Maine needs seasonal workers
As an operations manager for a seasonal campground, I am disturbed by the lack of interest in the work force. J-1 and H-2B workers are not coming, either.
State unemployment regulations are ruining the seasonal workforce. Badgering and forcing these workers to look for full-time employment in order to get benefits is not the answer. Most seasonal workers have a call back date, that should be good enough for the state. This policy is ruining the tourism industry, and it needs to be changed.
People will not come if they cannot be serviced. If we do not do something now, there will be no vacationland.
Susan Lara
Eastport
LePage misleads on education surtax
Either Gov. Paul LePage does not understand how Maine’s income tax system works or he is deliberately attempting to mislead, also know as lying to, the people of Maine on the subject of the education surtax on annual income over $200,000. Both options are unacceptable from an elected official.
Martin O’Connell
Bangor
Ban metal mining in Maine
Samantha Paradis warns in her April 24, BDN OpEd that mining at Bald Mountain would devastate the Allagash Wilderness Waterway. But it’s not just there that mining could destroy Maine’s waters and all they support.
There are a number of significant metal deposits in eastern, coastal, central and northern Maine, any of which would likely result in disaster if mined. Big Hill in Pembroke has seen mining exploration and speculation as recently as 2007.
Touted as potentially the deepest open pit mine in the world, Big Hill, like Bald Mountain, would be a large-scale, low-grade mine, meaning that the amount of waste would be truly enormous and extremely acidic. Located near feeder streams for Cobscook Bay and within the watershed of Boyden Lake (Eastport’s water supply) as well as within five miles of Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge, the state-protected Dennys River Corridor, a salmon habitat, and other important conservation properties, a mine at Big Hill could end up destroying one of Maine’s most productive ecosystems and commercial fisheries.
Mining is the ultimate boom-and-bust industry. Whatever the promises made, mines often close precipitously when world metal prices fall, leaving the state and communities holding the bag. Mainers are still paying for the Callahan Mine cleanup in Brooksville. The mine closed in 1972, with cleanup nowhere near complete. We can’t afford another such site.
Surely, it’s time to ban metal mining in Maine once and for all.
Alan Brooks
Lubec
No peace with greed and power
Is President Donald Trump and his coterie in the White House unaware of the catastrophic direction in which they are moving this country? Have they ever really thought about the devastation of nuclear warfare? Can they conceive of what would happen should missiles be launched — from anywhere by anyone — if he continues with his aggression toward North Korea?
We have, in the world at large, an arsenal of explosives capable of laying civilization to waste — from crowded cities to distant mountainsides, vast plains and dense forests. Mankind has worked, studied, labored, learned, invented, adapted, researched, studied and experimented to accumulate such remarkable knowledge, remarkable equipment, incredible medical technology and mechanical acuity, amazing communication skills and means of transportation, including in outer space.
Will all of this be blown away? Does this White House mean to sink the world in a morass of greed and self aggrandizement?
We are one world. We are the human race. We have been endowed with brains, sensitivity, imagination, adaptability, compassion and love. We speak multiple languages, which all have the same humanistic vocabulary, and with a little effort it is easy to understand one another, but we will never reach that lovely commonality if peace and love are sacrificed to greed and power
“Power” is a word that should only be applied to energy.
Please, stop and listen. Humanity needs the freedom and safety to love itself and one another.
Dorothy B. Hayes
Brooklin