Locals oppose Allagash management plan

FORT KENT – Tuesday night the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands reiterated its stance on the proposed revision of the Allagash Wilderness Waterway Management Plan: it is not their intention to close access points, remove bridges over the Allagash River or to bar outboard motors under 10 horsepower from the AWW.

Still, nearly a dozen northern Maine residents of some 60 present rose to the podium at a public hearing at the Fort Kent municipal building to express opposition to planned changes to the 1999 Management Plan.

A dozen members of the BPL’s Advisory Board attended the session, some of them querying speakers about their information and clarifying information.

Many Northern Maine residents have opposed the proposed new plan since November. They claim that their voices have not been heard about road access to some camping areas on the northern end of the AWW, about disallowing the use of 10hp motors and constant attacks on bridges used by logging enterprises in the northern Maine woods.

“You are constantly reducing our access to this river,” claimed Don Tardie of Winterville, a former logging company official and user of the Allagash. “That’s why we are here tonight.”

“I just want to be on the river whenever I like, and wherever I want to,” Stanley Pelletier of St. Francis said. “I don’t want to take anything away from other people who come to the river. We can all use it together.”

Peter Hilton of Presque Isle, a former advisory board member, told the panel that residents of northern Maine support a bill by Sen. John L. Martin, D-Eagle Lake, and Rep. Troy Jackson, D-Fort Kent, because that will guarantee their use of the Allagash.

A straw poll of the people at the meeting showed that all but one or two people there support the Martin-Jackson bill. The bill would guarantee road access to campsites like Cunliffe Depot and Ramsay Ledge, would protect the rebuilding of the Henderson Bridge and road access there, and would provide 19 snowmobile access points to the waterway. The bill also calls for changes to the AWW Management Plan to be brought to the full Legislature.

“We have the sentiment of the group,” meeting moderator Don Nicoll’s said after the straw vote.

Frederick Hafford of St. Francis decried the loss of traditional activities on the river, and alleged that the new management plan was crafted by a southern Maine group known as “Citizens to Protect the Allagash.”

David Soucy, director of the BPL, said CPA provided comments like many others, but the plan’s revisions were his and the BPL’s.

“The proposals we’ve made make sense for the Allagash,” Soucy said.

“We’ve been blindsided,” claimed Hafford. “The Allagash cannot be a wild river nor a wild and scenic river, it is a working river.

“Study the history of the Allagash,” he urged members of the advisory board and the BPL. “Leave the Allagash alone, and put back our access points.”

Melford Pelletier, a resident of Wallagrass, a former member of the BPL’s advisory board and a member of the Friends of the Allagash, a northern Maine grass-roots organization, spoke the longest, taking the time to dissect many areas of the plan, outlining lost traditions, showing contradictions and even questioning a section on Henry David Thoreau’s two-day outing on the southern outreaches of the AWW.

“Many buildings and camps were burned by the bureau after the AWW was accepted,” Pelletier said. “You still want to make changes, and management change seems to be your status quo.

“Much tradition of the Allagash has already been destroyed, and much local culture is no longer there,” he charged. “Members of the Allagash Alliance [a southern Maine group of citizens] have even said people from northern Maine should find another river.”

He showed, nearly page by page, where proposed changes should not occur. He went through a litany of alleged mistakes and conflicts in the proposal.

He urged the renovation and reconstruction of the Henry Taylor Farm, a project of the Allagash Historical Society.

“Your plan admits the destruction done … you’ve removed history, culture and traditions,” he charged. “Was all of this done to make a wilderness out of a working forest and river?”

He told the panel that logging noises, out of the protected areas of the AWW, carry a long way.

“Those bothered by those noises should know that comes from someone trying to earn a living for his family,” Pelletier said.

Finally, Jim May, a forester for Prentiss and Carlisle, reminded the panel that bridges, like the Henderson Bridge, are important to the working economy of northern Maine, and need to be reconstructed if anything happens to them. He said several crossings, like Umsaskis and John’s Bridge are also privately owned.

Two more public hearings will be held on the plan: in Bangor on April 4, and in Augusta on April 11. The public can submit written comments to the BPL until April 28.