Millinocket officials oppose land swap Councilor: Baxter deal could hurt economy

MILLINOCKET – Town officials condemn the loss of traditional land uses within a proposed $14 million land swap that aims to expand Baxter State Park by 6,000 acres that include Katahdin Lake.

Town Manager Eugene Conlogue and Town Council Chairman David Nelson were working Friday to draft a resolution saying the proposed deal would hurt the area’s economy and recreation, including hunting, trapping, float-plane traffic, ATV and snowmobile riding, and other tourist draws. Councilors will consider the draft at their next meeting.

Besides eliminating county and state taxes drawn from the 6,000-acre parcel, the deal is among a string of environmentalist-engineered transactions over the last several years that reduce the lands loggers and sportsmen can use and new businesses can build on in the Katahdin region.

This limits the area’s growth potential, councilors said.

“We cannot continue to shut the forest down as we have been,” Councilor Jimmy Busque said Thursday night during a council meeting. “We keep moving the breadbasket away from our community and making our community less attractive.”

Baxter officials prohibit hunting, trapping and motorized recreational vehicles in most of the park and the lake area is well-used by sportsmen, councilors said.

“This deal doesn’t offer us anything,” Councilor David Cyr said. “We should oppose this deal until it offers us something.”

The deal, which Gov. John Baldacci supports, entails the state Bureau of Public Lands selling roughly 7,400 acres of state-managed lots to nonprofit Trust for Public Lands if the conservation group raises the money by July.

The land trust will then give the acreage to Gardner Land Co., which would harvest some of the wood in exchange for the 700-acre Katahdin Lake and roughly 6,000 surrounding acres on Baxter State Park’s eastern boundary, which the private timber company owns.

The move toward a resolution places the council amid a small chorus of state legislators, businessmen and recreation advocates who have begun to fault the highly touted plan for lacking recreational access since the deal was announced last month.

Yet the resolution, Nelson said, might lack impact because the other parties can ignore it.

The council took care to direct that the resolution avoid totally rejecting the purchase. Councilors hope the signal the resolution will send will lead to all parties – including state officials who can fund land purchases and exert other political influence – heeding their wishes or including them in upcoming negotiations or land-use planning.

Intractability might lead to Millinocket being ignored, Councilor Bruce McLean said.

“It’s an important project for us and we need to be at the table,” McLean said. “If we just take a stance to fight this, we will be missing an opportunity.”

With conservationists having slowly been buying townships and other land around Millinocket for years, working steadily southward, town officials must try to be heard on all such purchases so that town wishes can be heeded, Councilor Matthew Polstein said.

If it can be raised, the $14 million “is a staggering price to pay for this land,” Polstein said. “It shows you that there are a lot of people out there who have a lot of money who don’t necessarily agree with us.

“If we are willing to be part of a discussion, I think we have a lot to gain,” he added.

Busque and Cyr counseled opposing the purchase powerfully.

“These people don’t compromise. They don’t go away,” Cyr said of environmentalists. “If we don’t take a stand, they will walk all over us.”