I’ve often heard it said that in Maine no good deed goes unpunished. When Plum Creek opted for the time-consuming process of preparing a concept plan for First Roach Pond, I was pleased to finally see a landowner take a proactive approach to preparing a comprehensive plan for conservation and development on a lakefront. A simple subdivision application would have been much quicker and less expensive to prepare.

I should have known that the Natural Resources Council of Maine, which helped craft the concept plan framework 10 years ago, would now spare no effort to criticize Plum Creek’s plan. As evidenced by their commentary on Dec. 26, their aim is twofold: to scare away any other applicant from preparing a concept plan by showing how miserable NRCM can make the process, and of course to raise funds and build the membership of the Natural Resources Council.

All this would be fair play, almost, except for one nagging problem. To accomplish their two-pronged mission, NRCM stretched the facts beyond the breaking point. Cathy Johnson’s commentary in the Bangor Daily News is stuffed fuller of misrepresentation than a Christmas turkey.

Case in point: She asserts that she only had three business days after official notice to file for intervenor status. I attended a field trip on First Roach Pond with Cathy Johnson in mid-August, about two weeks after Plum Creek announced their plan. She had more than a month to decide whether to intervene in the hearing. Even after being denied intervenor status because of the late filing, Plum Creek endorsed her request to be granted the privileges of an intervenor without the official status, knowing full well she would spend her time at the hearing opposing the project.

Perhaps most troubling is the false contention that since the hearing, land has been removed from the public conservation category. As a resident of Greenville, I have followed this particular issue closely. A change was made in the holder of some of the conservation easement lands because the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands declined to become the holder. Instead, the homeowner’s associations, and the individual homeowners will hold an easement on the conserved shoreline adjacent to their lots. The holders of the easement do not have the right to change the conditions of the agreements. The public rights and the conservation purposes are still fully intact.

In total, Plum Creek has proposed to place 81 percent of the Concept Plan area, and more than 75 percent of the shoreline in permanent conservation protection. I reviewed the two other Concept Plans submitted to the commission. One was approved and one rejected. Plum Creek has gone above and beyond what either applicant proposed for conservation set-asides on otherwise developable shoreline. They have set a very high standard for future applicants and probably exceeded what they had to do to gain commission approval.

As a former Land Use Regulation Commission commissioner, I must take exception to the assertion that the commission has greased the skids for Plum Creek. The LURC staff and commission hold every applicant’s feet to the fire, and Plum Creek is no exception. In fact, as I have observed from my vantage point in Greenville, the process has been very time consuming and expensive. I worry about whether any other applicants will submit to it, though it certainly provides LURC the best long-term approach to managing lake resources.

All of us around Moosehead Lake wonder about Plum Creek’s future plans for their holdings. To date they have sold 65 miles of Moosehead Lake shorefront to the state for conservation purposes. At the hearing they said they are working on a much larger conservation easement deal, presumably with the state. One can only hope it will come to fruition and that Plum Creek won’t be scared off by our perverse tendency to punish good deeds.

Steve Mason is a former LURC commissioner and lifelong resident of Greenville.