Plum Creek will blight Moosehead

For the past few years, I’ve read, with great interest, about Plum Creek Timber Co.’s involvement in Maine. As a Moosehead-area native, I’d like to share a few thoughts.

Moosehead sits at the edge of the largest surviving section of wilderness that once stretched all the way to Minnesota. This is a wonderful blessing, but it’s the result of luck, not a comprehensive conservation policy.

Despite this fact, Greenville-area residents gave an enthusiastic “thumbs down” to a proposed national park that attempted to preserve hundreds of thousands of acres of land from development.

Reasons for local opposition to this plan included the fear that land access for hunting, fishing, snowmobiling and other sports would be impinged. In reality, the national park would have included a preserve, where such sports would have been allowed. Because of the generosity of companies such Great Northern Paper and Scott Paper, Mainers have enjoyed access to private lands for generations, and many of these people – erroneously – regard this access as a God-given right.

The reality is that recreational access will become more and more limited as forest fragmentation and development increase. Don’t believe it? Try walking through Plum Creek’s subdivision at First Roach Pond with a fishing pole or rifle in hand. See how the homeowners like it.

Many feared a national park would provide mostly low wage, seasonal jobs. Ironically, these are the very same type of jobs that Plum Creek’s current development plan will provide. The area will see a short-lived bump in the economy from construction, but ultimately you’ll have the same low end service industry jobs that a national park would have provided, but with far fewer trees.

Plum Creek’s 975 houses and numerous resorts will increase pressure on area infrastructure, and will result in bigger budgets for all services including fire, rescue, police, medical, and school, to name a few. Taxes will almost certainly escalate because – and you can look it up – typical residential development costs a community more than it generates in revenue. (Conversely, open space generally provides more revenue than it requires in the way of services.)

Moosehead-area residents had a unique opportunity to help shape a proposed national park, to provide constructive criticism, to protect recreational sports, and to ultimately preserve a truly unique part of the world. Instead, it looks as though Moosehead is destined to become another Winnipesaukee or Sebago, where man’s pursuit of the almighty dollar has desecrated the land, forever blighting Mother Nature’s countenance.

I beg you, area citizens, to join together and respond to Plum Creek with a collective “HELL NO!” Somehow, however, I doubt this will happen. It’s far easier to dismiss this development as “inevitable” and “progress.”

It’s been nearly two years since I last visited my hometown. Too long.

I’ll be home soon, if only to take a few pictures from the water so my children will someday be able to appreciate what a special and stunningly beautiful place it once was.

Travis Wallace is a resident of Madison, N.H.