There is good reason to proceed with caution as state regulators consider the largest development plan in Maine’s history, a proposal from Plum Creek Timber Co. to develop and conserve more than 400,000 acres around Moosehead Lake. A comprehensive zoning plan for the region certainly would have made it easier for the Land Use Regulation Commission to judge the suitability of the project. Such a plan, however, is years from completion. Placing a moratorium on subdivisions and development in the area, as a citizen’s group has asked, will cause Plum Creek and other potential developers to face unwarranted delays. Worse, a delay of years is equivalent to a denial of a project without judgment on its merits.

Late last year, Plum Creek Timber Co. announced plans to develop and conserve more than 426,000 acres of its ownership around Moosehead Lake. Included in the plan, formally submitted to LURC last month, are nearly 1,000 house lots and 80 acres for sporting camps. Campgrounds and a high-end resort are also part of the plan.

The company proposes to set aside 89 percent of the total acreage as working forestland for the region’s forest products industry. An additional 10,890 acres of shorefront land would be set aside under permanent conservation easements, as would 71 miles of snowmobile trails and 55 miles of hiking trails. Conservation lands include 55 ponds that will be protected from development.

Before the application was filed, a group of citizens, including former LURC commissioners, filed a petition with the agency asking for a moratorium on subdivisions and development in more than three dozen townships around Moosehead Lake. The moratorium was needed, the group argued, to give LURC time to finish a regional zoning plan for the area.

The issue will be considered at today’s LURC meeting in Greenville.

In 1997, LURC committed to preparing regional land use and zoning plans for four areas where recreational development was on the rise: the Rangeley Lakes region, Moosehead Lake Region, Carrabassett Valley and Millinocket. Only the Rangeley plan is done. It took seven years. Building on the Rangeley plan, the one for Moosehead Lake could be done quicker, but would still take a matter of years.

State statute allows for a 180-day moratorium on development in LURC territory if “existing comprehensive plans, land use or zoning regulations or other applicable laws, if any, is inadequate to prevent serious public harm from residential, commercial or industrial development in the affected geographic region.”

While a Moosehead region comprehensive plan should be done, projects can’t be put on hold for years while it is. That’s why LURC staff has recommended that the moratorium be rejected and that, instead, the commission immediately begin a “visioning” process for the area. This process would entail gathering and reconciling differing views of what the region should look like in the future. This is a fair compromise that ensures the public has say, as do companies that want to develop the area.