Plum Creek hearing shows great division 400 attend Portland meeting

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PORTLAND – State regulators wrapped up the first leg of their marathon review of Plum Creek’s development proposal Saturday as the largest crowd to date voiced hopes and concerns about the future of the Moosehead Lake region.

Two weeks ago, Maine’s Land Use Regulation Commission kicked off a long-awaited series of public hearings in hopes of measuring the public’s pulse on Plum Creek’s proposal to rezone land near Moosehead for 975 house lots and two large resorts.

About 20 hours and hundreds of speakers later, the early results are in: Mainers in all corners of the state are deeply divided over the proposal.

Saturday’s hearing in Portland was no different, even if the crowd of 400-plus was larger than at the previous hearings.

Opponents outnumbered supporters roughly 180 to 120 among those who indicated their position while signing up to address the commission. But even after limiting speakers to three minutes each, the commission got through only about half that number before adjourning for a hard-earned holiday.

The two sides went round for round throughout the day. All speakers seemed to agree on the beauty and importance of Maine’s largest lake and surrounding forestlands. But they diverged on whether the region needs saving from a profit-hungry corporation or from economic collapse.

“We are intelligent enough in this state to create our own vision for the Moosehead Lake region, one that incorporates the principles of ‘smart growth’ and that is creative,” Sandy Amborn of Portland said while urging the commission to reject the plan.

“We have a landowner that has unequivocally announced it plans to develop, but they have offered to do it in a planned way with a vast amount of conservation,” said plan supporter Parke Burmeister of Portland.

Seattle-based Plum Creek, which owns more than 900,000 acres in Maine, received largely negative reviews of the first development plan unveiled in April 2005. Since then, the company has rearranged the location of some of the 975 house lots and moved one resort to Moose Mountain outside Greenville.

The company also has won over some past opponents by putting forth a package of conservation deals – contingent on LURC approval of the development plan – that would permanently protect more than 430,000 acres in the region.

But critics say the current plan still contains too much housing development on inappropriate locations, such as Indian Pond and Long Pond. They also have targeted Plum Creek’s plans for subdivisions and a resort near Lily Bay on Moosehead’s eastern shore.

Plan supporters, meanwhile, see the planned development and permanent conservation as keys to reviving the region’s economy.

The strong showing of Plum Creek supporters on Saturday was, in part, because of a sizable crowd of Greenville-area residents and others from northern Maine who made the trek to Portland.

But many speakers could not be pigeonholed based on geography.

There were self-described southern Maine environmentalists who see Plum Creek’s plan as the best solution to the region’s economic woes and Greenville natives who fear it will harm the Moosehead area’s tourist economy.

Multiple residents of southern Maine who own camps on Moosehead urged the commission to reject the plan out of fear it will ruin the tranquility and wilderness character of the area. Other camp owners praised Plum Creek’s open-access policies for recreation and the hundreds of thousands of acres of proposed land conservation.

Mark Mayone, an avid sportsman from South Portland, had a message for camp owners in general.

“To all of the people … who own camps on Moosehead Lake, thank you for the sprawl that forces me to support Plum Creek’s plan,” he said.

Academics also offered differing opinions on the plan’s impact on the region.

Husson College President William Beardsley, whose expertise is in rural planning and economics, said many of his school’s students come from rural Maine communities, such as Greenville or Jackman, with limited job opportunities.

“We can provide them with professional careers,” Beardsley said. “Plum Creek’s plan may help bring some of them home.”

But Shoshana Zuboff, a retired business administration professor at Harvard University, described Plum Creek as predatory and exploitative in Maine and elsewhere around the country.

“Their promises are like soap bubbles: Try to grab them and they pop,” Zuboff said.

LURC had planned to hold a fourth and final public hearing on Plum Creek’s plan in Greenville this past weekend, but the meeting was rescheduled to Jan. 19 because of the snowstorm.

Meanwhile, LURC has completed the first two weeks of technical hearings with interested parties. The commission will break for the holidays and then return Jan. 14 for one to two additional weeks of hearings with intervenors.

Plum Creek’s Luke Muzzy said in an interview Saturday that all of the commissioners and interested parties, himself included, seem a bit “wilted” after more than two weeks of meetings. As a sign of the tension surrounding the company’s plan, several private security guards shadowed Muzzy throughout the hearing.

But Muzzy said he was pleased with the turnout and the debate.

“What more can you ask for?” he said.