The latest news about Maine lakes and ponds.

Growing By the Rules in the North Woods

July 23, 2008 - Forty years ago, northern Maine was an East Coast version of the Wild West.

The only rule for land use was you needed to ask one of the handful of landowners for permission before building your cabin. There were no contracts, no fees, no regulations and no neighbors.

And Horace Hildreth, a former paper company lobbyist from Falmouth, was in the Maine Senate trying to convince lawmakers that Maine's "wildlands" needed protection from development pressure that was moving north.

"It was so obvious," he said during a recent interview. "The land along the edges of lakes was going to be a whole lot more valuable for shoreline lots than for pulp."

Today, sprawling vacation homes are appearing on lakefronts and hillsides, replacing the rustic camps that were the first wave of development. And the unorganized territories around Moosehead Lake are slated for the largest subdivision in state history.

Hildreth, 76, was given a Distinguished Contribution Award last month by Maine Audubon for his support of wildlife protection, including his role in creating the agency that oversees development in the North Woods. But, 40 years later, the state is again debating whether to increase regulation in the North Woods.

Hildreth, for one, hopes the state can do better in the next 40 years. "It hasn't lived up to its potential, or what I thought of its potential," he said.

Hildreth, who lives in Falmouth, is the son of former governor Horace Hildreth Sr. He is chairman of Diversified Communications, a Portland-based magazine publisher, broadcast company and trade show producer.

After graduating from Bowdoin in 1954, Hildreth went to work for a Portland law firm as a lobbyist for Maine's paper companies, a handful of which owned nearly all of northern Maine. In 1966, he was elected to the Maine Senate from Cumberland County and began working on environmental issues and using his knowledge of the paper industry. "I knew where all the bodies were buried," he said, laughing.

Hildreth wrote the so-called site law, which provides state environmental oversight of significant development projects in cities and towns. He wrote a law protecting salt marshes. And, in 1968, he introduced An Act to Create the Wildlands Use Regulation Commission in order to regulate development around roads and shorelines in the unorganized territories.

As the rest of the East Coast became more densely populated, he said, more people were heading to the woods. In a 1967, he told this newspaper: "This land is within four hours of nearly 40 million people with time, leisure and money, looking for someplace to go."

While Hildreth and others argued that uncontrolled development would ultimately destroy the recreational and commercial resource, he faced opposition from the paper industry and from within his Republican Party.

"It got clobbered when I first introduced it," he said. "The whole environmental thing hadn't even started then."

The idea was salvaged by Rep. Harrison Richardson, R-Cumberland. Richardson, who was not available to comment for this story, created a study committee to look at the issues raised by the bill. The committee brought the proposal back in January 1969 and, this time, it passed.

Maine's Land Use Regulation Commission began reviewing development in the Unorganized Territories in 1971, in time to witness historic development pressures and ownership changes.

Hildreth, however, is anything but boastful about the law. "At least the mechanism is there (to regulate growth). How effective it is is another question," he said.

Hildreth said there are exemptions in the law that have left most of the incremental growth unregulated. And, he said, Plum Creek Timber Co.'s proposal for 975 homes and two resorts around Moosehead Lake is too big to get the kind of review it should. Hildreth, who has criticized parts of the Plum Creek plan, said the agency is better equipped to handle bite-sized development than something spread over 400,000 acres.

Officials at the land use commission say they are conducting a thorough review of the Plum Creek plan, which could be up for a final rezoning vote this fall. But they don't deny that the development pressures can be overwhelming or that the character of the North Woods is changing.

"Today, we're seeing (camps) being converted to year-round homes, huge homes that would be found in suburban neighborhoods," said Catherine Carroll, executive director of the commission.

Although the agency has rules governing such aspects as construction setbacks from lakes and the clearing of lots, it doesn't have a lot of control over where most of the development is occurring, Carroll said.

One reason is the so-called two-in-five exemption that allows a property to be subdivided into two development lots every five years without any oversight. Of the nearly 10,000 new dwellings created in the unorganized territories since 1971, three-quarters of them are on lots that were created without any regulatory review because of that and other exemptions, said Fred Todd, manager of the land use commission's planning division. Todd started working at the agency a year after it was created.

"We're really only affecting the location of approximately a quarter of the development in the North Woods," he said.

The issue of control, or lack of it, is a hot topic now because the land use commission is updating its comprehensive plan for "the jurisdiction," as the area is called. Commissioners are expected to discuss the plan next month and could complete it later this year.

While the Legislature would have to act to expand the state's regulatory authority or limit exemptions, the review has rekindled the debate. "In many ways, the issue we're raising now is the same issue they struggled with 35 or 40 years ago," Todd said.

Landowners, including the timber industry, have been objecting to the idea of tighter rules.

Patrick Strauch, director of the Forest Products Council, a group that represents timberland owners, said there is no land rush or need for dramatic changes in the way growth is managed or to expand regulation.

"What we're saying is let's step back. Let's analyze what's happening to see if we have a problem," he said. More than 8,000 new dwellings without state review is not a crisis, he said. "In 35 years, over 10.5 million acres that's not a huge amount of growth when you compare it to anywhere else."

Ninety percent of the growth has been within three miles of a public road, and the rate of development in the interior of the North Woods has actually declined, he said.

Hildreth, however, said the state should have more power to prevent long-term sprawl.

And, he said, the development pressure that he saw emerging 40 years ago is only more obvious now. "There is a hell of a lot of land up there that is so expensive today that it's not profitable to buy it for timberland or forest products."

By JOHN RICHARDSON, Staff Writer, Portland Press Herald, July 20, 2008


Lakes:
Regions: Rangeley, Moosehead, Bangor, Katahdin, Embden, Houlton, Lincoln, Jackman, Presque Isle, Allagash


Print this story

Email this story

return to Lake News