MADAWASKA – John Dionne has been frustrated with the Maine Department of Transportation for 50 years since it failed to continue the interstate system north of Houlton to the St. John Valley.

He has been fighting the powers that be at the DOT for all that time, from one commissioner to the next. Still, there has not been a shovel full of dirt turned over. Dionne started yet another push Wednesday night at a meeting held in Madawaska.

Approximately 28 people including business leaders, industrial representatives, truckers, educational leaders and Canadian and American politicians voiced support for the new road and looked for ways to stem the flow of out-migration of young minds who leave the area for greener pastures.

They also heard speakers discuss the hard times experienced by the local forestry and paper industries, including Fraser Papers Inc.’s layoffs in recent months.

At the outset of the meeting, Dionne made a plea to Augusta and Washington to stop the discrimination against northern Maine, to stop years of meetings about a highway, and to finally bring the interstate the 100 miles from Houlton to a point in the St. John Valley that connects the area to points south and to the Trans-Canada Highway for commerce.

Trucking industry leader Robert F. Chamberland of R.F. Chamberland Trucking of St. Agatha said there were promises of a highway north when he entered the industry 35 years ago and northern Maine is still waiting.

Chamberland said he has seen multimillion-dollar bridges go up in Augusta, Bucksport, Bangor, and he has seen the rebuilding of highways to eastern Maine down Route 9.

“We need a good highway to the Valley, where truckers and other motorists could travel 55 miles per hour without entering a small town,” he said. “Each round-trip would save one hour of travel time, and time is money.

Chamberland said 75 trucks a day enter and leave the St. John Valley. That would mean saving 75 hours of trucking time a week and the 10 gallons per hour of fuel on each trip.

“It would mean savings and better service,” he said,

Don Levesque, publisher of the St. John Valley Times, a Madawaska weekly paper, called the frustration a “disparity” between the St. John Valley and the “other Maine.”

“The disparity needs to be reversed,” he said. “We should have the same services the rest of the state has, but it’s not going to be easy.”

Bill Peterson, director of human resources at Fraser, said the industry is in tough times. Markets are hard and the tumbling American dollar against a stronger Canadian dollar is not making it easier for the industry. Every one-cent increase in the Canadian currency means $100,000 on the company’s bottom line.

Peterson was not all gloom and doom.

“Workers understand what we are going through,” he said. “Their work ethic is exceptional.