Millinocket councilors mull eminent domain

MILLINOCKET – As Katahdin Paper’s closing looms, some public officials are looking for ways to preserve at least the power-generating asset of the facility.

Town Councilor Scott Gonya wants the Town Council to discuss the possibility of eminent domain. Duane Lugdon has actually tried such a thing, in a different situation.

An international representative for United Steelworkers International unions across the state, Lugdon was part of a failed effort to use eminent domain to seize a Passadumkeag sawmill in 2001.

“If you can put yourself in the place of an owner, those are your assets,” Lugdon said Monday. “If you own those assets, why should somebody else be allowed to abscond with them?”

“That’s how the courts look at it,” he added. “It’s almost impossible in the state of Maine.”

That’s why the USW representative, who works with unions and mills across Maine, said he found Gonya’s idea of using eminent domain against Brookfield Asset Management, the parent company that owns paper mills in East Millinocket and Millinocket, practicable but unlikely to work.

“If you do a study of eminent domain law, it’s possible to do it here, based on public need,” Lugdon said, “but these are private assets owned by a private company. It’s very difficult to be successful with that.”

Gonya proposed at last Thursday’s council meeting that the council pursue discussions of the idea, saying that Brookfield’s decision to close the Katahdin Avenue mill threatened public welfare.

Clarifying earlier statements, Gonya said in an e-mail Sunday that he would be interested only in using eminent domain to take public control of the mill’s 32-megawatt generating station and Stone Dam, which is located on mill property.

“I do not want anything else. BAM owns Katahdin Paper, Katahdin Timberlands and Brookfield Renewable Resource. All three used to be owned by Great Northern Nekoosa in 1989,” Gonya wrote. “The generating station is the cornerstone of our community and I will not let it go uncontested.”

Gonya admitted that the idea was intended to pressure Brookfield Asset into keeping the mill operational, but said it has several practical benefits. The generator could become a public utility that the town could manage. It could sell electricity at low rates to residents and serve as a magnet for industry, he said.

Lugdon agreed with Gov. John Baldacci’s statement Saturday that the first step is to pursue all talks with Brookfield before considering other options, including Gonya’s. Lugdon expressed confidence that the mill would reopen with a biomass boiler to replace oil within nine months of the signing of an agreement to provide that boiler.

“And I want to make clear that if we get to a place where Katahdin Paper does not culminate a deal to convert this boiler, we will support an eminent domain action,” he said, “but I think the first thing to do is take this thing to its end with Katahdin Paper.”

The Town Council agreed with Gonya that the idea was among several that councilors should hold a meeting on to discuss. No dates have been set.

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