The Land Use Regulation Commission is, in effect, the planning board for about half the land in Maine. Although the raw numbers – 8,800 new units in 35 years – aren’t shocking, half the development in LURC jurisdiction has occurred in areas the commission doesn’t consider healthy. Worse, nearly three-quarters of that development occurred through exemptions in current law, thereby bypassing LURC oversight. A new planning document for the commission offers an opportunity to strengthen LURC so it can fulfill its mission of managing sustainable land use for forestry, recreation and wildlife.

With these development trends – along with ever changing ownership of woodlands in northern Maine, a decade of conservation purchases and rapid increases in the number of energy projects – as a backdrop, LURC is currently updating its comprehensive plan, the document that guides policy decisions within the state’s 10.4 million-acre Unorganized Territory, which is mostly in northern Maine, but also includes many offshore islands.

The commission is now in the preliminary stages of updating the plan, which was last updated in 1997. At a series of meetings across the state, beginning Sunday in Fort Kent, LURC is poised to hear what Maine people envision for the Unorganized Territory using a preliminary update of the plan as a template. What do they value about the jurisdiction? What do they want it to look like in a decade? Fifty years from now? What policies will further that vision?

After gathering this information, LURC will revise its plan and present it for formal public comment. After more revisions, the plan will likely be presented to the governor, who must approve the plan for it to go into effect early next year.

Although the Comprehensive Land Use Plan will guide LURC decisions, no changes in the commission’s rules can take place without legislative approval. So, for example, although the preliminary plan offers options to control sprawl, such as reconsidering an exemption that allows landowners to develop two lots in five years without a subdivision review, such changes could not be made unless they were approved by the Legislature.

With development becoming more spread out, change from small seasonal camps to large year-round residences and increased demand for wind energy, which is often targeted for undeveloped areas, what happens in the Unorganized Territory increasingly affects all Mainers. Whether they live in towns that border the UT and are increasingly bearing the costs of emergency and other services for new development there or are hunters who rely on deer wintering areas to protect the herd or canoeists hoping to paddle on an undeveloped pond, managing development in LURC jurisdiction matters to them. It also matters to landowners, many of whom increasingly view development as an alternative to the financially unpredictable timber industry.

Balancing all these interests is not easy. That is why LURC must have the right tools, and the support of lawmakers.