is a more rational process than constructing the two ends of the road with no idea of what will really happen in between.