AUGUSTA, Maine — A near equal number of supporters and opponents spoke during a four-and-a-half-hour public hearing Wednesday on a bill to change the state’s mining laws.
Rep. John Martin, D-Eagle Lake, said he was prompted to introduce the bill by the increasing price of minerals and the potential for mining gold, silver, copper and zinc on Bald Mountain in Aroostook County.
Many testifying Wednesday, however, said that the bill was submitted too late and without enough study behind it, and they cautioned members of the Legislature’s Environment and Natural Resources Committee to do a lot more studying before they vote on the bill.
Martin submitted LD 1853, An Act To Improve Environmental Oversight and Streamline Permitting for Mining in Maine, late last week. The measure seeks to update Maine’s mining extraction laws and its co-sponsors include Sen. Roger Sherman, R-Houlton, and Sen. Troy Jackson, D-Allagash.
Martin said the bill would create sensible, environmentally sound mining regulations that would encourage responsible mining activities and that the state Department of Environmental Protection would be responsible for permitting and regulating such operations.
The measure was introduced specifically with Bald Mountain — located in Township 12 Range 8, northwest of Ashland and Portage — in mind, he said.
Martin told committee members Wednesday that the land is owned by J.D. Irving Limited and Prentiss and Carlisle, a company that provides forest resource management and timberland services.
Martin said that officials with Irving came to him with a proposal to reopen the mine and get a partner to explore it. He said that he was pressing forward with the bill so quickly because of the economy in Aroostook County.
According to Martin, recent reports indicate that mining development at Bald Mountain could create up to 300 direct, well-paying jobs and hundreds of indirect jobs. There also would be an excise tax on the minerals there, so the result would be more than $600 million in employment income and more than $120 million in state and local taxes.
Martin said he kept the environment in mind when drafting the bill so that streams, lakes, natural habitats and other resources around Bald Mountain would not be harmed.
The state’s mining laws and rules were updated in 1991 as a result of potential mineral deposits discovered at Bald Mountain.
Ben Townsend, an attorney in Augusta, has a degree in geology and worked at Bald Mountain when he was just out of college. He told the panel Wednesday that officials believed at the time there was $1 million worth of copper in the mountain. Townsend said he was against the bill because it was drafted in haste without the degree of study on environmental impact that was necessary.
“Give this significant review and don’t rush this for a single project,” he said.
Ivy Frignoca of the Conservation Law Foundation in Portland agreed. She said that her organization hadn’t had time to review the bill or prepare comment.
“This is something that should not be done in haste,” she said.
Nick Bennett, staff scientist and watersheds project director at the Natural Resources Council of Maine, also opposed it. He was concerned about risks to water and groundwater and also about zoning aspects.
Many of those in support of the bill were Aroostook County businesspeople, including Theresa Fowler, director of the Central Aroostook Chamber of Commerce.
She said that her organization supported the bill because it would lead to job creation, something the County badly needs. She also said that more jobs meant more people settling in The County, which has seen a massive population drop in the past 40 years.
Alain Ouellette, planning and development director for the Northern Maine Development Corp. in Caribou, also spoke in favor of the bill because it would lead to job creation.
Committee members requested a significant amount of material from the Department of Environmental Protection and other entities before they hold a work session on the bill sometime next week.
1st off I want to make this real clear. I don’t know squat about mining. But I do know, and have lived thru, the sudden ‘rush to judgement’ when it comes to seeing a ‘suddenly appearing’ and supposedly ‘desperatley needed’ piece of legislation inserted into a legislative calendar just before the Legislature has to make a decision. Who’s kidding who ? I am all for the jobs being created, both direct and the indirect one’s. But if this mining is to provide any number of both stable long-term jobs and a long term and stable source of mineral tax revenue then it only makes sense to do it right the 1st time and not rush it. A sudden rush tells me that there’s a lot more than meets the eye here.
And not to be a sudden P-I-T-A but if there was ever a case to be made for LURC involvement, well, this is it. What would be nice to see, for everyone’s benefit, would be both side’s coming together, with the State taking a lead role, by providing an open forum for everyone to put there 2 cent’s in and come up with a plan that everyone can agree to and not turn it into a sudden ‘Just say NO’ temper tantrum. The more complete a plan is developed, the more everyone stand’s to benefit. I just hope that DECD does the same due dilligence here that they did with Kestrel. Maine can not afford another ‘moose with a football’ fiasco. And as a sidenote to all of this, this whole opportunity also provides a way where local knowledge can be used to influence the LURC and the DECD by providing that knowledge, and input to them, from the folk’s who are going to be directly affected.
The same old laundry list of enviroterrorist organizations lined up to study this proposal to death.
Just like EVERY other proposal that would have, or will put food on the tables of the good people of rural Maine.
They will not be happy until every person is forced to leave THEIR wilderness so that THEIR primitive preserve can be completed.
Because there’s no such thing as a poorly thought out proposal. I think most reasonable people have learned to ignore your rants by now.
Apparently not there, dingus.
If the price for the product is high enough to do the mining correctly then they should go for it.
We don’t want any more of Paul Lepage’s $17 million dollar toxic waste dumps like the Dolby landfill that have to be paid for by the Tax payers.
Martin claiming to streamline something??? hahaha,,, Make it impossible maybe.
“Martin said he kept the environment in mind when drafting the bill so
that streams, lakes, natural habitats and other resources around Bald
Mountain would not be harmed.”
This is a ridiculous statement. All mining causes harm to natural resources.
So does all the homes,malls and parking lots being built in populated areas.Oh,and smog!
Southerners complaining Aroostook County takes from their money to pay for social programs.Now that Aroostook County may have a solution to help their own,southerners say no.I am confused!
Hey, southern Maine liberals want your landscape but don’t want you to earn a living. Get with the program bud.
My mistake..
Martin has always been ahead of the Maine population learning curve.
Wasn’t he the Democratic moonbat who made voter fraud fashionable before the FBI and Diebold?
After all if ” slick Martin” says it is so it must be true.
In the words of the Deliverance Movie extras who live up in the county, you know who I am talking about, the ones who play banjo and have unique facial characteristics, these are the people who need to put a roof over their head, food on the table and in-breed regardless of whether the groundwater table gets polluted from the mining tailings or the natural landscape of Bald Mountain is turned into a moonscape.
A couple years back I had a chance to meet county republican Mitch Lansky who turns out to be the author of the book BEYOND THE BEAUTY STRIP which looks at the destructive clear cutting practices of Irving Corporations in Maine, you know the people who fund John Martin’s re-election
campaign.
read his book here http://www.meepi.org/lif/reviews.htm.
Ben Townsend is not an environmentalist per se. He is a rational, intelligent and experienced person regarding the subject at hand. I encourage those who know nothing about the subject to support Ben Townsend’s views – which is a study before we allow more lax mining laws. Take a ride to Butte, Montana if you wish to see how devastating uncontrolled mining can be. The mess that mining left in Blue Hill, Maine is a local example.
So that you and Ben can continue to try to keep the rural parts of the state for your l;ittle playground?
I don’t think so, Bill.
And besides that, you’re twenty years behind the technology.
Please try to keep up.
If there is gold in Aroostock most is in Martins Bank Account.
After they dig up all the gold Anguish king can put a windmill on it.
Take heed, my friends. John “Ballotgate” Martin is murkier than a mine.
Although there is is room for improvement, and Maine should really consider creating a proper separate Mining and Natural Resource Extraction Board funded entirely by user fees ( as most other states do), I have to congratulate LURC in having in place already a workable process for any owner that wants to convert from an existing use to another and LURC has reasonably good regulations on mining.
Basically, as I understand the existing regs after a quick first read, mining and water extraction are not allowed in the Unorganized Territories except under a Planned Development, a sort of pre permit -application process intended to encourage adequate buffers, sound planning, and public review. ( Plum Cree, I think was a version of this although not a good example of how this tool can and should be used.)
This legislative initiave was prompted by the expressed interest of J.D. Irvine, an unimaginably huge Canadia Corporation in opening gold and other metallics mining at Bald Mountain, which they own , in Arrostook County ( T12 R8 WESL) . Gold has been confirmed there and at high and rising global prices it may now be profitable to consider extraction at Bald Mountain.
The entire New Brunswick Border , WESL ( West of the Eastern State Line) is under unimaginable pressure for this kind of conversion. The Tomah LLC Passamaquoddy spring water project suggests the posisbility that there is not just spring water but possibly carbonated mineral water all throuh the area; The shale gas permits and well results either side of Maine’s borders suggest that may extend into Maine on both sides.
Are we strong enough with our existing set up to handle these pressures from huge huge international corporations responsibly and also provide adequately for oversight of any operations that may be approvaeable?
No.
We need to get ready, now.
And we need a user fee funded Mining & Natural Resurces Extraction Board.