Reject Plum Creek proposal

A recent article by Kevin Miller, “Groups: Developer ignored concerns” (BDN, March 19) seems to suggest that Plum Creek has been more than patient with the public process involved with its major rezoning proposal in the wilderness area surrounding Moosehead Lake. Plum Creek seems to say that the time for dithering over details of the proposal is past and that it’s time for LURC to either give Plum Creek the rezoning it wants or reject the proposal.

Native Forest Network agrees. The time for debating these details is over and LURC should reject this demented rezoning application.

There is no middle ground in this controversy, and there shouldn’t be for a rezoning proposal of this magnitude. Since when does an individual landowner have the right to radically alter an entire landscape that large numbers of people and animals depend on for clean air and water, food, fuel and fiber? Only a multinational corporation has this amount of power to request a legislative process to make such sweeping changes to a landscape. There’s a reason why opponents outnumber supporters by more than 20 to 1, as Mr. Miller pointed out. This proposal would obviously result in “undue adverse impacts,” which is the legal phrase that is pivotal to LURC accepting or rejecting this rezoning application.

But as the legal phrase “beyond reasonable doubt” can be manipulated by clever lawyers in criminal cases, Plum Creek is cynically manipulating the natural understanding of what an “undue adverse impact” is. Whether we look at the details of this development proposal and its impacts on wildlife, water quality, the local economy, its carbon footprint and its consequences for local climate change, or the fine print of the “conservation” easements, this development adds up to an undue adverse impact on an area that consists mostly of wild forestland. Plum Creek understands all too well the notion of “large print giveth, and small print taketh away.”

The conservation easements are a case in point of this large print. Proponents keep exclaiming with exuberance what a great deal 400,000 acres of “permanent” conservation would be for the environment. But a close examination of the legacy easement shows that it is chock full of loopholes down in the fine print.

Plum Creek intentionally limited the easement holder’s power (in this case the Forest Society and Nature Conservancy) and retains many types of lucrative resource extraction and development rights. It allows for industrial forestry management practices resulting in even-aged stands of trees that hardly resemble a real forest. It allows for gravel mining and leaves open the possibility of commercial water extraction.

It allows for all manners of development within the legacy easement (the 350,000 acres proponents keep referring to). Plum Creek reserved the rights to build cell towers, power lines and any structures related to “forest management,” a phrase that is vaguely defined at best.

The supposed intent of these conservation easements is to prevent parcelization and wilderness sprawl. But, paradoxically, Plum Creek’s reserved development rights could result in wilderness housing sprawl and parcelization anyway.

The easement holder has no decision-making power over what activities are permitted on easement land or what kinds of structures are permitted. The easements are being used as a leveraging device to coerce LURC into approval of the rezoning application. In the future it will be used as a marketing gimmick aimed at retiring baby boomers.

We don’t have the space to go into all the details of why the conservation easements are such a sham, because as a wise fellow once said, “it takes one minute to tell a lie and ten minutes to refute it.” Perhaps that’s why this circus has gone on for three years.

For once, Native Forest Network agrees with Luke Muzzy of Plum Creek. The time for debate is over, and the facts are in. The time has come to reject Plum Creek and begin anew with a better vision of what a creative, localized land-based economy can look like in northern Maine.

Contact nfnmaine@gmail.com for further specific information about our critique of the rezoning application and our alternative visions.

Rip Stavin is a volunteer with the Native Forest Network. He lives in Rockland.