NRCM Blog

The Public Has Spoken: No Development on Lily Bay

Well it took us a few days to read through them all, but finally we know what the public really thinks about the latest proposal for development at Lily Bay.  I think that Julie Sawtelle’s comments are a good summary of the public’s response.

“Just tell Plum Creek: 'No thanks, Lily Bay is just fine the way it is….'"  -Julie Sawtelle, Litchfield

In the end, after a four week comment period that ended last Friday, the Land Use Regulation Commission (LURC) received 1,768 individual letters and emails.  1,762 were opposed the Plum Creek proposal, 1,517 of those comments specifically mentioned Lily Bay.  On the other end of the spectrum, LURC received six letters in support of the development proposal.  Two of those said they’d support development on Lily Bay.

Here’s a picture of the stacks of comments.

Overall 99.6% of the comments LURC received raised objections to Plum Creek’s proposal.  85.8% opposed development at Lily Bay.  Eighty percent of all comments were from Maine residents.

The comments came from more than 300 Maine towns in all sixteen counties, from Allagash to Kittery, Rangeley to Eastport. They came from the communities and outposts surrounding Moosehead Lake (Greenville, Greenville Junction, Rockwood, Beaver Cove, Tomhegan Township, Sapling Township, Frenchtown Township, and Jackman). And they came from families that have enjoyed the quiet remoteness of Lily Bay State Park for generations...

The Plum Creek Hearings - An Update and Summary

After four long weeks and hundreds of hours of testimony the technical intervener sessions on Plum Creek’s development proposal for Moosehead Lake have ended; at least for now.  The Land Use Regulation Commission closed this phase of the sessions on Friday and gave at least some indication of how the process may move forward.  On the final day of the sessions the Commissioners were offered three options from the Attorney General’s office.  The first option was for the Commissioners to vote up or down on the proposal as it is now.  The second was for the Commission to allow Plum Creek to make amendments to its development scheme.  The third option was for the Land Use Regulation Commission staff to draft a series of suggested options for potential changes.  The Commissioners voted unanimously in support of option three.  Comments from the interveners on the three options were due yesterday.  NRCM believes that the Commission should vote yes or no on the application that is in front of them now, but it appears that this not the direction the Commission is going to go.  Knowing this we think option three is the next best choice.  We don’t want to see Plum Creek continue to make only symbolic changes and attempt to drag this process out in a never ending war of attrition.  Once the Commission has a chance to review the intervener’s comments they will decide how to continue the process.  We should know more about this in the next week.

The one clear conclusion of these sessions is that Plum Creek’s current proposal is fatally flawed and significant changes are necessary.  Now we just have to figure out how to best make this happen.

-Diano Circo, North Woods Policy Advocate and Outreach Coordinator

Plum Creek hearings - an update from this week

After a few weeks of preparing for the upcoming public hearing in Greenville tomorrow, I’ve finally been able to come up for air and return to the intervener sessions.  We know that many of you rely on this blog to help you keep up with what is happening.  We’ll do our best to keep this blog up to date for the remainder of the intervener sessions.

The intervener sessions started back up on Tuesday of this week and will continue on Tuesday of next week and hopefully finish up on Friday the 25th.  I’ve been stopping by the intervener sessions to help out briefly over the past three days.  I think the first thing I noticed was the ever evolving revolving door of lawyers that Plum Creek has brought in.  I’m looking now at a team of what appears to be five attorneys at Plum Creek’s front row table.  Three of them are faces I haven’t noticed before and still more of their lawyers are sitting in the back of the room.  It’s hard not to wonder what the price tag is on this type of legal assault.  I can’t help at times but to envision spinning wheels of numbers over their heads with the billable hours increasing by the second.

This week has focused on scenic impacts, traffic impacts, and wildlife and habitat issues. At the moment, the Commission is cross examining state agencies about the potential impacts Plum Creek’s proposal would have on the federally listed Canada lynx.

Troupe Stays in Step For Plum Creek

1/11/08 column by Bill Nemitz in the Portland Press Herald:

Troupe Stays in Step for Plum Creek

It's no secret that Plum Creek Timber Co. has hired all kinds of local talent -- lawyers, lobbyists, beefy security guys with little plugs in their ears -- to help pitch its proposed mega-development around Moosehead Lake.

But a choreographer?

It happened last month in Portland, at the Maine Land Use Regulation Commission's hearing on the Plum Creek proposal. And the award for best stage management goes to Barton & Gingold, a Portland-based public relations firm hired by Plum Creek to, shall we say, keep supporters in step.

"We have a large team of foot soldiers tomorrow," exulted Elizabeth Swain, a partner with Barton & Gingold, in an e-mail sent to nine co-workers on the eve of the Dec. 15 hearing at the Holiday Inn by the Bay. It was one of four public hearings to be held around the state by LURC to gather input on Plum Creek's plans for two resorts and 975 house lots in the northern Maine woods.

Swain's e-mail -- reportedly recovered from a waste basket at the hotel and circulated since among Plum Creek's opponents, offers a rare glimpse into just how carefully the LURC hearings -- the last comes Jan. 19 in Greenville -- have been orchestrated by those on Plum Creek's payroll.

There's this advice from Swain to the "B&G people" who might testify to LURC:

Up the (Plum) Creek

This piece by Edgar Allen Beem was originally published in The Forecaster - and we wanted to share it with you in case you hadn't had a chance to read it.  We think it's a great piece!  Be sure to share it with your friends, family and colleagues!

Up (Plum) Creek
by Edgar Allen Beem
The Forecaster, December 27, 2007

On Saturday morning, Dec. 15, I attended the Land Use Regulation Commission’s public hearing in Portland on Plum Creek’s mammoth development proposal for the Moosehead Lake region. I went with my daughter Tess, who was interested in writing a letter to LURC urging defeat of the monstrous resort/summer colony plan.

What I saw and heard in the packed conference room of the Holiday Inn by the Bay saddened me deeply and convinced me that Plum Creek’s Wal-Marting of the Maine woods will probably be approved, albeit with a few mitigating conditions.

Over and over again I heard folks from northern Maine express the opinion that we in southern Maine shouldn’t have any say in the matter. Whatever happens around Moosehead is none of our business. The most prominent person voicing this parochial opinion was Sen. John Martin of Eagle Lake, which, for the record, is just as far from Greenville as Portland is...

Behind the scenes at the Portland Plum Creek public hearing

I want to start this post by thanking everyone who came out to the public hearing in Portland on Saturday, and especially those who patiently waited hours for their three minutes of time.  Here is one blog post about the experience from the League of Young Voters http://theleagueofyoungvoters.wordpress.com/2007/12/17/reflections-on-moosehead-lake-by-felicia-teach/.  The media has been reporting that somewhere around 500 people came to the hearing.  I wish I had a more exact figure for you, but I was sitting up front doing my best to keep track of all the testimony and didn’t have a chance to do a head count.  I did have a few opportunities to stand up and look around, the room was full of people sporting the "Don’t Mess Up Moosehead" sticker that we were passing out.  It was clear to me that the vast majority of people in the room had come to show Plum Creek and the Commission that they were opposed to the development proposal.  There has been a lot of media over the past few days about the hearing so I won’t go into what has already been hashed and rehashed in the paper.  You can read the Portland Press Herald coverage here http://www.nrcm.org/news_detail.asp?news=2022.

What I’d prefer to tell you about is what hasn’t necessarily been reported...

Final Greenville hearing postponed due to weather

The final Greenville public hearing about Plum Creek's massive development proposal for the Moosehead Lake region was originally scheduled for Sunday, December 16.  Due to a predicted snowstorm, the public hearing has now been postponed and will be held in Greenville on Saturday, January 19, 2008.  To learn more, please go to http://www.nrcm.org/pc_action.asp. 

We hope to see you in Portland for the public hearing on Saturday, December 15 - that one will go on as scheduled at the Holiday Inn By the Bay.  We will then see you in Greenville on January 19.  Thank you!

Questions about Plum Creek's proposal? Post them here.

Hey everyone let's get a dialogue going here.  If you have any questions about what is happening at the hearings or what is in the Plum Creek development proposal let us know and I’ll do my best to answer you here.

Diano Circo
North Woods Policy Advocate and Outreach Coordinator

Plum Creek hearings update - December 11

Today I had to give in to the need to get some office work done. While many of NRCM’s staff are hard at work at the intervener sessions I’m back at the office returning calls and planning for this weekends public hearings in Portland (Saturday, Holiday Inn By the Bay) and Greenville (Sunday, Greenville High School). I hope you all will take some time to come to the hearings. NRCM will be having an open house at each location where you can ask questions, pick up some food, and chat with NRCM staff. While at the office I’m continuing to follow the live action via the live web audio offered on the Land Use Regulation Commission website www.maine.gov/doc/lurc/webcast.html.

Over the past several days of testimony the proposed resorts at Lily Bay and Moose Mountain have drawn a lot of attention. NRCM has repeatedly pointed out that there is no certainty in Plum Creek’s proposal as to what a “resort” might actually look like. The proposal actually does not give any detail as to what the resorts my look like, it simply says that all sorts of uses would be allowed in the resort zone. The current resort zones would actually allow single family home subdivisions. We are concerned that the resorts will simply become gated communities and not true resorts. For example Plum Creek would only be required to have 15 transient accommodations at the Lily Bay resort. Many of Plum Creek’s supporters and witnesses have pointed to the potential resorts as the linchpin to the plan, yet it has been made clear in the past few days that there is no guarantee that a true resort will actually be built. Also of interest yesterday was hearing the attorney representing the Maine Professional Guides Association, Maine Snowmobile Association, ATV Maine, and Maine Bow Hunters Association attack the idea that the Moosehead region has wilderness.

NRCM’s tourism expert Costas Christ, who has worked all over the world, strongly stated that this region is the last remaining undeveloped forest east of the Mississippi and certainly meets the definition of wilderness. Costas went on to strongly encourage the Commission to require Plum Creek to include internationally recognized standards for sustainable resort development in their proposal. He highlighted some examples where resort developers have adopted these standards and also talked about places in the world where these standards have not been adopted and the local communities have been left to deal with poorly planed development. Costas also revealed that at one point Plum Creek had attempted to put him on retainer, but that he had decided not to accept that offer and instead thinks that what is being proposed to much too large and runs the risk of destroying what would attract people to the region.

-Diano Circo North Woods Policy Advocate and Outreach Coordinator

Plum Creek hearings update - the beginning of Week 2

I’m back at the St. Paul Center this morning for continued cross-examination of experts.  The intervener process will be continuing for the rest of this week and pick up again for a week in mid January.  As I’m typing NRCM’s attorney is cross-examining one of Plum Creek’s economic experts.  You’ll be happy to know that the flocks of lawyers have not thinned over the past week.  If you can believe it, it actually seems like the number has grown. In my experience spending time and working with people in Greenville a real concern has been what will happen to the families that currently live there if Plum Creek’s development proposal is successful.  Many have referenced what has happened on Maine ’s coast as an example of what they don’t want to happen in Greenville.  No one wants to see long time families forced to leave because of increased valuations and the taxes that come with it.

An interesting commentary from Will Neils, a witness from the Native Forest Network, on Friday touched on this issue.  While being questioned by one of the members of the Commission, Mr. Neils made some eloquent comments about the changes that he has seen in the Camden region as more affluent people have come to town.  Being born and raised in Appleton Mr. Neils testified that over his lifetime he had seen the taxes on his families property continue to climb as those who can’t afford to stay in Camden are forced inland to places like Appleton driving up costs.  He feared that what has been happening on the coast of Maine will come to Greenville.  Would long time residents of Greenville be forced away from Moosehead Lake and into towns like Shirley, Monson, and Dover-Foxcroft?  Mr. Neils thought that a true “plan” for the region could only be created by the people of the region through some kind of broad public process that included community members across the region. He went on to say that a process like this should be done by some kind of public body like the Land Use Regulation Commission and not a for-profit corporation like Plum Creek.