ORONO, Maine — Three residents expressed concerns about allowing mineral extraction near their homes on Maxfield Drive during a public hearing Monday regarding amendments to land use regulations affecting the low-density residential district.
“We are very concerned,” said Meg Fergusson, a resident of Maxfield Drive, which is located about a mile west of the junction of Forest and Stillwater avenues.
Fergusson said she was the first person to build a house on Maxfield Drive and in the last 14 years several families have moved in.
“There are now 15 houses and 26 children,” she said, expressing worry about a rock quarry coming to her neighborhood. She was the first of three people who live on Maxfield Drive to make similar statements.
The low-density residential district, created in 2009, consists of about 1,500 acres west of Interstate 95 that has a mixture of residential, open space and rural uses, said Town Planner Evan Richert.
He explained that the Comprehensive Plan Committee has spent a considerable amount of time reviewing the district and decided it should continue as a “hybrid zone” that allows a variety of different uses.
“Mineral extraction is a legacy use in that area,” Richert said, adding that “standards to protect citizens” are already in place. There are currently no quarries in the district and none are planned.
The amendments also would allow newer mobile homes, which are now banned.
Mobile and modular homes are built to such high standards today that “the committee couldn’t find a reason for that ban,” the town planner said.
The proposed amendments will go before the council for a full vote at an upcoming meeting.
During the meeting, the board appointed Leo Kenney to the Regional School Union 26 board to fill the seat left vacant by Shari Kinnison, who resigned from the school board on Jan. 19 and has one year remaining on her term.
The panel also hired Black Bear Lawn Care of Bangor to mow the cemeteries in town for $24,680, and authorized using $5,000 for the Old Town-Orono Fiber Corp.