Hammond Lumber paves paradise to put up a parking lot; residents howl at clear cutting

New low for Tremont boards; MRC wants $20 million to restart failed plant

TOWN HILL, March 11, 2022 - Hammond Lumber has been cited by the code enforcement officer for zoning violations after it illegally clear cut a lot to make way for expansion.

Last week it cut a wide swath of trees behind its buildings on Town Hill but also illegally removed trees from an abutting .75-acre lot which is in a shoreline zone, said Code Enforcement Officer Angela Chamberlain.

Her citation came after neighbor Jill Walker on Gilbert Farm Road and others complained about the clear cutting which ignited a full-throated discussion on Facebook.

Mike Good, who lives on Knox Road and took these photos, called the clear cutting a “crime against our ecosystem which caused deep pain.

“I’ve been a birder there for 30 years,” said Good, who runs Downeast Nature Tours.

“The wood that they cut could only be chipped ... it had little to no value for lumber …this was an important area for wildlife habitat. What madness has destroyed our understanding of how our ecology works? Nothing is sacred to the forest product industry. What the heck?? The bird life alone…”

Other FB comments:

• Rebecca Hubert Williams I would like to understand the code. I am restricted as a private landowner from cutting more than a limited number of trees to protect the view, so I wonder how such clear cutting is allowed here. For an island that attracts tourists and residents alike for its natural beauty, I wonder how a local business thinks this eyesore is good public relations. For inhabitants of a dying planet undergoing mass extinctions, I wonder how any human thinks this unnecessarily brutal clearing of habitat is anything but extremely short-sighted

• Daniel Saflicki Seen this the other day it’ll most likely be more useless storage that they don't need sad to see MDI the way it is now compared to years ago. I remember when parking was free and MDI felt like home. Now it's just out of staters buying everything up and making it look bad.

• Richard Zack Klyver I drove by yesterday. Its an enormous area that is completely clear cut. Does Bar Harbor LUZO allow for this?

• James O'Connell I thought Town Hill voted for shielding businesses from the street view. Hammond Lumber should change their name to Hammond Tree Museum and charge a dollar to see em.

• Susan Fox we are desensitized as people in a democracy, and too lazy to care perhaps, thank you for reminding us how dishonest and sneaky this was, but more importantly how fatal it was to a thriving ecosystem that was not displaced but just destroyed. GREED 

• John Craigo If we don't get past the anthropocentric ideology that creates such a thought as,"...economic value of commodity growing on my land," we will surely destroy all the rest of what's left of the living planet. A forest, a river, a meadow, are all living … 

• Robert Chaplin I am going directly to BH planning to ask some very hard questions about the gross insult to the environment.

Some MDI residents said they will boycott Hammond.

Mike McGowan, Hammond manager, acknowledged that the company was unaware of the different zone for the lot it recently acquired. He said Hammond will replant there according to town instructions. Hammond needed more space for outdoor storage and to expand the hardware store, he said.

Code enforcer Chamberlain stated in an email, “We were aware that Hammond was cutting. However, we were not aware, and our tax records do not reflect that they purchased the small lot, so we had no idea that they were cutting on a newly purchased piece of property. 

“They are working with Haley Ward (engineering firm) who didn’t realize that the small lot was in the shoreland, and by the time we realized where they were cutting, it was done. 

“It is the burden of the applicant/property owner to do their due diligence and to comply with all standards and code requirements.  Had they come in and met with us to discuss their plans, some of this could have been avoided.”

Those words were no comfort for Mike Good, who said Hammond will probably pay a small fine but the habitat has been destroyed.

Who needs Netflix? Tremont town board videos are binge worthy

TREMONT - When did the word “stupid” become a legal term?

On Tuesday night, apparently, at the select board meeting when “town counsel” James Collier used it several times to describe the citizens petition for a land use ordinance change.

It was not a surprise that he would be a mouthpiece for Acadia Wilderness Lodge, instead of being an unbiased representative of the citizens of the town. He was exactly what the select board wanted, to fortify its position to deny the citizens petition for a place on the May town meeting ballot. When asked his opinion of the citizens petition, Collier immediately ceded his turn to the lawyer for AWL.

But he later took it beyond the decorum sacrosanct to small New England towns. It was a red-blooded takedown with words and phrases more suitable for the WWE.

How many times do we have to hear Collier say, “In my more than 20 years of practicing law in Maine … ” all the while sitting across the aisle from Dick Spencer, lawyer for CTR, who’s practiced law twice as long as Collier?

Back to “stupid.”

Collier’s primary comment to the select board was that the citizens petition was poorly written and that it was “stupid.”

I thought lawyers went to school to learn how to write in an obtuse manner in language to make everything opaque. Was that what Collier meant when he said it was badly written? That it should have been more obtuse and incomprehensible so to serve a particular interest?

The QSJ set him two emails for comment and got no replies.

CTR accomplished amazing things in less than a year. It stirred activism in a small town and forced the Planning Board to reckon with its role after it failed, twice, to seek a moratorium on campground development. So it is with great irony when select member Eric Eaton called out CTR for playing out of the sandbox when he and other select members twice rejected the Planning Board’s request for a moratorium.

Same select board put Beth Gott, owner of Gott’s construction, on the planning board. What do you think her views are on development?

Board members lectured CTR to respect the “process” of town government. The lawyer for AWL pointed to the town’s comprehensive plan as the foundation for any changes to land-use ordinances.

Here is the language in the town’s current comprehensive plan as adopted in 2011:

“Due to the 2011 Tremont Comprehensive Plan Future Land Use Plan Page 123 conflicts between residential and commercial uses in less developed parts of town, the boundaries of this zone outside of the village areas would be reduced so that areas that are currently primarily residential would retain that character (see Future Land Use Map).”

The legend accompanying the map clearly shows the area west of Kelleytown Road (white color), where AWL’s campground will slice through, as “rural residential” in the plan.

So much for process. It’s been 11 years since the town adopted this roadmap for development. Where was the planning board? Where was the select board?

What Eaton doesn’t understand is that he and the two other self-serving select members gave birth to the citizens movement. When governments fail, as it has spectacularly in Tremont, Maine law provides for citizens to take action just as CTR has. These citizens wanted to send Eaton and other business people on the board a clear message: We don’t want Tremont to become another Bar Harbor (the lawyer for AWL also represents the biggest hotelier in Bar Harbor). We want the town to remain primarily a rural residential eden.

The Planning Board owes a huge debt to CTR for having used its template extensively to draft its proposed changes to the land use ordinance as a first step toward the goals of the 11-year-old comprehensive plan.

Compare Collier’s caustic words to that of CTR organizer Cindy Lawson, who said, “We were concerned that the proposals weren’t adequate in areas that would address the biggest concerns surrounding density and influx of people impacting neighboring properties and the towns infrastructure. It is good that the Select board placed the Planning Board ordinance on the warrant and at this point, as the only option, will be supported with the hope that there will be the opportunity to further protect the community down the line.”

But how will the town salve its wounds, the cankered alchemy created by no fewer than eight lawyers - none of whom live here?

The town has become a dark comedy. If “LA Law” and “Ozark” had a baby, it would be called the Town of Tremont. Who needs Netflix when you can watch this?

MRC wants member towns to guarantee funding to restart failed plant

SOMESVILLE - Talk about boiling the ocean. The agency which oversaw the collapse of the regional waste plant in Hampden announced a plan Thursday so complicated that it will require a team of lawyers and consultants to sort out.

And maybe that was the goal, as the Municipal Review Committee often feels like a full employment act for lawyers, consultants, staff and no one else.

The MRC now wants to spend at least $21.5 million to operate the failed Fiberight waste plant in Hampden and wants its 115 municipal members to provide the “full faith and credit backing” for most of it.

The consortium of 115 towns has never operated anything on its own.

Among new disclosures:

• The bondholders have written down its $85 million investment in building the Fiberight plant and are willing to sell it to MRC for $1.5 million if no bidder emerges before June.

• After that, MRC proposes to raise $20 million to recapitalize and begin the process to re-open the plant.

• MRC has written down its $1.5 million loan made to Fiberight only two months before it closed the Hampden plant in May 2020.

As MRC Chair Karen Fussell spoke, it became clear that the new plan has many potential points of failure.

“The major part of the investment comes after the acquisition ($1.5 million) and includes the not insignificant cost of restarting the facility ($20 million) and ramping up waste into the facility and getting to that point of profitability, which will take upwards of two years.

“It is very difficult to find a source of financing because everybody is looking for collateral,” Fussell said, adding that the nature of the facility as a single purpose asset reduces it as collateral of value.

She said the MRC wants its towns to guarantee the “full faith” credit backing.

“So MRC is in the process of putting together the concept of what it would look like if we went to members to request interest in providing full faith and credit backing to support the reopening of the facility. And we anticipate that we'll have that more fully fleshed out and available to members in probably early April.”

The MRC is structured so that votes by the larger waste-producing towns have more weight. The nine-member board includes representatives from Bangor, Orono and Brewer.

It started as a watchdog agency to protect members from price gouging by the incinerator in Orrington but then broke off of that agreement four years ago and attached itself to Fiberight, which promised to build and operate a state-of-the-art facility with 80 percent of the waste recycled. Its 187 members fractured, and 115 broke off to support Fiberight under MRC.

MRC owns the land in Hampden, but Fiberight was able to raise the money through debt to build and run the plant. It began to bleed cash as soon as it opened in late 2019.

Critics have challenged MRC’s claims that Fiberight’s technology is sound, pointing out it only achieved the required 50 percent recycling threshold by counting the material used as “daily cover” at landfills.

Since the plant’s closing, the MRC board has never considered options other than reopening the failed plant. Portland, for instance, operates recycling at a high level because residents sort and then put out bins for curbside pickup. The concept of a single receptor for trash is losing favor among environmentalists who want to reduce trash at the source and to bring back residential sorting.

Climate activist Bill Lippincott, who led a fight to close a leaking landfill in Hampden in 2006, stated:

“What is clear is it’s that they’re full speed ahead on the Fiberight technology, with the same joinder agreement and power dynamics in terms  of voting for the towns, and although they didn’t mention it, the same restriction on not pulling out food waste, same creation of plastic briquettes and pulp and biogas, same minimum required tonnage from the whole of the MRC communities.

A major concern, Lippincott said, is that “there’s no one else successfully doing this currently (copying Fiberight’s model).”

Lippincott also challenged the comment by MRC Director Michael Carroll that there are “no (environmental) issues” with the plant.

He said the plant needs to test for “forever chemicals” after washing the trash, as required of landfills.

Fiberight claimed to have recirculated most of the water, Lippincott said, but “if that water was continually recirculated it would get more and more contaminated with each wash.

“I really doubt that they were able to re-circulate most of that contaminated water. I’m guessing a lot was sent to the Bangor waste water treatment plant, which currently has no capacity to treat or filter PFAS, so that wastewater was/ will be going to the Penobscot River, untreated for PFAS.”

The per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are chemicals used to make fluoropolymer coatings and products that resist heat, oil, stains, grease, and water. They do not break down, can move through soils and contaminate drinking water sources and build up (bioaccumulate) in fish and wildlife.

Residents opposing grid upgrade to power Nordic Aquafarm flood PUC with comments

BELFAST - The Public Utilities Commission is receiving a tsunami of public comments urging it to deny Central Maine Power’s request to amp up the grid to feed Nordic Aquafarms’s profligate power needs, at ratepayer’s expense.

The comments tripled this week, ahead of the March 15 deadline for public input. There were 89 comments as of this writing.

Power consumption has become a new front for those fighting the invasion of foreign aquaculture companies exploiting the coastal waters of Maine as the systems were built for small villages and an occasional lumber mill.

Belfast Journalist Lawrence Reichard said Friday PUC Administrative Director Harry Lanphear told him, “The PUC has received a number of public comments on the proposed CMP expansion, and it sounded like such comments can have a real effect.”

“The PUC, which will in late March or in April, decide whether to approve CMP's request to expand Section 80, its midcoast power transmission line,” Reichard wrote in an email.  

“A January 21, 2020 letter from a CMP lawyer to the PUC indicates that the sole reason for the expansion is to accommodate the very considerable power needs of Nordic Aquafarms and that Nordic would not be able to run its fish factory without the expansion - Nordic's protestations to the contrary notwithstanding,” Reichard wrote.

“Please keep in mind that CMP ratepayers are being asked to foot the $63 million bill for the expansion, which will benefit only Nordic Aquafarms. In other words, we are being asked to subsidize a $500 million project for the benefit of Nordic executives and investors and upscale consumers.”

To comment:

https://mpuc-cms.maine.gov/CQM.Public.WebUI/Comments/PublicComments.aspx?CaseNumber=2011-00138

To read the posted comments:

https://mpuc-cms.maine.gov/CQM.Public.WebUI/Common/CaseMaster.aspx?CaseNumber=2011-00138

LETTER: Cruise Ships’ Achilles’ Heel

By Bowen Swersey, contributor to the QSJ

SOUTHWEST HARBOR - It’s been a while now. We gave them an inch and now, miles down the yardstick, the cruise ship industry has become the 800-pound gorilla in Bar Harbor. For 100 years, Mount Desert Island has been a destination for tourism. It will always be one. I remember coming here three times as a youth. We drove up from Jersey, camped in Blackwoods with our pop-up trailer, and then as a bicycle tourist with American Youth Hostels. There are many kinds of tourists. Some camp out, some glamp out, others stay in hotels, B and Bs, or short-term rentals.

In the last several years, visits from cruise ships have become odious and ubiquitous. Bar Harbor’s sidewalks and shops are crammed with what can only be described as the least-common-denominator of tourists. As a 32-year citizen of the Quietside, this only affects me when I need to shop or work in Bar Harbor. My own summer visits to town have been sharply reduced, and I am not the only local who will avoid town whenever cruise ships are there.

Of all the tourists who come here, it is those from the tour ships who make the biggest impact and provide the fewest benefits. The restaurants might all have waiting lists for lunch, but the average tip per table is way down. Meanwhile, the $150 I would have spent at A&B or Hannaford will go to stores in different towns, where one can park and walk with relative ease. In exchange, the t-shirt and souvenir purchases hardly make up for the imposition the cruise tourists bring. Indeed, as the numbers of cruise ships increase, the numbers of hotel and inn visits have and will decrease.

Citizen-based initiatives to limit, curtail, or stop cruise ship visits have fallen on deaf ears with the town council and Chamber of Commerce. No one in these offices wishes to be seen as anti-business. Some of them have a horse in the race, others are hogtied by legalities. So, what can ordinary citizens do?

The entire cruise ship industry has a soft spot, an Achilles heel. We, as citizens of a free democratic republic have rights, and we are not hampered by the same responsibilities and rules as our elected (or selected) officials. Where these behemoths of tourism are sensitive is in their image. If it is bad for a company’s image to keep doing business in a town, they will quickly move on. I am talking about organized protest. I am talking about a few dozen, maybe a few hundred well-meaning citizens gathering at the docks and around town, waving placards and sandwich boards that ask the cruise ships (as nicely as possible) to go elsewhere, because their business is ruining the peaceful character and small town feel of Bar Harbor. Invite the press. Channel 5 news from Bangor, the local papers, even national news outlets will take an interest in a citizen-based protest to save our quality of life.

Such a display would have repercussions. While the vast majority of residents in Bar Harbor would like to limit or stop cruise ship visits, it is not a unanimous sentiment. But, such displays are perfectly legal. One might even say they are what makes America great. We can, because of our First Amendment rights, organize and protest in a peaceful manner. Add a few news cameras, and we will quickly see the ships sailing off for friendlier shores. It will take persistence and determination. It will take some organization and creativity. But, if there is ample willpower, it will work, with or without the blessing of our local governance. The citizens of Bar Harbor have tried playing nice and have been rebuffed. It is time to draw our bows and take aim at Achilles’ heel, before Troy falls.

A few years ago, Bar Harbor was overbooked for cruise ships. One smaller ship began making arrangements to offload passengers in Southwest Harbor and bus them to Bar Harbor. There was a town council meeting on this topic and it was a whopper. Over a hundred concerned residents went to express their very real concern that this was not the direction we wanted to see our town go. While the council deliberated, I sent a pointed letter to the public outreach office of Princess Cruise Lines. I wrote that public sentiment was very strong about this issue and that if they proceeded to disembark passengers here, they would be met by angry mobs bearing torches and pitchforks. While that may have been an exaggeration, it was a useful one. Discussion about using Southwest Harbor as a cruise industry bus terminal abruptly stopped.

 We, as ordinary citizens have a lot of power. When our interests are not served by our officers, we must wield that power and act on our own.

LETTER: Losing Ezra Peter

TREMONT - With profound regrets:

Ezra Peter Weisenberg died at home this afternoon, March 4 2022 at 3:11PM. He had been diagnosed with additional cancers recently, and the resulting pain was overwhelming. Hospice assisted in his pain management.

Ezra Peter worked in the debris that had been the World Trade Center for several weeks immediately after 9/11/2001, in the pit with the heavy equipment, sifting human remains from the debris..

The air hung heavy with dust and toxic materials of all kinds. And like many workers, police, and firemen that were on-site, Peter started to develop cancers of types prevalent to people that worked in those conditions.

In the five years after the onset of his cancers, he had organs removed, but it was  impossible to stay ahead of the new cancers and the pain that resulted from the disease.was difficult to suppress

It could not get better. Only worse.

He and Debbie, his wife, understood that there was no heroic cure for what the World Trade Center had dealt him, and he wished that he could die with dignity, and with as little pain as possible.

During the last couple of weeks he spent time with Debbie and the kids, and meeting with his AA friends, and generally saying goodbye.

He was scared of dying, of its inevitability, but he was less afraid of death than he was of pain. He will receive the Last Rites of the Catholic Church.

But as of 3:11 this afternoon, he has died quietly, in his sleep, at home.

Reva and I will help Debbie and the kids with whatever support they will need.

Ezra  came into our lives at 7 months and has left at 58 years. That’s a long time, 

But Reva and I are still here, and conventional wisdom tells us that parents should not have to bury their children.

We will mourn his  passing, but there it is.

Love to all,

Arnold and Reva Weisenberg

(Arnold is chairman of the Common Good Soup Kitchen)

LINCOLN’S LOG:

SOUTHWEST HARBOR - After last year’s record year for total lobster dock value, this winter is producing even loftier prices.

One lobsterman on social media reported getting $15 a pound at the dock this week in Vinalhaven. It was under $10 a year ago.

Geddy’s restaurant in Bar Harbor has a 4-ounce lobster roll for $40 on its menu.

Last year, lobster fishers got $725 million for the total value of lobsters at the dock, $300 million more than 2020.

The high price is offset by diesel fuel and bait prices. The national average for diesel now exceeds $5 a gallon.

TRIBUTE: David William Pierce Sr.

1932 - 2022

ELLSWORTH - David William Pierce, 90, died at his home March 8, 2022. He was born in Bar Harbor, April 4, 1932, the son of Leon C. and Vernice (Ackley) Pierce.

David served in the US Air Force during the Korean War and the Vietnam Era. He retired as a Master Sargent after 27 years of service. He was an avid reader, collected lighthouses and enjoyed watching and collecting race cars.

He is survived by his wife of 70 years, Constance M. (Young); son, David W. Pierce, Jr. and wife Cheryl of Otis; daughters, Cheryl White and Linda Wolfe both of Ellsworth; many grandchildren, great-grandchildren; cousins and nieces and nephews. He was predeceased by his son, Michael Pierce; brother, Jim Pierce; sister, Lois Fournier.

Private services will be held at Woodbine Cemetery, Ellsworth.

Contributions in David’s memory may be made to Alzheimer’s Association, Maine Chapter, 383 U.S. Route 1, Suite 2 C, Scarborough, ME 04074.

Arrangements by Jordan-Fernald, 113 Franklin St. Ellsworth
Condolences may be expressed at www.jordanfernald.com