Millinocket cuts MAGIC funding

MILLINOCKET – Spencer Phillips could understand townspeople being anti-Wilderness Society if his organization was in Maine picketing wood mills.

But the Town Council’s 4-3 vote Monday night to cut $25,000 in funding to the Millinocket Area Growth and Investment Council for MAGIC’s work with the society on an economic development grant struck Phillips as bizarre.

Even if the council action had come in response to a referendum vote, he said.

“I have never seen it before,” the senior resource economist with the society’s Charleston, Vt., office said during a telephone interview Tuesday. “Certainly there are people who do not have the same appreciation for wilderness protection that our members have, but in the cases where we have done work with communities, particularly on the economic front, Millinocket is unique.”

Councilors and residents involved in Monday’s vote, and in the petition effort that led to the 1,400-926 referendum vote on Nov. 2 to cut a $50,000 appropriation to MAGIC, said they wanted to send an anti-Wilderness Society message.

Allowing the Wilderness Society to get involved in development, even with plans to create what could be the state’s first industrial park totally powered by environment-friendly biomass boilers in Medway, “is not a good idea for the long-term future,” said Councilor Jimmy Busque before he voted to cut the funding.

Several other speakers said the Wilderness Society was a radical environmental organization that would eventually help doom the area’s fragile wood mill-based economy.

Phillips disagreed.

“It’s not anywhere within our intent to do economic damage to communities and it’s not within our capacity,” Phillips said. “We have advocated for having a sustainable approach to forest practices and I think that there are certainly industries who have benefited from this.”

Under the Medway park’s plan, a 600-horsepower boiler, which would run on burning wood wastes leftover by lumber operations, would power a 2-megawatt steam turbine that would provide electricity and hot water to power and heat park businesses.

The project is expected to create as many as 114 jobs in its first phase.

The boiler also would be instrumental in drawing other proposed businesses to the park for phase II, which might include a water-bottling plant, microbrewery, and large-scale greenhouse operations. All would use the steam and water.

“This project, I think, was pretty clearly aimed at improving that connection between an existing conserved land base in the central Maine area and economic development,” Phillips said.

“You can’t have a biomass facility without cutting down trees and chipping them and burning them. This is not only an economic use of the land base, but it’s also a consumptive commodity type of use, a physical use of natural resources as opposed to the development that comes from scenery, recreational opportunities and things like that,” he added.

And the vote and its impact won’t prevent the society from helping the biomass facility, Phillips said, because the grant is already almost entirely spent.

“I guess it’s a statement but it hurts everything MAGIC is able to do because it cuts into their core funding,” Phillips said.

MAGIC Executive Director Bruce McLean agreed. He spent much of Tuesday going over the impact of the $25,000 loss. He said MAGIC should have funding to stay at work until the end of its fiscal year in June.

“We could start feeling it sooner than that because our cash availability is already causing us to be a bit nervous,” McLean said of MAGIC’s operating at a $35,000 deficit. “We’ve got to raise money to finish out the year … I’d feel comfortable if we could get $50,000.”

If that effort fails, MAGIC might have to ask its towns to accept expenses usually paid for by private fund raising, McLean said.

Society workers haven’t been in this area since April or May, but are considering returning to the area to meet with residents to clear up misunderstandings, Phillips said.

And MAGIC will continue to try to draw more jobs and business to the area, McLean said.

“We’re extremely disappointed at how this turned out, but we’re hopeful that it’s behind us,” he said. “We will now start to build a bridge between community leaders and our organization. We’ll make that a priority.”