Plum Creek News & Updates

Plum Creek plan panned in Belfast
LURC hearings on plan begin Dec. 1
Republican Journal

BELFAST — Plum Creek’s plans to develop approximately 20,000 acres in northern Maine while placing hundreds of thousands of acres into various conservation agreements was characterized as a bad deal Tuesday night by two well-known environmentalists.

Photo by Steve Fuller

Jym St. Pierre and Jonathan Carter gave a presentation explaining their opposition to Plum Creek’s plans for Maine’s northern woodlands at the Belfast Free Library on Tuesday night.

Plum Creek, based in Seattle, is the nation’s largest private landowner.

“What’s wrong with Plum Creek’s plan is that it’s way too much development in way too many wrong places,” said Jym St. Pierre, Maine Director of the group RESTORE: The North Woods.

St. Pierre and Jonathan Carter, a former Green Party gubernatorial candidate who is now the executive director of the Forest Ecology Network, led the hour-and-a-half-long presentation in the Abbott Room at the Belfast Free Library. More than 25 people were in the audience.

First released in 2005, Plum Creek’s plan for the Moosehead Region has been revised in both 2006 and 2007. The plan needs approval from Maine’s Land Use Regulation Commission (LURC) in order for Plum Creek to be able to rezone land that is included in the company’s plan.

What Plum Creek now describes as its “final plan” will be discussed at four public hearings held by LURC in the coming weeks, as well as formal party hearings involving LURC, Plum Creek and intervening parties.

St. Pierre, who gave a PowerPoint presentation that was accompanied by occasional commentary from Carter, said Plum Creek’s plan concerns him because it deals with such a unique region.

“This is the last big chance to get a big piece of the last undeveloped land in the eastern United States,” said St. Pierre. “This is the last big place that’s really up for grabs.”

To underscore that point, St. Pierre showed maps depicting such things as housing density and lighting concentration across the US. Both maps showed a large gap in northern Maine, stretching roughly from Moosehead Lake to the northern tip of the state.

Plum Creek, which in 1998 acquired 905,000 acres of Maine’s woodlands from South African Pulp and Paper Industries (SAPPI), is planning for 975 residential units, with approximately 300 of them considered shorefront and the remaining 675 considered “backlots,” according to Plum Creek’s website. The plan also calls for the construction of at least two resorts, and for the designation of more than 500 acres as either “mixed use” or “commercial/industrial” zones.

Carter noted that Plum Creek, which was formed in 1989 as Plum Creek Timber Company, no longer goes by that name. Instead, Plum Creek today identifies itself as a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT). Carter said the change shows Plum Creek is more interested in maximizing the economic benefit it can get from the land than anything else.

“This is big land speculation,” said Carter, referring to the company’s plan. “It helps Wall Street and it helps their [Plum Creek’s] stock price. It isn’t about helping Maine.”

St. Pierre said that while Plum Creek has said its plan will bring economic development to the region, he does not believe that will be the case. He said the greater Moosehead Lake region deserves economic development and a good economy, but that Plum Creek’s plan will not provide either one because it will take away from the natural beauty that draws people (both tourists and residents) and their money to the region in the first place.

“Let’s not strangle the golden goose here,” said St. Pierre.

Plum Creek, on its website, argues that its plan will protect the Moosehead region’s natural assets, which in turn will continue to draw people to the region and promote economic prosperity. The company cites a study done by Dr. Charles Colgan, an economist at the University of Southern Maine, to back their claim up. Summarizing Colgan’s report, the company writes:

“Plum Creek’s plan offers economic sustainability for the Moosehead Lake region by focusing upon its traditional industries, including timber management and nature-based recreational tourism.”

It also notes that the proposed conservation easements “could stimulate further economic investment by guaranteeing public access on these private lands.” Elsewhere on its website, however, the company notes that a majority of the land to be placed into conservation (approximately 340,000 acres) through the plan is a “binding purchase and sale agreement with the Nature Conservancy, the Forest Society of Maine and the Appalachian Mountain Club.”

“The groups acknowledge that final terms of the Conservation Framework can not be finalized until LURC has made a decision on the overall concept plan,” the groups said in a joint press release issued in March of 2006.

That arrangement drew flak from both presenters Tuesday night. St. Pierre said the land that would be covered under the arrangement should be protected, but not in a way that holds it hostage to Plum Creek’s plan.

Carter said the ‘if you support what we want, then we will go through with this deal’ approach “really isn’t fair.”

“This quid-pro-quo is, in my view, a form of extortion,” said Carter.

Both men said the proposed conservation arrangement has created divisions within the groups that have signed on to it. St. Pierre said he likes those groups, but can’t support what they are working for with Plum Creek.

“They’ve struck a bad deal here,” he said.

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