Three top conservation posts changing hands

Maine’s Department of Conservation will soon have three new faces in top administrative posts.

DOC Commissioner Patrick McGowan announced the successors to three senior-level managers who have left or will soon step down from the department, which oversees nearly 50 public parks and more than 480,000 acres of public lands.

Elizabeth Townsend, a former state lawmaker who currently serves as executive director of the Maine League of Conservation Voters, was named deputy commissioner of the department. Townsend replaces Karin Tilberg, who will become a senior policy adviser to Gov. John Baldacci.

Before joining the Maine League of Conservation Voters in 2000, Townsend served eight years in the state House of Representatives, including two years as co-chair of the Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee.

McGowan praised Townsend’s experience in a statement announcing the appointment.

“Her legislative experience will serve us well over the next four years of the Baldacci administration,” McGowan said. “Eliza grew up in Canaan and is passionate about the Maine outdoors. She has a real connect with the issues facing rural Maine, both economic and environmental.”

McGowan also announced two changes within the Bureau of Parks and Lands.

Bureau director Dave Soucy is returning to his law practice in Fort Kent after slightly more than three years in the job. Soucy’s successor, Willard Harris of Readville, worked more than 20 years in the department his most recent stint within the Department of Administrative and Financial Services.

Another of Baldacci’s senior policy advisers, Alan Stearns, will take over the job of deputy director of the bureau. Stearns, a former policy and environmental director within the Maine Department of Transportation, fills the spot vacated by Ralph Knoll, who retired earlier this year.

In an interview, McGowan said it is not unusual to have significant turnover in senior positions at the tail end of a governor’s term. McGowan said the department’s employees put in long hours working on difficult issues.

“We’ve had a lot of things that we’ve been able to get done in the first term of the Baldacci administration,” McGowan said. “So I do think there is a little bit of burnout. People work hard.”

Tilberg, Soucy and Knoll have been at the center of several major initiatives in recent years, some of which generated more than their share of controversy.

Knoll and Soucy were key players in the political dogfight over a proposal to permanently preserve 6,000 acres surrounding Katahdin Lake. Both men were on hand last week in Millinocket to celebrate the completion of the $14 million deal, which expanded Baxter State Park by 4,000 acres and added another 2,000 acres to the DOC’s land holdings.

Tilberg has been heavily involved in the tug-of-war over whether to preserve all 941 acres of Sears Island near Searsport or to continue to set aside part of the island for a possible container port.

Tilberg has been leading the effort to bridge the gap between the preservationists and the port backers. She said this week she plans to continue working on a compromise into 2007.

Soucy, meanwhile, has been embroiled in the controversy over the Allagash Wilderness Waterway for years, first as a lawyer representing the interests of local residents concerned about access and then as the head of the bureau charged with managing the waterway.

It was unclear Thursday whether Soucy, who could not be reached for comment, will remain active in Allagash issues.

A fourth member of McGowan’s team, assistant to the commissioner Erik Anderson, is also leaving the department. That position has not yet been filled.