SETTLE BRIDGE QUESTIONS

A citizen’s group opposed to the placement of a major crossing between Maine and New Brunswick wants the Army Corps of Engineers to hold a public hearing on the matter before reaching any conclusion, which it is expected to do later this month. The request for a hearing is fair and necessary for several reasons.

The Friends of Magurrewock, which has gathered 1,200 signatures in opposition to building the bridge in Calais as planned, largely have environmental questions on their minds. Specifically, if the planned Calais International Bridge crossing is to send a large volume of truck traffic through the two-lane Routes 1 and 9 within the Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge, how long will it be until the traffic demands the road be expanded to four lanes?

This is important because the alternative bridge routes (known as 2, which is no longer being considered, and 2A) would cross the St. Croix River west of the Moosehorn and avoid potential congestion. The Maine Department of Transportation says it has no plans to expand the highway and that “traffic volumes through Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge remain a nonissue.”

Maine also knows federal regulators don’t want four lanes through the refuge. Indeed, in reviewing the current plans last spring, the Environmental Protection Agency was fine with the chosen site – unless it meant expanding the road there. If that were the case, it told the Army Corps of Engineers, the expansion “would likely cause greater impact to the aquatic ecosystem than some of the alternatives, and would not prove the least environmentally damaging.”

Two of the reasons for this project are that the current Calais crossing is the eighth busiest between the United States and Canada. Maine has been told for years that this crossing is nearly overwhelmingly busy. Now it is being told that a two-lane road can handle the traffic. Second, the crossing is supposed to be an integral part of the region’s long-planned east-west highway.

In 1999, then-Gov. Angus King described the expansion opportunities in the project, “As this east-west highway is upgraded over time,” he said, “sufficient right-of-way will be acquired to create the opportunity for the future expansion of these corridors to four lanes as the need arises.”

Acquired right-of-ways in the Moosehorn? The Army Corps should want to know about that.

This possibility isn’t merely the idea of the friends’ group that opposes the project. In 2002, New Brunswick Minister Percy Mockler wrote to the Maine DOT to say the current Calais site for the bridge was acceptable to the province, in part because Maine had satisfied its officials that the state would be able to provide “future upgrading potential” within Moosehorn. On leaving merely two lanes in that area, the letter added, “With the forecasted traffic growth and existing access conditions, particularly in the Baring section, the operating conditions, in our opinion, will not be acceptable in the area by

the end of the study period.”

That was similar to a 2001 commentary in the Maine Policy Review by Richard F. Mueller, assistant professor of economics and Canadian studies at the University of Maine. He wrote, “trade between Canada and Maine has grown and this growth is likely to continue into the future. The proportion of goods being shipped by truck also has increased. Although highway deficiencies do not appear to have inhibited trade to date, the growth in goods shipped by truck could quickly overwhelm existing highways and

border crossings.”

None of this concludes the crossing is being situated in the wrong place or that other considerations should be disregarded; all of it points to serious questions that have yet to be sufficiently answered. Without an open review, with the state participating to respond

to the public, a difference of opinion will fester into resentment and division.

Better to clear up the issue now.