Brownie Carson, NRCM's executive director

 

Please Join Us in Taking the “Protect Moosehead” Pledge

From Summer 2007 Maine Environment

In July, I sent you a letter outlining NRCM’s reasons for opposing “Version 3” of Plum Creek’s massive development proposal for Moosehead. These include:

• Lily Bay is the wrong place for a resort, and the magnitude of the Moose Mountain Resort is beyond what we believe the area’s environmental “carrying capacity” to be.
• The location of some proposed house lots is inappropriate—the undeveloped north shore of Long Pond, and those proposed for ecologically sensitive Burnham Pond, for example.
• All totaled, the number of new accommodations could be more than 2,300—more than twice the number of structures currently in Greenville.
• Loopholes in the conservation easement would allow mining, road building, and unsustainable logging. These deficiencies must be addressed.

When I shared these findings with you, I asked you to contact the Land Use Regulation Commission to request hearings in locations accessible to a majority of Maine people, so that everyone who cares about Moosehead will have the opportunity to make your voices heard.
You responded in droves. In fact, you have frequently shown your support for our efforts to protect Moosehead during the past two and a half years, by contacting LURC, writing letters-to-the-editor, sending encouraging letters to us here in the office, renewing your membership, and making generous additional financial gifts. For that, all of us here at NRCM thank you.

Now, we need you to take one more very important action.

We need you now more than ever. A full house before the LURC commissioners will show them that we will not allow Seattle-based Plum Creek to ruin one of Maine’s truly special places.

As always, thank you for your support, and for all you do to protect Maine for our children and grandchildren.

Pollution Control
From Spring 2007 Maine Environment

It’s more than a little unsettling, the notion that pollution from distant chemical plants and industrial facilities invades and settles into our bodies — especially our children. Even more disturbing is the fact that this contamination also comes from chemicals in everyday household items, things we all buy and bring into our homes. Recent debate about banning Deca, a brominated flame retardant found in plastic casings of some electronic products, has shined a spotlight on this problem.

Human exposure to these chemicals, of course, comes from many sources. How much mercury is in the fish we have caught and eaten on canoe trips, or purchased at our local supermarket? How about the chemicals that so many Vietnam veterans and Iraq war veterans have ingested? What about the compounds leaching from landfills into our precious water supplies, or the tons of dioxin poured into our rivers from paper mills over many decades?

In my own home, I wonder about how many chemicals my children were exposed to from carpeting, furniture, and other everyday items we believed to be safe.

In the 1950s and 60s, we learned that animals could collect harmful chemical residues from industrial activity in their body tissues. We lost the entire eastern race of the Peregrine Falcon and sent other species, including the Bald Eagle, our national symbol, to endangered status. Only then did we come to fully understand that rampant use of DDT collected and increased in the bodies of predatory birds. Transformed into DDE, the chemicals caused the eggshells of birds like Peregrine Falcons, Ospreys, and Bald Eagles to be so thin that the mother bird’s weight would crush her own eggs.

Since that time, scientists have greatly increased the sophistication of tests to detect a vast array of chemical residues. Now, we humans are finally turning the microscope on ourselves. Fourteen brave souls here in Maine recently participated in a study to determine the extent of toxic chemicals in the “typical Mainer.” These people came from all parts of the state and from range of professions. When organic farmers, remote wilderness camp operators, and health care professionals are contaminated with a wide range of chemicals, we know there is problem.

NRCM and our partners in the Alliance for a Clean and Healthy Maine have made it a high priority to remove the worst offenders from the list of chemicals that are collecting in our bodies. We are working toward a more comprehensive and systematic way of ensuring that humans and our environment do not become the unwitting dumping ground for the by-products of the chemical industry.

We may never know exactly how the world’s industrial legacy will impact human and environmental health. But, right now, we know enough to warrant further strong action to avoid exposure to a wide range of dangerous chemicals. Thanks to your support for the work of the Natural Resources Council of Maine, we will ensure that laws are passed so that our grandchildren and their children will carry less of this toxic burden in their bodies.

You Really Can Make A Difference
From Winter 2007 Maine Environment

“Make your voice heard.” How often have you heard our staff say this? How many times have you read this call to arms in NRCM publications? In fact, we say it again in this issue of the newsletter, on page 4, as part of our invitation to join NRCM’s Action Network. That’s because you will make a difference, and we need you in 2007.

Later this year, the Land Use Regulation Commission (LURC) will be holding public hearings to help LURC staff make an important decision. That decision is whether or not to permit Seattle-based Plum Creek Real Estate Investment Trust to move ahead with the largest development ever proposed in Maine, in the Moosehead Lake region. Almost a thousand house lots. Two resorts. An unlimited number of “accommodation units” (which could mean gated communities, more house lots, and condos). And much more, sprawling through 58 subdivisions in our treasured Moosehead area.

More than 30 years ago, a chorus of concerned voices stopped the proposed Dickey-Lincoln project from destroying the Allagash. In the 1980’s, many voices joined together in a powerful coalition and kept the Big A dam from spoiling the Penobscot’s mighty West Branch. And in 2005, more than 5,000 signatures collected by NRCM and delivered to LURC helped send Plum Creek back to the drawing board.

Unfortunately, the company’s new plan has changed little from its first. More than 90 percent of the development is planned for the exact same places. Now we have learned that Plum Creek’s claims of sustainable forest practices are far from justified. NRCM’s investigation last fall, launched in response to complaints from hunters and loggers led us to uncover the company’s terrible record of destructive forest management in Maine’s North Woods. Plum Creek has had 18 clearcutting violations and has been fined $57,000—by far, more than any other forestry company in Maine. Plum Creek knowingly destroyed winter habitat identified by Maine’s wildlife biologists as being important to deer for food and shelter.

Too much development in the wrong places, and now this blatant disregard for laws designed to protect our North Woods and the animals that live there—we can defeat this $5 billion company if we continue standing together.

I would like to personally invite you to become part of our network of citizens willing to attend LURC hearings this spring. We need your support to stop Plum Creek from ruining what is so special about Maine. You may choose to testify or to simply attend as a show of support. We will stay in close contact with you leading up to the hearings, and will help you help us grow our network of supporters during the critical window before the hearings.

There are others ways to “make your voice heard,” too. If you haven’t already, please also sign our new petition asking LURC to turn down Plum Creek’s application. Join our Action Network to receive updates about the Plum Creek issue. Bookmark our website (www.nrcm.org) and check in often for the latest news. And as always, we appreciate the financial support you provide to enable us to defend special places like Moosehead Lake, a true gem among the many wild, backcountry areas of Maine’s North Woods.

Redefining the Impacts of Global Warming in Maine
From Fall 2006 Maine Environment

The Maine we know could be a very different place within the lifetime of our children. Leading scientists agree that given the current rate of Greenland’s melting glaciers resulting from global warming, a three-foot rise in sea level is very real possibility within the next 50 years. To understand what this really means, NRCM worked closely with Greg LaShoto, a GIS student at Colby College, to develop maps depicting the impact of sea-level rise on some of Maine’s signature coastal locales. The data was provided by leading climate change scientists, and results are disconcerting, to say the least.

A three-foot sea-level rise would consume much of Kennebunkport village and swamp the Bush family home on Walker’s Point. Bath Iron Works, a major provider of jobs for our state, would see most of its facility flooded. Old Orchard Beach, a Maine icon and major tourist destination, would suffer tens of millions of dollars of property loss.

Some scientists believe we are on track to experience 20-foot sea-level rise. While this would take longer to occur, experts say that we could reach a tipping point well before 2100, after which it will be impossible to prevent such a rise. Based on our maps, I-295 through Portland would be underwater, and there would be no more Commercial Street. Reid State Park in Georgetown, breeding grounds for the endangered Piping Plover and a favorite swimming beach for Maine families, would be unrecognizable, and 30 percent of the Cranberry Isles, near Mount Desert Island, would be gone.

If current trends continue, some of Maine’s most special places will be seen by our children and grandchildren only through photos. How would we begin to explain to them why we failed to take the action necessary to protect the place we love, the place we have chosen to call home?

To raise awareness of the urgency of our findings, NRCM held a press conference September 19 in Portland. We were joined by Portland Mayor Jim Cohen, Professor Gordon Hamilton of the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine, and others who cautioned about the impact of sea-level rise on Maine’s economy and cultural heritage. The story was picked up extensively by the press.

Although the window of opportunity to reverse the current global warming trend is closing, it is not too late to prevent devastation to some of Maine’s most vulnerable places, and the Natural Resources Council is leading this effort in Maine.

Most recently, our Maine Global Warming Challenge is more than three-quarters toward our goal of reducing 600,000 pounds of global warming pollution by Earth Day (April) 2007. This is thanks to you, our members and supporters who have taken the pledge to make easy yet important choices in your daily lives to reduce emissions. Hundreds of you have signed our postcard urging President Bush to make the U.S. a leader on energy conservation and clean, renewable sources of energy. Your membership dues help provide the financial support we need to stay on top of the latest research and to work for legislation to protect our families and our communities from the harm of global warming pollution. Thank you.

The Selective Listening of Plum Creek
From Summer 2006 Maine Environment

By now, those of you who live in Maine have probably seen the television commercials. The setting is the beautiful Moosehead Lake region, and the mantra, from Seattle-based Plum Creek, is “You spoke. We listened.” The phrase refers to the company’s revised plan, announced in March in response to Moosehead-area residents and thousands of others from across Maine and beyond who voiced concerns about Plum Creek’s original plan submitted in 2005.

Did Plum Creek listen? Staff here at NRCM spent many weeks carefully combing through the company’s most recent plan to find out. Our response: the company practiced “selective listening.” Although Plum Creek did make a few improvements, more than 90 percent of the development proposed in Plum Creek’s first proposal remains in the same places.
This issue of Maine Environment details the specifics about what has changed in the plan and what remains the same. As you read through the articles, I encourage you to pay special attention to the voices of those who live in the region. Their concerns about the first plan included

• Too much development
• Development in the wrong places
• Lack of permanent conservation and public access.

The ads Plum Creek is peddling would have us all believe that Moosehead-area citizens are now pleased with the proposal, that Plum Creek “really listened.” But big developments are still slotted for Brassua Lake, Prong Pond, and other remote and treasured places—some would be more than an hour’s drive from municipal services. That means that fire and rescue, road maintenance, and other basic necessities would fall largely to Greenville, driving up property taxes for Greenville residents without broadening the tax base of that community. In fact, of the staggering 975 house lots proposed by Plum Creek, not one is proposed within the town of Greenville, where the company owns 8,000 acres.

And how has Plum Creek addressed concerns about the lack of permanent conservation in its first plan? The company is negotiating a separate “Conservation Framework,” for which it will be paid $25 million or more. Most people I speak with are startled to learn that Plum Creek will be paid, full market value, for the conservation. Although this land sale does have conservation value, it is a commercial transaction, one that Plum Creek is using to distract the public from its massive plans for development.

We so appreciate your support, our members and friends, as we continue our work to protect the wilderness character of the Moosehead Lake region. We will keep you informed as the situation evolves. I invite you to visit our website often at www.maineenvironment.org. There, you can also sign on to our Action Network to stay abreast of actions you can take to help protect Moosehead—and Maine—from the designs of a $5 billion Seattle-based company whose financial interests are not in the best interests of the people of Maine.

A Vision for Conservation and Community-building
From Spring 2006 Maine Environment

Forty-five years ago this summer, in 1961, I saw for the first time Moosehead Lake and the forests that surround it. One of my brothers and I paddled from Rockwood to Northeast Carry, made the nearly two-mile portage, then canoed down the West Branch of the Penobscot River. We took a side trip into Lobster Lake overnight, and saw our first moose early the next morning. We continued down the West Branch into Chesuncook Lake, fought fierce headwinds for most of two days, and finished a glorious, week-long trip near Ripogenus dam.
As a teenager, it never occurred to me that a place as remote and beautiful as Moosehead Lake might someday be put at risk by extensive real estate development. Like generations of Mainers and visitors who had explored this treasure for over 100 years, I simply assumed that it would be there for my children and grandchildren. However, as I have watched wild areas and undeveloped lakeshores transformed into subdivisions and resorts all over the country during the past several decades, I have learned that natural treasures must be safeguarded.

In my 22 years as Executive Director of the Natural Resources Council, I have seen much of Maine change dramatically, especially in our southern counties and along the coast. But NRCM, both during and before my time, has played a critical role in protecting some of Maine’s true gems. We stopped the Army Corps from destroying the St. John River with the Dickey-Lincoln dam in the 1970s, and we were a member of the Penobscot Coalition that successfully defended the West Branch from Great Northern Paper Company’s “Big A” dam in the 1980s.

Now, we face Seattle-based Plum Creek’s proposal for large-scale development on and around Moosehead Lake. In April, 2005, the company submitted to the Land Use Regulation Commission (LURC) a plan for 975 house lots, two resorts, a marina, three RV parks, four sporting camps, and 116 rental cabins—too much development in the wrong places, with no proposed permanent conservation.

NRCM was the first group to oppose Plum Creek’s massive development scheme. We announced our opposition last June and then went to work creating an alternative vision for the area. We listened carefully to the hopes and concerns of residents in communities around Moosehead Lake, heard the comments of our members, and hired a land use planning firm, Terrence DeWan and Associates. A Vision for the Moosehead Lake Region, released on March 14th, is the product of these efforts.

We believe that such a vision is a bold, necessary step toward encouraging Maine citizens and our leaders to conserve the natural resources and craft a sustainable economic future for the Moosehead area. As you’ll read in this issue of Maine Environment, Maine’s North Woods offer not only unique recreational opportunities but also are home to the largest populations of some of our most spectacular wildlife in the lower 48. In some cases, these are “source populations,” ensuring the ongoing survival of populations elsewhere; for other creatures—lynx and American marten, for instance—the North Woods is the only place in the state where they can be found.

NRCM supporters know we have something special in the North Woods, which is why, together, we have beaten back some powerful threats in the region over many years. Now, once again, we have sent Plum Creek a clear signal that we will defend another of Maine’s great treasures—Moosehead Lake. So Plum Creek has “gone back to the drawing board,” and has yet (as of this writing) to submit a revised plan to LURC. But when it does, you can be certain that NRCM will be there to ensure that Moosehead—and the surrounding forests, lakes, and ponds—will be there for future generations.

Green Buying for a Safe Environment
From Winter 2006 Maine Environment

A colleague of mine here at NRCM recently told me how, while holiday shopping at a local store, she overheard a couple trying to decide which cookware to buy for a gift. “The Teflon kind is bad for you,” she heard the woman say.

Fortunately, a growing number of people are becoming aware of health risks associated with chemicals in products that have become part of our daily lives. Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), used to make Teflon, is found in hundreds of products now commonly used by families across the country and beyond. In studies, rats died after inhaling PFOA, and the chemical has been linked to cancer and possible birth defects in animals.

DuPont, the company that manufactures Teflon, knew this, according to the story that broke in Devember. They also knew that PFOA can travel from a mother to her unborn child. For decades, DuPont hid this information from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which is responsible for protecting families from chemicals like PFOA. In a record-breaking settlement, the EPA fined DuPont $10.25 million and is requiring the company to invest another $6.25 million in projects to protect the environment.

But a fine, no matter how high, is not enough. Manufacturers must take responsibility for eliminating dangerous chemicals from the products they make.

NRCM has a strong track record of getting these “product stewardship” policies passed in Maine’s Legislature. We helped pass legislation banning the sale of mercury-containing thermometers in Maine. Our work helped lead to Maine’s first-in-the-nation law requiring auto manufacturers to remove and collect mercury switches before cars are scrapped, affording protection to our environment and drinking water supplies. We also get Maine’s e-waste bill passed; now makers of television and computer monitors must responsibly collect and recycle these products and the lead, mercury, and other toxic chemicals they contain.

In the current legislative session – and for as long as it takes – NRCM will continue our campaign for product stewardship. The long-term goal is to get manufacturers to go beyond safe collection and recycling to phasing out the use of poisons in their products all together. The immediate need, which we’ll be working on in the new year, is for a program requiring collection and recycling of thermostats that contain mercury. And we’ll join with health professionals and our other partners to reduce the serious and pervasive threat of brominated flame retardants.

You can help by joining our Action Network today. Doing so will keep you informed of specific actions you can take when your voice is urgently needed. There are also simple things you can do on a day-to-day basis to reduce the threat of toxic chemicals around your home.

And of course, supporting NRCM as a member is a powerful investment for a cleaner, healthier Maine for you, your family, and generations to come.

- Brownie Carson, Executive Director

Energy in Maine: Setting an Example for the Nation
From Fall 2005 Maine Environment

As the devastation of Hurricane Katrina unfolded before our eyes, it became clear that the impact of this massive storm would be like none other in our nation’s history. Destruction of New Orleans and communities throughout the Gulf Coast. Parents searching frantically for missing children. The terrible loss of life.

We here in Maine could do little more than watch, hope, and pray, even as we gave to relief efforts. But members of the Natural Resources Council of Maine are making a difference in another way.

NRCM is leading Maine’s efforts to reduce global warming pollution that experts agree feeds the fury of storms like Hurricane Katrina. One such expert is world renowned hurricane researcher Dr. Kerry Emanuel, MIT professor and author of a new book, Divine Wind: The History and Science of Hurricanes.

In a recent interview, Dr. Emanuel described hurricane activity as “very highly correlated with an upward trend in tropical ocean temperature.” He noted that scientists studying these temperatures believe the increase in hurricane activity is mostly a consequence of global warming.

The United States’ energy policy should be a proud example of a nation doing everything in its power to reduce reliance on fossil fuels that are contributing to more severe weather. But instead of supporting clean, renewable energy technology, the Bush administration shamelessly rewards big oil companies reaping record-breaking profits—as you and I pay unprecedented prices at the pumps.

Under NRCM’s leadership, with support from our members and friends, Maine is pursuing energy policies that are setting an example for the nation. NRCM helped craft the blueprint for Maine’s Climate Action Plan, which outlines how the State will reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other global warming pollution. Governor Baldacci signed into law one element of this plan in May, the Cleaner Cars Law requiring manufacturers to make more low-polluting vehicles available to Mainers.

These are important steps toward accomplishing our long-term goal of reducing the kind of pollution that poses an increasingly dangerous risk to people, our environment, and our communities.

To help the people of Maine take steps in their own lives, we produced the booklet, Global Warming in Maine: Warning Signs, Winning Solutions. The publication has become a model for similar projects in other states. You can download it from our web site or contact us if you would like to receive a copy.

Our hearts go out as Hurricane Katrina’s impact on the people and communities in the Gulf Coast becomes fully known. NRCM will continue working hard for policies that address global warming pollution and the harm it causes.


- Brownie Carson, Executive Director

Maine Environment is provided four times a year to NRCM members.
Become a member today!

to top
Site Map | Privacy Policy | Copyright Natural Resources Council of Maine
web solution by digital goat