CARIBOU, Maine — A meteorologist at the National Weather Service in town said he could not discuss the matter, but local residents had no problem complaining that the regional Environmental Protection Agency went “overboard” when it came to Saturday’s balloon release.
“The EPA didn’t allow the National Weather Service to participate and it put a damper on the event,” said resident Twyla Learnard, one of around 100 who participated in the balloon release.
Irma Anderson of New Sweden helped organize Saturday’s event at the Maine Veterans Cemetery in Caribou and asked others to join her in sending holiday letters written to loved ones who have passed heavenward by balloon at around 11 a.m.
Originally, Caribou’s National Weather Service office was scheduled to donate the use of a weather balloon and the letters would have been attached to it.
“When we got there we learned they were not able to participate, but the event went on,” said Learnard, who released a balloon with a couple letters attached to loved ones she misses. Around 20 others did the same, she said.
“This is the EPA going overboard,” said John Cook, a neighbor of Learnard. “I called the EPA and left a message stating my displeasure.”
For Anderson, who learned that the weather service would be pulling out of the event on Friday, the decision did not change the gathering.
“This is such an honor for not just my Dad, but for all the military, past and present, who served our country and made us free today,” Anderson said at the event. “When I shared my letter with a friend, he said, ‘Why not share this with everyone?’ and this is what happened.”
Her brother, Lincoln Jandreau, from Fort Kent arrived with his own letter and brought another sent from their sister, Angel Caron, who lives in Florida.
“I never thought it could be this beautiful,” Anderson said by phone later in the day.
She was also given a flag and certificate from U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin’s representative Kim Rohn, thanking Anderson for her dedication to the memory of her father and other veterans from Aroostook County.
Anderson came up with the idea after keeping a letter for 72 years that was written by her father, who was in the Army serving overseas, that said he was sad he wouldn’t be home for her first Christmas. Anderson’s dad died in 1986, and she wanted to send him a letter in heaven.
Participants were encouraged to place their letters in a zippered plastic bag and attach them to a balloon, which is what upset members of Balloons Blow, a Florida-based conservation group who called a number of local agencies, including the Caribou Police Department and posted comments on the department’s Facebook page.
“Please do not allow the release of balloons with plastic bags tied to ribbon,” Sandra Blanco-Halvorsen posted at around 1 a.m. Saturday. “They will blow out to the oceans, wildlife will get entangled in the ribbons and they will mistake the balloons and plastic bags for edible jellyfish. What goes up, must come down — they will NOT reach the heavens or those we’ve lost. Littering and endangering wildlife is no way to remember our honored veterans. Just imagine your balloon and letter in its plastic baggy wrapped around the neck of some poor bird. Blow bubbles, not balloons. Write and share notes to loved ones on social media so that others can read them and know the fallen soldier that you grieve for.”
The meteorologist working in Caribou on Saturday referred all questions about the National Weather Service withdrawing from the balloon release to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration spokesperson in Maryland, who did not return messages left Saturday. Other messages left for EPA officials also went unreturned.
The mid-Atlantic region for the Environmental Protection Agency posted an item on its website stating balloon releases cause marine trash and marine animals can become caught and some animals, including endangered sea turtles, mistakenly eat the balloons thinking they are jellyfish.
Aroostook Republican & News reporter Chris Bouchard contributed to this story.