LINCOLN, Maine — The recent discovery of vernal pools near Lincoln Regional Airport threatens the town’s ability to develop its only industrial zone outside of a local paper mill’s campus, officials said Tuesday.
Ted Ocana of Foresight Engineering was examining wetlands near the airport two weeks ago when he made the discovery, said Ruth Birtz, the town’s economic development coordinator. Ocana was preparing to design a road from the airport to the seaplane dock in the Penobscot River for construction this summer.
He said he saw immediately that the road would have to be relocated.
“This whole place is just flooded with standing pools [of water] everywhere. The habitat is huge. It is as far as the eye can see,” Ocana said Tuesday. “The stuff I saw was pretty much un-permittable.”
Protected against development by state law, significant vernal pools are shallow depressions that usually contain water for part of the year. They feature varieties of wild ferns, shrubs and floating or submerged plant-life, and are home to a variety of frogs, salamanders and fairy shrimp, plus large batches of eggs laid by those creatures, according to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection’s website.
The pools sit on an approximately 60-acre site between River Road and the airport that town officials have hoped to convert into an industrial park, Birtz said. The site has been a key element of the town’s master plan for development since 1988.
Given its proximity to the airport and Interstate 95’s Exit 227, town officials have hoped to develop the park with three-phase electricity and water and sewer utilities to eventually draw light-industrial manufacturing facilities, businesses that typically deliver well-paying jobs, to the proposed park and River Road itself.
The plan builds on several small aviation-based companies around the airport, which is off West Broadway and River Road, and expected nationwide increases in local airport usage. The town has purchased a pilot’s lounge building, a hangar and a campground near the airport in recent years as part of the development plan.
Birtz and Ocana suspect that the vernal pools are, effectively, man-made; the result of River Road and the airport being built at elevations that helped facilitate runoff and wildlife growth in the shallow areas between them, Birtz said.
“We knew the wetlands were there,” Birtz said, “but we didn’t believe them to be high-value.”
Ocana’s discovery has town officials searching for ways the land might still be usable, said Town Manager Ronald Weatherbee, who will discuss the issue with the Town Council at its May 11 meeting.
“We are looking at all of our options right now,” Weatherbee said Tuesday.
“Hopefully the density [of the vernal pools] will not be extreme,” Birtz said.
Maine DEP officials might allow the town to develop the land if the vernal pools are deemed insignificant, Birtz said. The town is paying students from the School of Forestry at the University of Maine about $1,050 to determine the environmental significance of the vernal pools.
As part of that study, the students will deploy sensors via airplane on Wednesday. Their report is due on May 6, Birtz said.