DOWN TO EARTH...

North Woods abuzz over land deal
By JOHN RICHARDSON

There seems to be a big thaw taking place in northern Maine.

Oh, the air is still plenty nippy north of Bangor. It's the chilly relationship between the warring parties of the North Woods that's warming up.

In fact, an announcement issued last weekend about a creative land deal near Millinocket sounds like an honest-to-goodness breakthrough in the biblical struggle between recreation, commerce and wilderness preservation in the region.

First, Millinocket Town Manager Eugene Conlogue gives credit to Roxanne Quimby, northern Maine's most notorious preservationist. And Quimby says kind things about Conlogue and the negotiators who represented snowmobilers and hunters, many of whom drive around with "Ban Roxanne" bumper stickers on their cars and pickups.

"They were very nice people," Quimby said this week. "We saw, especially after the first couple meetings, that we had a lot in common."

What they essentially agreed on is that the North Woods are big enough for conservation, recreation and wood production, and that they have to stop fighting over those priorities before the land gets sold and divided so that none of them can happen.

"When a township changes hands four or five times in the last few years, after it hadn't changed hands more than once or twice in the last hundred years, it creates this unpredictable atmosphere," Quimby said. "Change creates strange partnerships."

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=153579&ac=PHnws

The clean car law that almost was
By JOHN RICHARDSON

It was nearly three years ago when Adam Lee defied the auto industry and went to Augusta to urge lawmakers to require less polluting cars and trucks be sold in Maine.

The president of Lee Auto Malls has since become a vocal advocate for Maine's clean car law, which became a centerpiece of the state's efforts to slow global warming. The new standards, which would have made cars 30 percent cleaner and more fuel efficient by 2016, were scheduled to be phased in starting with the 2009 models.

Were. The Bush administration slammed the brakes on that plan this week by announcing it will not grant a legal waiver allowing California, Maine and at least 15 other states to clean the air and cool the planet by regulating the car industry.

"This negates the whole thing," Lee said Friday. "We can have a law on the books. We just can't do anything with that. We're back to square one on emissions."

The announcement deflated activists and frustrated governors from Augusta to Sacramento. Here's the way many critics saw the decision:

After routinely granting more than 50 clean air waiver requests from California over the years, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sat on this one for two years. Then, just before the California standards were about to be implemented in states representing nearly half of the U.S. auto market, the Bush administration cut a deal with the auto industry to accept a more gradual fuel efficiency increase in the new energy bill in return for the EPA's best effort to hold the states at bay.

The administration denied political deal-making on the issue. It said the federal government should coordinate the response to global warming, even if it's not as aggressive as Maine and the other states want.

"The Bush administration is moving forward with a clear national solution, not a confusing patchwork of state rules," EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson said.

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=157231&ac=PHnws

Monday's answer is blowing in the wind
By JOHN RICHARDSON
Portland Press Herald

Maine's love-hate relationship with wind power will face a big test Monday. Actually, a couple of them.

Two wind farm proposals could face up-or-down votes by the Maine Land Use Regulation Commission, the zoning board for northern Maine.

All bets are off about whether the projects are in for a warm hug or a cold shoulder.

Both projects would be in the hills of Franklin County, and together they would double Maine's wind power capacity.

The Kibby Mountain project, with 44 turbines, would become New England's largest wind farm.

While smaller, the Black Nubble wind farm may get a cooler reception. Black Nubble includes just 18 turbines, but in a relatively remote, mountainous area near enough to the Appalachian Trail to draw passionate opposition from those who are protective of the 2,175-mile walking path.

Black Nubble also has a history with the commission that could make things awkward. It was originally part of the Redington Mountain project, which effectively got rejected by the commissioners last year. The developers salvaged the plan by scaling it back and asking for another chance.

What makes the outcome of Monday's meeting especially hard to predict is that, unlike with other projects, the commission's staff is making no recommendations to approve or reject the plans. The appointees who serve on the commission decided to go without the advice of staff members after opponents of the Black Nubble project accused the staffers of bias.

"I'm assuming they're going to decide something. What? I just don't know," said Catherine Carroll, the commission's executive director.

The developers of the two projects probably won't be the only ones holding their breath.

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=161820&ac=PHnws

Idea to use fewer plastic grocery bags gets recycled
By JOHN RICHARDSON
Portland Press Herald

When it comes to plastics, what goes around sure does come around.

Not only does the stuff tend to live on long after we have any use for it, but we also like to drag it out and punch it around every now and again.

Consider the assault on plastic grocery bags that's become a cause for environmentalists in Maine and around the world.

The bag backlash made news this week when Whole Foods Market announced that its stores will be plastic bag-free by Earth Day, April 22.

A Maine lawmaker and the Maine Grocers Association, meanwhile, are pushing the use of reusable bags as a way to keep plastic ones out of circulation.

It might sound familiar. Way back in 1989, Maine's Legislature adopted a law requiring all stores in the state to use paper bags instead of plastic ones, unless a customer specifically asked for plastic.

The reasons were similar to those driving the plastic bag backlash today.

The bags littered communities and the ocean, choking sea turtles and other wildlife that mistook them for tasty jellyfish. Now, of course, the bags also are maligned for consuming valuable oil and contributing to global warming.

Plastics, in general, were just as much a political punching bag in the late 1980s and early 1990s as they are now.

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=165105&ac=PHnws

High price of gas has a sunny side: Innovation
By JOHN RICHARDSON
Portland Press Herald

Bill Drinkwater spends a lot of time in the basement tinkering with his latest creation, a three-wheeled car that may soon carry him to town at 40 mph.

But this is not your typical 62-year-old tinkerer, and his electric-powered car is more than a retirement hobby.

Drinkwater, who lives in Belmont, is one of a loose network of Mainers who see hard times ahead and are using their Yankee ingenuity to prepare. The way we travel will change dramatically, he says, as global warming and tightening oil supplies make our current way of life too expensive.

"Things seem to be collapsing pretty quickly," he said.

Drinkwater grew up in Camden, but left Maine for about 20 years to experience a series of adventures, including a stint in the Army.

He hitchhiked through Central America and spent a summer "roaming around the wilderness" above the Arctic circle in Alaska. He also spent years panning for gold in northern California.

"I scratched out a living ... but the adventure was fantastic," he said.

Drinkwater returned to Maine after injuring his back looking for gold. He spent time in a wheelchair, and still uses crutches 18 years later.

Last year, Drinkwater saw a documentary about life in Cuba after the fall of the Soviet Union. He saw the way Cubans had to adapt to a massive disruption in oil and food supplies as a lesson, and a warning, for the rest of the world.

Drinkwater went to work on his car.

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=166697&ac=PHnws

Environmental victories make a winner out of Ed Muskie
By JOHN RICHARDSON
Portland Press Herald

It was a big week for Maine's air and water, and for Edmund Muskie.

The late governor, senator and statesman from Rumford was the driving force behind the federal Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act in the early 1970s. And nearly 40 years later, both laws are still cleaning up his home state's rivers, lakes, coastal waters and air.

On Monday, the Portland City Council voted to spend $61 million to speed up efforts to keep millions of gallons of untreated sewage from spilling into Casco Bay every time it rains.

It will mean a 21 percent increase in sewer rates. It also will mean cleaner water for swimmers and sea life, and relief for clam flats that have been contaminated since Muskie was elected governor in 1954.

Muskie knew all about the damage from sewage along the coast. His Clean Water Act required that Portland and other cities around the country stop using rivers and bays as open sewers. Portland built its first treatment plant in the 1970s, but that didn't solve the problem entirely.

Because old sewers were built to also collect storm water, treatment plants get overwhelmed when it rains, and the storm water and sewage spill from overflow valves.

Now, the Clean Water Act is forcing Portland and other communities to eliminate the overflows, usually by separating storm drains from sewers. The threat of penalties under the law clearly helped persuade Portland to step up the pace this week.

Chalk one up for Muskie.

On Thursday, Maine's Board of Environmental Protection approved a new cleanup plan for the Androscoggin River.

This one would have been especially meaningful for Muskie, whose national campaign for clean water was inspired by his upbringing near the Androscoggin, then one of the dirtiest rivers in the country.

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=168361&ac=PHnws

Wolves may be at our door
By JOHN RICHARDSON
Portland Press Herald

Wolves are well-known for their ability to travel hundreds of miles from home.

But getting from eastern Canada to western Massachusetts would be no small feat. An Eastern wolf would have to cross the St. Lawrence River and survive a gantlet of traps and snares north of the U.S. border before passing through Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. Or at least that's one theory.

The confirmation this week that an 85-pound male canid shot last fall on a Massachusetts farm was a wild Eastern gray wolf is seen by some as further proof of an alternative theory. Wolves may already be living and breeding in New England, perhaps in northern Maine.

The wolf in Sherburne, Mass., was killed after it mauled 13 lambs and sheep. State wildlife officials gave the farmer a green light to shoot after deciding it couldn't be a wolf, a federally protected species.

There had not been a wolf in Massachusetts in 160 years, but as many as six others have been killed in Maine, Vermont and New York in the past 15 years, said John Glowa, a founder of the Maine Wolf Coalition.

"How many more wolves have to be killed before the state and federal governments get serious about this and protect them?" Glowa said.

The coalition filed a petition last year calling for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to increase protections and spend more time looking for wolves instead of downplaying the possibility that they're here.

"It was not an anomaly. It's part of a clear pattern," he said. "It's likely there's a population here and they're breeding. That's my opinion We've got too many dead animals."

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=174342&ac=PHnws

Woman's idea may bring recycling to doorstep of city apartment buildings
By JOHN RICHARDSON
Portland Press Herald

For most Portland residents, recycling couldn't get much easier.

Just throw paper, plastic and metal into a single bin and haul it to the curb once a week.

But there are plenty of city residents – those living in large commercial apartment buildings – who want to recycle, and simply can't.

"It all goes into the garbage," said Joan Bullock, who lives at Longfellow Commons on State Street. "It's not easy."

But where there is a will – and a frustrated, creative person like Bullock – there is a way. And the solution she came up with is getting lots of praise as a way to finally make recycling possible for a sizable segment of the city.

"It's always that one single-minded individual who can take an idea and bring it to fruition," said Kym Dakin, who works for the Portland Time Bank. Now, Dakin said, "We're going to see how many other places can replicate it."

The city does not collect recyclable items from apartment buildings with more than 20 units. Those buildings are considered commercial businesses and hire their own trash haulers. Residents are typically left to haul recyclables to collection centers, or throw them away.

The problem is that many residents of these buildings are seniors or disabled, or both, and have minimal incomes. Most don't have cars, let alone any place to store cans and old newspapers, Bullock said.

Bullock discovered all this last year after she toured the new single-sort recycling center in Portland. It includes a massive Willy Wonka-like machine that separates glass, paper and different varieties of plastic and makes the chore simpler than ever for residents, especially those with curbside collection.

"I thought, 'Wow, this isn't too hard to do,' " she said. "And then I found out it was."

She soon formed a plan.

Bullock and about a dozen other tenants who wanted to recycle formed a group called "Tenants Go Green" and joined the Portland Time Bank, a nonprofit organization that matches people who need help with those who can give it.

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=177074&ac=PHnws

Earth Day at age 38: From protest to action
By JOHN RICHARDSON
Portland Press Herald

Earth Day turns 38 years old Tuesday.

And, as with wine and people, the years have added a certain subtlety and depth that was missing in the early days.

The first Earth Day in 1970 was a historic event, an outpouring of frustration and a call to action that helped change the way Americans and people around the world view their environment. Some 20 million people participated in what was largely a college-campus-driven protest against belching smokestacks, chemical discharges and toxic dumps that left air thick with smog, poisoned wildlife and turned rivers into fire hazards.

Soon after, President Nixon created the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and Congress, led by Maine Sen. Edmund S. Muskie, passed the laws that still protect our air and water. As a result, our environment is cleaner and the most glaring threats are controlled.

Earth Day 2008 is also expected to be a pretty big deal, with perhaps a record number of participants worldwide who will focus on a new generation of stealth environmental threats, led by climate change, that tend to happen in slow motion and invisibly.

Now, more often than not, the enemy is us: our cars, our poorly insulated homes, our over-fertilized and over-watered lawns, the old medicines we flush down the toilet and the disposable packaging and products we buy.

As our perspective has changed, so has Earth Day. As EPA's New England Administrator Robert Varney put it, the event has matured from a day of protest into a day of action.

That's not to say the revolution's over. There is still a rabble-rousing side of Earth Day that's all about pushing for change and demanding more aggressive action from political leaders and government agencies -- including Varney's, by the way.

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=182433&ac=PHnws

Gas prices fuel Yankee ingenuity
By JOHN RICHARDSON
Portland Press Herald

Commute Another Way Week starts Monday.

People who give their cars a rest and bike, walk or ride the bus to work will once again be rewarded with free T-shirts and prizes.

But Matt Sargent and his friends couldn't wait for the prizes. Not with gas prices shooting up 71 cents per gallon in the past year -- 37 cents in the past month alone.

"I was spending $120 a week" just driving to and from work, Sargent said.

So Sargent and two buddies did what a lot of Mainers may finally be ready to do, now that a gallon of gas costs $3.70. They changed their driving habits.

Sargent, Tim Reynolds and Kevin Mabry all live in the Lewiston-Auburn region and work in Portland renovating a downtown office building.

As gas prices rose last winter, Reynolds and Mabry started sharing rides in Mabry's pickup. But none of the guys had a vehicle that got better than 20 miles per gallon, or had enough seats to carry all three of them.

Sargent decided he'd had enough about a month ago and paid $1,000 for a 1993 Saturn with 187,000 miles. The three men have been car pooling daily in the 30-mpg car. Sargent pays for maintenance on the car while Reynolds and Mabry split the cost of gas -- each spending about $25 a week.

"Imagine all the combined money we were spending," Sargent said. Not to mention all the gasoline they were burning.

Mainers drive more miles than the average American -- usually alone -- and we have less-efficient vehicles. Not only has that left us especially exposed to the price spikes, it has made our cars and trucks the state's No. 1 contributor to global warming.

Those are the reasons behind the annual Commute Another Way event, and why it expanded from one day to five last year.

Each day next week has a special theme. Tuesday, for example, is "Transit Tuesday" and bus services around the region are offering free rides. (For more information, go to www.gomaine.org/cawday.)

The desire to save the earth is still fueling interest, said Carey Kish, coordinator of Commute Another Way Week and program manager of the nonprofit GoMaine program. But it's clear that gasoline prices are having a big effect this year.

As of Friday afternoon, about 6,400 Mainers pledged to leave their cars at home at least one day next week, well above the 5,000 registrations received in an average year, he said.

"We're getting registrations from far and wide, more so than ever," Kish said.

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/story.php?id=186719&ac=PHnws