Letters to the Editor

Proposed dump already smells foul

To the Editor:
    On May 21, 2014, the Municipal Review Committee (MRC) presented a proposal for a new landfill to be located in the towns of Argyle and Greenbush. MRC, under a different name, was created in the 1970s to provide oversight for the member towns and cities that utilize and own the Penobscot Energy Recovery Corporation [PERC] for disposal of their solid municipal waste, i.e., trash. All of the municipalities in this area, with the exception of Wellington and Kingsbury, are members of MRC. Cambridge and Ripley are part of Dexter’s district.

    In 2018, the current contract with PERC will expire. In 2021, PERC’s license will be up for renewal. There is no reason to think that PERC’s license will not be renewed. With these two dates looming before them, the MRC determined that that costs for disposal of municipal solid waste would greatly increase, both for tipping fees for PERC, and for ash disposal at Juniper Ridge Landfill. In an effort to stave off higher municipal costs, MRC proceeded to make plans for a new landfill in the towns of Argyll and Greenbush.
    MRC sent letters to the Department of Environmental Protection stating that they had the “full support” of their member communities, as measured by volume of waste contribution. Later they amended their statement to claim 70 percent support, admitting that their support came from the biggest waste producers, like Bangor, Lewiston/Auburn and Waterville. The smaller communities were not considered in this decision, because we don’t generate enough trash.
    According to MRC’s own bylaws as a public benefit corporation, they were prohibited from expending monies beyond the exploration of municipal waste disposal alternatives for the benefit of their member communities. But, they generated studies, hired consultants, generated plans, and sought out sellers of land for their proposed use, and began the permitting process, all without any input from all of the 211 communities that would be directly affected by their actions. Once this dilemma was pointed out to them and the DEP, the MRC amended its bylaws in late July, presumably, to permit such activities.
    The MRC seems to be in a rush to steamroll this new dump through the DEP. Member communities were notified well after the fact without any mention of possible viable alternatives, such as technologically upgrading the existing PERC facility. Member communities were not told that there are existing sites already permitted for landfills farther to the north. Member communities were not told that if this new dump is built, then PERC, by state law, can import and burn 100 percent of their required municipal solid waste from out of state. Once that out-of-state trash hits the ground in Maine, it becomes Maine trash, and we are all responsible for it.
    Member communities were not told that the new dump would be used to produce low-grade propane through an anaerobic decay process. Output is low from such projects, but the State of Maine offers major subsidies for electricity produced by such projects.
    To produce an equal amount of electricity as that produced by PERC which burns 300,000 tons of trash per year, this new dump would require 3,000,000 tons of municipal solid waste per year.
    Yes, I said millions! Their latest proposal involves ethanol production. But, there still doesn’t seem to be a plan, other than to acquire the land at the present time.
    Member municipalities have not been informed that the proposed landfill in Argyle and Greenbush is in the environmentally sensitive Birch Stream, Alton Bog, and Penobscot River watershed. Argyle lies totally within the Atlantic Salmon Critical Habitat Zone. The proposed landfill’s highest point above is only 27 feet above Birch Stream. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in its own reports states that landfill liners will “ultimately fail.”
    Finally, we haven’t historically been getting that great a deal from the MRC. The 86 Equity Charter Members, of which Sangerville is one, pay $77 per ton to tip. New Charter Members, who joined after the initial founding of PERC, pay $55 per ton. And private, commercial corporations pay a measly $35 per ton. Whose interests has the MRC been looking out for all these years? Why is the MRC trying to rush this project through the DEP? Who is the MRC really working for? Something stinks in Denmark, and it is more than just trash.

Eric A. Tuttle
Guilford

Depot supporters are the best

To the Editor:
    Third annual Save the Depot celebration was a huge success as a fundraiser and as a fun time. We wish to thank those who contributed to this “Saving the Depot” effort.
    The exhibitors were artists Milt Christianson, Bill Crosby and Durward Fernald; Bob Roberts, retired CPR worker; members of the HJ Crosby Community Band; Matt Sawyer, Moosehead Historical Society; and Paul Smith, Operation Life Saver. We also appreciate the generous local businesses who supported this year’s event.
    Special thanks to the CMQR Ballast train crew and the many volunteers for their time and energy.

Greenville Junction Depot Friends Board

Busy as a beaver?

To the Editor:
    The beaver holds great significance in the lore of the Torbett family. No animal has had more impact and remains more spoken of, with a wry grin, in the dwellings of Grandpa Torbett’s descendants, for it was the beavers that started the war. Yes, the great beaver war of Lisbon, Connecticut.
    It was not a war that caused much of a stir for the rest of Lisbon, other than when officers arrived to inform my grandfather, while trying to suppress their laughter, that he could not fire his shotgun at the taunting rodents within the city limits. Still, it was the beavers that fired the first volley. It was a small, but very personal war between Grandpa and a band of marauding beavers, which had crept up from the marsh behind the house to invade Grandpa’s gardens.
    Yes, the garden was the battlefield. The beavers had dammed the slow moving bog, and the marshy waters had begun to encroach upon the fertile bank where Grandpa had his garden. The beavers also developed a taste for cultivated vegetables and they wreaked havoc on everything in their path as they searched for their preferred leafy delectable.
    Since local authorities had quickly eliminated firearms and, due to some intuitive premonition, had firmly excluded the use of explosives, Grandpa entered this battleground disadvantaged and outnumbered. His first foray was to rip holes in their dam in hopes of lowering the water level away from his garden and somehow encouraging the beavers to move into a more accepting neighborhood. His several attempts at this merely triggered the sense of industry within the little furry bundles of indomitability. He also succeeded in angering them. They retaliated.
    Grandpa soon began to see pieces of his woodpile appearing in the beaver dam to stop up the breaches. The beavers had not only invaded his garden by the marsh, but had now crossed the brook and invaded his home. This was intolerable! It was now open war!
    For months, Grandpa’s daily war with the beavers waged on (the family staunchly contends to this day that Grandpa enjoyed every minute of it), with no visible result save the precipitous depletion of Grandpa’s wood stores.
    But the beavers got too greedy and sealed their own doom. One late night, the flat-tailed, aquatic bandits made off with a recently purchased 4×8 sheet of half-inch plywood. Grandpa awoke the next morning to see it stuffed defiantly in their dam, blocking the latest Grandpa-induced breach, and mocking him in the glare of the morning sunrise.
    This was the last straw, or sheet. They had crossed the line. Grandpa succumbed to reality, and the advice of children and grandchildren, and called the game wardens to live-trap the beavers and move them to a more hospitable location. (I would suspect that some of you are thinking they moved them in right next door to you.)
    Sadly, we see this humorous, but true story played out here in the politics of Maine. The policies of our governor have begun to tear breaches in the dam of the river of revenue built by zealous Democrats over some 40 years.
    The flow of prosperity and industry has slowly started to move again and the stagnate waters of government bureaucracy have begun to recede away from the gardens, which contain the fruits of the labors of the people of Maine.
    Mike Michaud is determined to stop this and bring us back to the days when he and his master, John Martin, were taking from the hard earned wages of Mainers, chasing business from the borders of our fair State, and stealing the benefits from senior citizens in order to shore up the dam he and fellow Democrats had built to fill the tax-marsh of wages for big government.
    Not content even to raid our gardens filled with the fruit of our labor; our income, Michaud has crossed the brook into our homes and raided veterans’ benefits, senior citizen funding, and the very basic traditions that we pass down from generation to generation in our families.
    While the beaver is an amazing creature of industry that sometimes comes in conflict with another amazing creature of industry, humans, the corrupt politician, such as Mike Michaud, that wants your garden of finance and the stores of your homes, is nothing more than a shadowy enemy of the people of Maine.

Andy Torbett
Atkinson

Tourney important to Jimmy Fund

To the Editor:
    Jimmy Fund Golf extends its sincerest thanks to the organizers and sponsors of the Bobbie Jo’s Friends Playing for Her Only Wishes held on August 9, 2014 at Foxcroft Golf Club in Dover-Foxcroft. Special recognition and appreciation goes to Timothy Richardson of Sangerville and the committee who organized the seventh annual event.
    The dedicated sponsors, participants, and volunteers helped raise critical funds to support life-saving research and care at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The Bobbie Jo’s Friends Playing for Her Only Wishes is one of the many golf tournaments that will be held in 2014 to raise funds for the Jimmy Fund and Dana-Farber.
    Jimmy Fund Golf is the oldest and largest charity golf program in the country. Now in its 32nd year, Jimmy Fund Golf has raised more than $97 million to support adult and pediatric cancer care and research at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and will surpass the $100 million fundraising mark in 2014. From 18-hole golf tournaments to mini golf events and day-long golf marathons, golfers of all ages and skill levels can conquer cancer through Jimmy Fund Golf.
    To learn more, visit www.jimmyfundgolf.org.

Nancy Rowe, director
Jimmy Fund Golf