Media: Sears Island takes center stage, at Alamo

Not bad!  though I wish she'd mentioned my main point when she wrote: "it might impact Penobscot Bay." to summarize my depiction of the awesome marine fertility of the island's shoals area and how it is being needlessly threatened for a port for which, Commissioner Cole in so many words admitted, there is no need, only an opportunity.  But I think  that opportunity would be on the backs of nature and the nature based economies of Penobscot Bay. - RH
PHOTOS FROM THE EVENT

 

Capital Weekly. Augusta Maine

Sears Island takes center stage, at Alamo

By Tanya Mitchell   (Mitchell attended the S914/09 event)

Sep 16, 2009

Bucksport — What better place to hold a forum about the future of an island that has been at the heart of decades-long arguments about how best to use it?

Than at The Alamo.

Voices on various sides of the Sears Island debate were broadcast live over WERU FM airwaves Sept. 14 throughout the two-hour forum.

While the discussion initially attracted a light crowd — with about a third of the theater seats occupied at the start — the audience steadily grew as the show progressed.

The forum was billed as a discussion about the future of the island, which is divided into two portions through a joint-use plan and conservation easement signed last spring by Gov. John E. Baldacci.

About 601 acres of the 941-acre island is preserved in perpetuity by way of a conservation easement held and managed through Maine Coast Heritage Trust.

The joint-use plan also allows for the remaining 340 acres to be set aside for potential development of a container port.

Throughout the joint-use planning process, which spanned about five years, those seeking to keep the entire island in its natural state have been at odds with those who support port development on the island.

The division between the two sides was apparent Monday night as panelists discussed — and in some cases, defended — their positions.

Panelists were Sen. Dennis Damon, D-Hancock, Fair Play for Sears Island member Peter Taber of Searsport, former Sears Island Joint Use Planning Committee member Jimmy Freeman of Verona Island, Maine Department of Transportation Commissioner David Cole and Ron Huber, executive director of Penobscot Bay Watch.

WERU volunteer Gray Parrot moderated.

Damon, who chairs the Legislature's Transportation and Marine Resources Committees, questioned Taber about his characterization of the planning process.

During Taber's opening statements, he referred to a series of public meetings held prior to the formation of the JUPC, when the public largely supported keeping the island undeveloped.

Taber described the process as dishonest, and called out the Maine Sierra Club for changing its position on keeping the island development-free in exchange for a planned education center that he called "eco-world."

Damon called Taber's statements as inflammatory rhetoric, and questioned why Taber chose to see things as he does, even with the potential for conservation and recreational opportunities on the majority of the island.

Taber said Damon need look no further than the planning process, which he said was conceived because MDOT "had bungled this sort of thing in the past."

Taber recalled when the planning process, under the Sears Island Planning Initiative Steering Committee, established so-called affinity groups where those on differing sides could draft visions for the future of the island.

"Those groups were quickly distilled into those who wanted a port and those who agreed that a port might be OK," he said.

Taber, a former newspaper reporter for the now-defunct Waldo Independent, said the process was aimed at keeping the public out. He said he crashed secret meetings at Department of Conservation headquarters that involved the affinity groups, but no one who opposed development on the island was there.

"That's what I mean by dishonesty," Taber said.

Freeman, who like Huber, was instrumental in fighting the development of a cargo port on the island in the 1990s, questioned why Huber did not get involved in the planning process from the beginning.

Huber had bemoaned that the process included potential risks that development might pose to wetlands and other parts of the on-island ecosystem, but not how it might impact Penobscot Bay.

"You had every opportunity to be a part of this process right from the beginning... But you chose to kind of snipe at all the players," said Freeman. "Why did you choose that path instead of just getting involved?"

Huber referred to the fight over the island 15 years before, when Freeman worked with Earth First and "sent Angus King into a tizzy" with his skill as an activist and organizer.

Then he recalled the fight in 2003 and 2004 to keep a liquefied natural gas terminal from being constructed at Sears Island. After a vote from Searsport townspeople indicated they did not support such a development, the governor agreed to back off from those plans.

"When this came up, we thought we didn't have to worry," said Huber, noting Freeman and the Sierra Club were considered part of the resistance. "...Then, it was almost like the Stockholm Syndrome took place."

Huber said after he and other environmentalists trusted the process was in good hands, those in the public with views opposing island development were ignored at subsequent planning meetings.

Huber referred to three lawsuits against the state currently pending in Maine Superior Court that seek to revoke the joint-use plan, in which he is one of three plaintiffs.

Cole, who stated that transportation needs are shifting from trucking to shipping and rail use due to the need for more environmentally friendly options, questioned Taber about his perceptions on how the public feels.

"I don't hear from a lot of other people except for you and your group," said Cole. "... Could you at least conceive the possibility that you might be out of touch?"

Taber said Cole had done "a masterful job at public relations and manipulating the process from the beginning," in that people who turned out to fight for a natural island were excluded from the process.

Taber said they eventually got discouraged and gave up participating.

Taber took issue with the use of the term "compromise" when referring to the consensus agreement and joint-use plan. "You don't compromise with virginity," said Taber. "... I think you may be out of touch."

The audience turned up the heat, particularly on state officials, when it came time to take questions from the steadily growing crowd.

One woman asked Cole if a study was ever conducted that demonstrated a need for a port at the island.

Cole referred to a report completed in early 2008 by The Cornell Group out of Virginia, which indicated there was a market for such a development. He also addressed a question regarding the state's use of $100,000 to pay a consulting firm to market the island to potential port developers.

"We are aggressively marketing Sears Island to see if there is the demand that the Cornell Group said was out there," said Cole.

Cole said that should a port plan become reality, it would be through a public-private partnership, where the developer would be on the hook for design and construction costs.

Others asked what they could do to protest port development on the island.

Cole said if a port is proposed — and he stressed there are currently no plans on the table for Sears Island — it would likely go through a permitting process through the Army Corps of Engineers. That process includes a public comment period.

Jody Spear of Harborside, a neighborhood of Brooksville, criticized the state for its proposal to create a Federal Wetlands Mitigation Bank, where the 601 acres of conserved land at Sears Island would be used as the first deposit.

According to ACE, such land banks are used in other parts of the country if there is potential for wetlands damage during a project. There are several types of "credits" that a developer can withdraw from a mitigation bank to replace the "debits" that occur during construction.

Spear said she saw this as another way the state attempts to circumvent state and federal environmental regulations in the interest of getting a port on the island.

Spear pressed Damon on why hearings have not been held through the Marine Resources Committee regarding potential impacts on the marine habitat should a port come to fruition.

"Perhaps we should have some input on this," said Damon. "... We haven't done that because we're not to a point that we have any type of plan."

Harlan McLaughlin of Searsport and Fair Play for Sears Island revisited the use of the term "compromise" for his question.

"What did you give up?" McLaughlin asked the entire panel.

Damon, who noted the island was purchased by the state for transportation purposes, stated the 601 acres of conserved land constituted a compromise.

Cole agreed.

Taber said the state didn't give up as much as Damon and Cole thought, in that the 601 acres are referred to as "the buffer easement" throughout the conservation easement that is aimed at protecting the space.

"It's a buffer for a port," he said. "... It's a lousy compromise."

Freeman said he gave a little when he allowed for the possibility that a container port might be built on the island down the road, if a build-out at Mack Point is not feasible.

"My compromise was not joining this process from the beginning," said Huber. "Otherwise, I can't compromise anything."

"We compromised on a totally wild island, that's what we gave up," said McLaughlin. 

Sears Island at the Alamo! Pt 1 & 2

T'was a fine time at the Alamo Theater in Bucksport last night. The Great Game playing out once more.
Both hours roared by; I couldn't believe it when it was noted but a few minutes remained...See photos here.

Here  are my recollections of the first hour: The entryway, where Sally Jones displayed used cores of  rhyolite, which a first nations-er  discarded on the island sometime during the last fifty centuries of the managing of Sears island 's natural resources by the Wabanaki and the red paint Maritime Archaic peoples. She issued Won't clam up! pins and en-coffined mourning-the-island visors to those entering the theater. And held forth to Tanya Mitchell,  reporter from the Belfast newspaper.

Then off  to the cavernous interior, where, on the long table on the raised stage where the five forumistas would sit sat,  two water cups (speaking is thirsty work!) flanked each talker's table microphone.

A biot of sound checkery, and an introduction by Amy Brown. Then an explanation of the forum's process byWERU moderator Gray Parrot: Five minutes for each panelist to lay out their main points, then one question of another panelist by each panelist, then a question by the moderator for all the panelists to answer, then questions from the audience until the end.

Damon started off. He acknowledged multiple valid sides to the controversy, admitted that initially he and his committee had voted unanimously to condition the granting of the easement to a port wannabe  first acquiring port permits. Baldacci convinced him to redo the vote, getting around Public Law 277  by having the Transportation Committee merely assent to a gubernatorial executive order accepting the conservation easement, and not assenting directly  to MDOT's split the island plan; [ Aside: this bit of legerdemain, by the way,angered some of the veteran committee members who were being asked to now vote  unanimously AGAINST what they'd just voted  unanimously FOR, amid heartily confused new legislators in the Transportation committee who complained they were being forced to vote in a rush, on the day this Sears Island thing  landed in their laps, without rknowing hardly any details - and all because Damon had scheduled a bus trip to a fish hatchery for that afternoon!  On little fish, this island's fate keeps pivoting.

In any case, Senator Damon said, the division of Sears Island for port and protected areas was the right thing.

Peter Taber was next He noted his 18 years of journalism in  Waldo County; and his close following of,  and reportage on, Sears Island development schemes by governor's Mckernan, King and Baldacci in his first term.  He detailed at length the overall dishonesty and rigging of the process by each succeeding chief executive's government , the legislature and us congress, industry and NGO's alike.

Jim Freeman followed. He noted his 25 years in Maine, his 15 years of activism around defense of Sears island. He agreed Sears Island was "an incredible place", extolled its fish nursery, noted he'd been involved in protecting ii in the 90's and early '00's, but , fearing the state might sell the island to condominium development, decided that saving part of it by the state giving  MCHT a conservation easement over the east side was better than nothing. And besides there might never be a port on the other side since Mack Point across the bay isn't filled to capacity. Thus he joined the MDOT's Sears Island  Joint Use Planning Committee and went with their flow.

David Cole of Maine DOT described the state's plan for a "trans-shipment" container port, one that could send double stacked containers by rail  from ships docking at Sears Island to depots in the midwestern US  by way of Montreal.  Rail is the "most environmentally friendly"  of all transportation modes anyway, he noted. One-third the carbon footprint.

I was next. I noted that  a "trans-shipment container port" meant that it would not carry Maine-bound goods; those would all continue to come into and around the state by truck or other ports. The transhipment rail line would take  the containers  form the ship and directly through and out of Maine unopened. I also noted that a containerport  is a heavy air polluter: the ships, trains, trucks and cranes all running their petrol-burning engines at once all the time. The upper bay would become an asthma cluster zone in epidemiological studies.  I noted that the island was set up at the interface between river and bay and its location was perfect for growing baby groundfish and other fishes (although the illegally created causeway's lack of culverts has diminished that function and must be pierced).

Then came questions from panelist to panelist:
Damon asked Peter why he was accusative, "inflammatory". Why do you choose to discredit?   Peter replied with a detailed description of the perfidy perpetuated by Cole's agency and by Sierra Club, from SIPI's beginnings to the present. Damon said that the sell-out NGOs reserve the ability to question why 2/3 of the island was conserved.He's not convinced they are all on board. (Cole looked right uncomfortable hearing this this, as he did when Freeman next to him announced his lukewarm support of a port on the island.

Peter asked Damon to explain why he had earlier said that he was not sure of the sincerity of the people that signed onto the agreement; did he still feel that way.

Jim Freeman noted that he and I had worked together for years on  Sears Island. Why, he asked, was I (RH)  "on the outside"  casting  "wild allegations", and not on the inside being a part of JUPC?   I replied that at the startup of the JUPC process I was busy suing Dragon Cement in Thomaston to make them cap their dusty CKD mound; when I saw the Sierra Club and Earth First!er Jim Freeman were on the Sears Island  Joint Use Committee, I thought  the island was safe - these people have never compromised when it came to protecting the entire island from development.

What a shoc, I said,  to find out it wasn't so!  Freeman and Sierra Club had consensed with MDOT against piercing the causeway! Had agreed a port was an "appropriate use" of western Sears Island agreed to triple the amount of acreage given up to industrial development.   And how sad that Mr Freeman  and the Sierra Club would not respond to the public whose interests they were supposedly representing, would not meet with them, would only assure them that everything was fine.

Coleasked his question next.  He claimed overwhelming support for island splitting plan by mainstream enviro groups, by the community of Searsport, by the legislature, by Downeast Magazine, etc, then asked Peter if he would concede that he was maybe "a little out of touch"?

Peter conceded no such thing! and pointed out how the state's process had been manipulated.  How assent for the port plan was either manufactured by MDOT's facilitator eliminating island protectors from the SIPI, or by  officials representing the town of Searsport claiming town support without polling its citizens, by Sierra club, the new version,  likewise not consulting its members before a few leaders gave support ot island splitting. By Senator Damon rushing the governor's/MDOT's plan throughout a bewildered Transportation Committee while keeping it entirely out of the Marine Resources Committee. No real support. Only the appearance of it.

I asked Commissioner Cole why Maine DOT was not going by the requirements of the Maine Sensible Transportation Policy Act (after first describing it and its relevance to the Sears Island planning process) Cole replied that since the matter was under litigation ( by me and two other Mainers) he was not going to answer!  But, he continued, "We don't even have a development yet, let alone a design, let alone a permitting process.  I can assure you that when a port is considered, if and when, that there be extensive public process. All applicable federal and state rules and laws  will be followed." (quote from recording).

End of Part One of my recollections of the meeting. Recordings of the speakers,and the rest of the two hour forum coming up soon. Somewhere in there Cole agrees to hold a hearing in  the marineresrouces committee about Sears Island.

Sears Island litigant calls MDOT's response to suit "encouraging".

Legal actions continue in Maine Superior Court over State's Sears Island Partition Plan.

Rockland. A man suing the Maine Department of Transportation's over its January partitioning of Sears Island into port and conservation easement zones today called the response filed by MDOT's hired private lawyers on March 23rd "encouraging."

"MaineDOT violated the Maine Sensible Transportation Act (STPA) by planning an enormous and enormously destructive container port project, said plaintiff Ron Huber of Rockland, "without taking a single look at the ecological and health consequences of doing so." Huber sued MaineDOT in February (pdf)

"I find their argument - essentially that a containerport is not officially a transportation facility, and thus the Sensible Transportation Act doesn't apply, to be encouraging in its lameness, as it shows the agency has no real defense to the charges I have brought against it."

The state has filed a motion to dismiss Huber's lawsuit, a motion to consolidate his suit with two similar lawsuits and a motion to avoid having to divulge state documents related to the easement.

It is not surprising, Huber said, that MDOT's response to the lawsuit spends so little time defending its actions and so much on challenging his legal standing. "They've got no excuses. Along with the STPA, Commissioner Cole violated Maine's Site Location of Development Act and the Maine Constitution. All he can hope for is that somehow the judge won't allow the case to be heard. But my case and my legal standing to bring it are rock solid, so that's not going to happen."

Huber also said it is very significant that Maine's Attorney General has declined to represent MDOT in the lawsuit.

"MDOT has been hung out to dry," Huber said. "When former MDEP Commissioner Dawn Gallagher got caught having illegal dealings with a polluting company, she too was forced to seek outside counsel for herself and her agency. The blatancy of the lawbreaking here by Maine DOT Commissioner Cole must have been too much for Attorney General Mills to stomach."

"Let's put it this way: the AG's office isn't even on the court's cc list about this case. This is completely unheard of when an agency is in court over violations of state laws and the Maine Constitution."

Huber said he will file his responses to MDOT's filings over the next three weeks..

END

Sears Island activist takes MDOT & State Legislature to court

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Contact Ron Huber 207-691-7485 or coastwatch@gmail.com

Legal action filed in Maine Superior Court against state's
Sears Island Partition Plan.

On Thursday February 19, 2009, Ron Huber, an opponent of the Maine Department of Transportation's January 22nd partitioning of Sears Island into port zone and conservation easement zone, filed a "Petition for Review of Final Agency Action by the Maine Department of Transportation" with Maine Superior Court in Rockland, Maine.

The petition (pdf file) charges that the Maine Department of Transportation (MDOT) and the Maine Legislature's Joint Committee on Transportation violated state law and the Maine Constitution when planning and approving the partitioning of Sears Island in upper Penobscot Bay into industrial and conservation zones.

The petition calls for the Superior Court to protect the irreplaceable Wasumkeag Estuarine Complex made up of Stockton Harbor, Long Cove and Searsport Harbor, (see illustration) from irresponsible MDOT port development.

Huber has asked the Court to order the the state's 600 acre conservation easement to Maine Coast Heritage Trust to be rescinded until a careful look is taken at the environmental implications that a container port on the other 340 acres of Sears Island could have for upper Penobscot Bay/lower Penobscot River water quality and the River's and Bay's fish and shellfish

It also calls for the Superior Court to declare a 2005 law unconstitutional that gives the Legislature's Transportation Committee approval power over activities on Sears Island,by violating the Maine Constitution's separation of powers.

Plaintiff Ronald Huber of Rockland, Maine, has asked the court to:

1. Find that Public Law Chapter 277 "An Act Regarding the Management and Use of Sears Island" violates the Maine Constitution's Article III Distribution of Powers. The 2005 law improperly grants Executive Branch decision-making power to the Maine Legislature's Joint Committee on Transportation.

"Get the Legislature's Joint Committee on Transportation out of the Executive Branch's turf." Huber said. "Sears Island decisionmaking needs to be free of backroom politics of the sort demonstrated by the Senator Dennis Damon in his co-chairmanship of the Transportation Committee over the past year."

2. Find that MDOT and its Joint Use Planning Committee failed to comply with the planning requirements of the Maine Sensible Transportation Policy Act and the Maine Site Location of Development Law.

"Those two state laws have hugely important environmental impact review standards that the Baldacci administration with, incredibly, the active collaboration of the Maine Chapter of the Sierra Club and other "conservation' members of the Joint Use Planning Committee like Friends of Sears Island and Penobscot Bay Alliance, have tried to work their way around." Huber said. "Maine uses them to protect her places of natural biological productivity, her irreplaceable scenery, her historic and archaeological sites, from the long term effects of poorly-planned large scale developments like a container port."

Huber also criticized Senator Dennis Damon for unconstitutionally using Public Law 277 to lead the Transportation Committee into on November 18, 2008 , imposing binding conditions on MDOT's before the agency could execute the conservation easement, and then then, on January 13, 2009, pressuring his Committee into completely reversing its earlier unanimous vote, and vote to waive the restriction they'd earlier imposed.

"What was the quid pro quo?" Huber said."What did Senator Damon ask for and receive during those private meetings with the governor he admits to having after the November 18th vote?"

"What was enough to make him switch not only his vote, but also to press the members of the Legislature's latest transportation committee into switching theirs?"

"I am asking the Court to relieve the Transportation Committee of the burden of implementing PL 277" Huber said. "I trust the judge will declare it in violation of the Maine Constitution's Article III Distribution of Powers.

"I am proud as well to have a religious and spiritual relationship with Sears Island and its surrounding estuarine complex, protected under Article 1 Section 3 of the Maine Constitution." Huber said.

"This is a place that Almighty God has created to nourish, shelter and transition the salmon that morph there - freshwater to saltwater, salt to fresh, back and forth between Penobscot River and Penobscot Bay, have done so for at least 8,000 years, and will continue to do so, if I can help it. Not to mention the river herring, the sturgeon and the other fishes and water-dependent wildlife that use these sheltered fertile waters."

For more information contact Ron Huber at (207) 691-7485 or by email at coastwatch@gmail.com

Sears Island: Legislature says - Fix JUPC plan and get back to us in December

Evidently the Maine Legislature is not terribly enthused by the output so far of the Sears Island Joint Use Planning Committee.

According to the final few paragraphs in the latest Sears Island article by Waldo County Citizen reporter Tanya Mitchell, about the April 11 meeting of the committee in Searsport, there is...

"some division within the Transportation Committee about whether to support the process."

"Some of the representatives had misgivings about what the ultimate success was going to be here" Duane Scott, JUPC administrator for MDOT is quoted as saying. Scott observed that Transportation Commissioner Cole's report to the Maine Legislature's Transportation Committee on the JUPC's progress "went well, despite interruptions".

'Interruptions?' Duane's not referring to citizen hecklers in the audience. Rather the legislators were interrupting Cole's delivery.

MDOT's Scott fretted, according to reporter Tanya Mitchell, that "Some were caught up in all the history that has brought us up to this point in time."

And what a history that is.

At least, according to Mitchell, MDOT's Duane Scott appears to believe the committee members were "supportive of what we have accomplished up to now."

Ah but now the bottom may fall out of the plan. What about the impact of inevitable eelgrass loss and its well-predicted negative effect on lower Penobscot Bay fin and shellfisheries, that the National Marine Fisheries Service objected to 13 years ago? The Joint Use Planning Committee has yet to discuss the impacts to marine resources that should have played a role in the committee's delineation of a potential port zone right from the start two years ago.

That it hasn't bodes ill for meeting the legislature's December '08 deadline

Sears Island - who gets to carve it up?

Like the West divvying up the Ottoman Empire, the players aboard the Sears Island Joint Use Planning Commission are poised to slice up Sears Island .

Today's Republican Journal's article today
"How will Sears Island be managed?" by Tanya Mitchell, describes how on March 28th, the
Sears Island Joint Use Planning Committee
"wrestled" over how the 600-acre conservation area will be managed once the planning ends and any activity there begins.

The ever-more-tightly-closed-circle of 'deciders' making up the Joint Use Committee have consensed on giving Maine DOT -big winner this go round of attempts to slag the island- two presents: a free hand in port configuration, and an iron hand over the conserved part of the island.

Expect commissioner Cole's post DOT future to be most richly rewarded, should he deliver Sears island to the global industrial transportation network.

How the mighty have fallen! Observe the state to which even once visionary Earth First! activist extraordinaire Jim Freeman has come. This formerly indomitable defender of natural Sears island, and to this day an implacable opponent to the E/W highway, the Transamerica NAFTA highway and all those global corporate byways and highways strangling our planet, has consensed and signed off on a port configuration for Sears Island that will double the amount of cargo containers entering and departing Maine by rail and truck! A port that will stimulate the East West Highway, and will tie neatly into the NAFTA highway from Mexico to Canada. But that is just what Mr. Freeman has done. According to Mitchell's article:

"JUPC member Jim Freeman said if a group like Friends of Sears Island was interested in occupying the island, it would need to draft a use plan and meet with the council to discuss its intentions. would go through a bid process that would spell out details on intended uses for the island and associated construction costs. Once the final proposals and bid information is compiled, Freeman said, DOT will make the final decision."

While Jim is unarguably a contractor par excellence who has played a role in the revitalzing of downtown Bangor, turning use of Sears Island into a biddable competition is not likely what the Great Spirit had in Mind for Wassumkeag's shining sands.

Perhaps a Sears Island live call-in show should be organized on WERU Community Radio which has featured Sears Island in earlier years There, Freeman and others of the Sears Island Joint Use Planning Committee can explain their new plan for Sears Island to the local Maine environmental community.

Sears Island: Does JUPC's reach exceed its grasp?

Critics of the port+park plan unfolding under the auspices of the Sears Island Joint Planning Committee say that the level of expertise on conservation and environmental issues that are endemic to the plan fall far short of what is needed. See map

But the Federal Highway Administration has washed its hands of Sears Island, recently declaring it has no requirement to review what is presently a state action.

Thus it is up to the state of Maine to provide the scrutiny of the plan's likely impacts to Penobscot Bay's fishery generally, to the island's eelgrass meadows, and upland wildlife and vegetation.

Maine DOT's process for Sears Island is remarkably similar to Plum Creek's plan for the Moosehead Lake region: ambitious development plan, but woefully short on detail.

Very little has been revealed - proposal for three lines of track , a new heavy duty roadway, MDOT request for realignment to allow 7,000 foot trains on-island. MDOT clearly has more than a vague fuzzy idea of what is up its sleeve for Wassumkeag, as the Native Americans call this gorgeous keystone island.

Plum Creek's paucity of detail when they unveiled their plan set off a public outcry that lead to the lengthy comprehensive public hearings, where every detail of the company's plan and its impact to the natural environment was made clear.

It is time for this to happen to the Sears Island Joint Use Planning Committee's plan for the future development of sears island. Let's bring MDOT's plans for the island into sharp focus, and let the public and the myriad state and federal agencies with decades of expertise on the island come forth and explain to the Maine Board of Environmental Protection what is at stake.

Under Maine statute called "Site Law", Section MRSA 38 sec 485-1-C. Approval of future development sites, the Department of Environmental Protection can require a would-be large scale developer to apply for a "Planning Permit" for any:

"development within a specified area and within specified parameters such as maximum area, groundwater usage and traffic generation, although the specific nature and extent of the development or timing of construction may not be known at the time the permit is issued. "

Sound familiar? Let's find out if the Maine Board of Environmental Protection will give this a hard look. Watch this space...


T