Plum Creek to Alter Development Plan
By Kevin Miller, Bangor Daily News, Maine
Jan. 19–AUGUSTA — Plum Creek is once again revising its development plans for the Moosehead Lake region and has asked state regulators to postpone hearings on the company’s controversial proposal.
A representative for the timber and land company declined Thursday to characterize the scope of the revisions or provide specifics about possible changes to the plan, which encompasses 421,000 acres of forestland near Maine’s largest lake.
Plum Creek’s Luke Muzzy said the revisions, which are still being completed, are in response to feedback from staff at the Maine Land Use Regulation Commission and other state agencies and groups involved in the review. The company hopes to submit the changes to LURC staff in two to three weeks.
However, Muzzy said some areas of development “were given a real hard look” by company officials. A postponement will give LURC, as well as the public, more time to analyze the changes, he said.
“We made the decision we are going to make some changes, and we felt we should make them now rather than later and give LURC time to review them,” Muzzy said.
Plum Creek’s current proposal — the largest development plan in Maine history — seeks authorization for 975 house lots and two resorts in one of the most beloved recreation areas in all of Maine.
The Seattle-based company, which is the largest private landowner in the U.S., also has offered to permanently conserve more than 400,000 acres in the region through a combination of donations, land sales and easements.
But the scope of the development on the forested landscape around Moosehead has sparked intense debate about how to revitalize the economy of North Woods communities without compromising the natural beauty that makes them unique.
After months of delays due to insufficient information, LURC’s board voted earlier this month to tentatively schedule the first public hearings for late May and early June. Several conservation groups objected to the timing and urged the commission to hold hearings in late summer when more seasonal residents are in town.
LURC director Catherine Carroll said Thursday she hopes to hold the hearings in the summer, but the exact dates depend on when the company submits its revisions as well as the extent of those changes.
Carroll said she was not familiar with Plum Creek’s latest alterations.
“For many months now, LURC staff and Plum Creek have worked very, very closely together … and we have been offering our best suggestions on how they might make some improvements to their plan,” Carroll said.
A lack of details didn’t stop Plum Creek’s critics from celebrating, at least somewhat, on Thursday.
Representatives of the Natural Resources Council of Maine said in a statement that they were “encouraged that Plum Creek has recognized that the plan they proposed for the Moosehead Lake region is a failure and is not popular with Maine people.”
NRCM has consistently attacked Plum Creek and the company’s development plan, describing it as sprawl that threatens the very wilderness character that draws tourists to the Moosehead region. The group has even criticized the terms of a 340,000-acre conservation deal that was offered as part of the development proposal and is contingent on the total plan’s approval.
Plum Creek is partnering with The Nature Conservancy, the Appalachian Mountain Club and the Forest Society of Maine to either sell them the land outright or have it placed in conservation easements. The deal with the three groups — valued at about $35 million — would rank as one of the largest land conservation projects in U.S. history.
Plum Creek also has offered to donate another 72,000 acres of conservation land to offset the proposed development in the company’s concept plan.
In an interview Thursday, Cathy Johnson, NRCM’s North Woods project director, said she hopes Plum Creek’s latest revisions will include removing house lots from such places as Lily Bay Peninsula, Prong Pond and Brassua Lake.
In the company’s second-generation development plan, submitted to LURC last April, Plum Creek relocated one of the resorts, reduced the size of a second and clustered some development closer to existing communities.
But the changes didn’t satisfy NRCM and other groups, prompting some Plum Creek supporters to accuse the groups of pursuing a militant conservationist agenda at the expense of the Moosehead-area economy.
Johnson, however, remained adamant Thursday that Plum Creek needs to “go back to the drawing board.”
“We, of course, hope they will make some major revisions, unlike last time, and hope they will focus the development near Greenville and Moose Mountain resort,” she said.
LURC’s review of the application is expected to take months. The agency, which oversees development in Maine’s Unorganized Territory, has hired several consultants and already billed Plum Creek hundreds of thousands of dollars in review costs.
Muzzy said he and other company officials are eager to move forward with the review of the revised application.
“We believe these are really good changes,” Muzzy said.
For more information or to download documents on Plum Creek’s application, go to http://www.maine.gov/doc/lurc
—–
Copyright (c) 2007, Bangor Daily News, Maine
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.