unSafe Harbors Rockland Meeting November 5, 2021 Photos

 

Camden Hills State Park: is secret roadbuilding there a precursor to windmills?

Just as the Bureau of Parks and Lands tried and failed  to enter the wind energy land leasing business offshore in Maine's submerged public lands, so it is presently almost certainly also seeking to open up the Camden Hills and other public lands under its jurisdiction to intensive windfarms. 

Can't do that in state parks or public reserved lands? Not a problem.  Just takes a  2/3 vote of the legislature to open any of Maine's  public lands... 

Chiefly, what mountain windtheft requires are ROADS to get the operation up there and maintained. 

According to this April 8, 2010 story in the Free Press the Bureau of Parks and Lands is transforming key hiking trails of Camden Hills State Park into graveled roads.  

Using the preposterous claim that this land clearing, blasting, bulldozing,  grading and graveling  is simple "trail maintenance" and as such doesn'ted approval from Maine DEP or any other agency, the Bureau has just gone off on its own initiative using private money  to hire the contractors and prison labor for the grunt work.  Whether Maine DEP has truly been in the dark about this patently unlawful activity,or is feigning so, (see closing paragraphs of above article) the whole thing is highly susupect and needs to be publicly scrutinized. Probably litigated about.

BPL likes wind mills. They were  quite upfront to the legislature about wanting to earn money leasing the public domain to the commercial wind industry. Judging from the immense fees they wanted to charge, the bureau hopes to earn big bucks leasing public land for wind. 

Let's take a deeper look at BPLs "trail maintenance" projects around the state. I doubt Camden Hills state park is the only one doing this - let alone the many non-park public lands that the Bureau of Parks and Lands administers.