TOWNSHIP 4, RANGE 8, Maine — A part-owner of land near Baxter State Park asked a civil court Friday to halt the state from harvesting trees from the parcel, citing a state analysis that called the land’s features “essential” to the preservation of endangered Atlantic salmon.
Atkinson resident Charles Fitzgerald’s 12-page request for an injunction would, if approved, immediately stop the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands from building roads or bridges or harvesting trees from the 2,500 acres which he co-owns with the state. It was filed in Penobscot County Superior Court on Friday, said Fitzgerald’s attorney, Bernard J. Kubetz of Bangor.
According to the request, the Maine Department of Environmental Protection classified Wassataquoik Stream, which runs through the land, as Class AA waters — “the highest classification” of environmental value for Maine Rivers.
“Only waters which are outstanding natural resources and which should be preserved because of their ecological, social, scenic or recreational importance are classified Class AA,” the request for injunction states. “The Wassataquoik Stream is one of the cleanest and most pristine watersheds in Maine.”
Bureau spokesman John Bott said Friday that bureau officials cannot comment on pending litigation.
Gov. Paul LePage in February announced that the bureau had started to re-establish access to the land by building roads and restoring a bridge on a different parcel owned by entrepreneur Roxanne Quimby that is east of Baxter State Park. Quimby has hoped to give her land there to the National Park Service as a new national park, a move that the governor, state Legislature, U.S. Rep. Bruce Poliquin, R-Maine, and U.S. Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Angus King, I-Maine, have resisted or opposed.
State Forester Doug Denico said that the state expects to harvest the Wassataquoik Stream parcel that Fitzgerald co-owns later this year or in 2017 for the trees’ economic value, but also to help keep the forests healthy.
The forestry and road-building could prove very harmful to the land, which is referred to as the East Turner Mountain Lot in the injunction request. Twin Pond and water from the East and North Turner mountains drains into the stream and the land. Bureau officials cautioned in their 15-year management plan for the property that special precautions would have to be taken “if timber harvesting were ever considered on the land,” the affidavit with the request states.
Several hundred acres of the property contain “a myriad of tributaries and wetlands associated with Twin Ponds Brook” that show “little history of human disturbance,” bureau officials said in reports. A natural resources inventory conducted by the bureau in 2012 called the 2,500-acre parcel “remarkable for its near-pristine condition and because of it is one of the largest undisturbed examples of its type known from the state.”
“The state’s plans will likely cause an environmental injury that cannot be remedied by money damages,” the affidavit states. “Indeed it is unlikely that the condition of the property could ever be restored if the state is permitted to proceed.”
If granted, the injunction would only temporarily bar the state from logging the land until a petition for partition of the land that Fitzgerald filed on March 7 is resolved.
If the petition is approved, a civil court judge will appoint a three- to five-member committee to assay the Wassataquoik land and first determine what percentage the state and Fitzgerald own. Then the committee will recommend how those percentages should be broken out in acreage and location.
The state has 21 days to respond to Fitzgerald’s injunction request.