MILLINOCKET – Two organizers trying to create the Katahdin region’s first multiuse recreational trail system have made significant progress toward establishing a trail connecting Millinocket to Milo and Brownville, they said Thursday.

If several conditions are met, Katahdin Forest Management officials would be receptive to allowing a trail on KFM land mostly near Route 11, John Raymond and Brian Wiley told the Town Council on Thursday night.

“It is significant,” Raymond, a council candidate, said outside the meeting, “because right now we are connected to nothing. There are no [multiuse] trails here.”

“Six months ago, this wasn’t even a concept,” said Wiley, president of the Katahdin Area Chamber of Commerce. “No one knew anything about it.”

The trail they and Paul Sannicandro, a resident who is assisting them, propose would start on KFM land at the Northern Timber Cruisers clubhouse in Millinocket. It would follow a power line passage to Route 11, then to Green Bridge. Avoiding nearby ski trails, it would continue south to the 5 Lakes Lodge area to Schoodic Lake and the Milo-Brownville area, effectively connecting Millinocket to a burgeoning multiuse and ATV trail network in southern Maine, Wiley said.

Councilors were supportive. Councilor Bruce McLean praised the three for working hard to overcome resistance to their ideas.

“I know how difficult and long an effort it’s been for you. It’s much appreciated in town,” Councilor David Cyr said.

“When it comes to tourism, motorized recreation is where it’s at,” Councilor Jimmy Busque said. “ATVs is definitely where the biggest bang for the dollar will be.”

Raymond has been working for more than a year on creating a multiuse trail system for all-terrain vehicles, bicyclists, bird-watchers, campers, hikers, snowmobilers and other recreationalists. He and his partners are enticed by the multibillion-dollar tourism and recreation industry such trails – particularly with ATV riders – have created in other states.

While the Katahdin region is considered one of the best for snowsledding, a multiuse trail network could help draw tourists and income year round.

Area landowners, however, fear damage created by ATVs, especially in working forests. They complain of littering, and liability issues if riders are hurt – especially where logging trucks roll – and want trails policed.

Raymond and Wiley will discuss their ideas for policing trails at the Joint Elected Officials Board meeting at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 17, at the East Millinocket town office. Members of the public, especially landowners, are invited to attend. Elected officials from East Millinocket, Medway and Millinocket sit on the board.

If all goes well, the 35-mile trail could be operational in 2008 or 2009, but not before a bridge costing about $150,000 is built across the Penobscot River’s West Branch, Wiley said. He implied that he could use, but did not actually seek, a council appropriation of $7,000 for property and engineering prep work that would help the bridge plan qualify for a federal grant. The federal grant would cover the cost of the bridge, but would require reimbursement of up to 20 percent.

The council would be happy to consider such a request, council Chairman Wallace Paul said after the meeting, but Wiley said he probably would raise the $7,000 himself because it’s due as part of a grant application on Oct. 15. He declined to say how he would raise the funds.

If the grant application is not completed in time, Sannicandro said, the bridge would be delayed a year.

The best part of creating the 35-mile trail, the proponents said, is it would show skeptical landowners that mixed-use trails can work while drawing ATV enthusiasts from the rest of the state and beyond into Katahdin.

“Because they have organized trails down there [in Milo], the four-wheelers are staying on the trails,” said Raymond, answering a common landowner concern that trail creation would expand, and not diminish, vandalism to their lands.

“About 95 percent of people on the trail stay on the trail,” Wiley said. “These are the things we have to go back to the landowner and prove.”