Maine Granolas OK With Recycling Plastic

In a post last week, I'd written about the Berkeley, California Ecology Center's critiques of recycling plastic. Those criticisms led the Ecology Center to recommend not recycling plastic at all, rather than give people false assurances that might prompt people to consume more plastic than they need to.

That post prompted some more investigation from reader and local city councilor John Anton, who also happens to be on the board of ecomaine, the uncapitalized regional waste management company here in southern Maine. He sent my post to Kevin Roche, ecomaine's general manager, to ask about where our own plastics end up. Here was Roche's response, in its entirety (emphasis and links are my own):

Hi John -

I've been selling plastic scrap since 1989 and have visited many plastic processing facilities during my time in the industry. Back in the late 80's and early 90's, it was tough to find markets for plastic and often times you wouldn't get any revenue for it. But it was still better than sending it to a landfill so we continued to market it to a variety of processors who chip it, wash it, and palletize for the use in new products and packaging. I witnessed this being done first hand so I'm confident that when you put this much effort into processing scrap, that it goes to good use.

Today, the markets have matured substantially...

The non-colored (natural) HDPE milk jugs (marked with a number 2 on the bottom) are now commanding over $800 per ton ($18,000 per trailer load). We sell a lot of this material to a Company in York PA called Graham Packaging which makes new plastic containers for detergents and cleaners (non-food).

The Colored HDPE #2 containers are sold to various markets (including Graham Packaging) at $600 per ton. Again, they make new bottles out of scrap bottles.

The PET #1 containers are sorted automatically by our scanner and sold at $400 per ton to various markets that make carpet or stuffing for sleeping bags and jackets, etc.

The 3-7 plastic we mix and sell together because we don't get enough of any one of them to substantiate accumulating them in separate loads. These markets are in their infancy (just like the #1 & #2 markets were 18 years ago). However they're the smallest percentage of what we process... See below.

Make up of the Plastics we process:

Colored HDPE #2: 28%
Natural HDPE #2: 25%
PET #1: 25%
Plastics #3-#7: 22%

We just started selling 3-7 plastic last year and we've averaged $45 per ton. Not nearly what the other plastics bring in but at least we're getting paid for it. Because there are limited markets for this material right now, we sell it to various brokers. Because they pay us for it, they can't simply afford to landfill it. It's sold to lower end markets but our hope is the markets will improve for this material over time as it has for the other plastics.

I hope this helps. Kevin.

So in Maine, at least, plastic recycling is pretty beneficial. Still, recycling does consume a lot of energy and resources, and note that even here, plastics are "downcycled" - that is, transformed from food-grade to non-food containers, or from water bottles to jacket insulation. And recycling plastics other than HDPE #2 and PET #1 is obviously more problematic, for now. Note that Roche does not know where those plastics end up - it's entirely possible that purchasers may be scouring that 22% portion of our plastic recycling to cherry-pick what they can and landfill the rest.

It's also important to note that ecomaine is a nonprofit owned by its 21 member communities, which helps to make its management considerably more open, progressive, and innovative than most waste management companies. I mean, would Tony Soprano have bothered to write the response above? Unfortunately, most American communities shouldn't expect this level of service from their own local recycling haulers. But as Roche has proven here, it's worth asking them about it.

So using less plastic is still far better than recycling plastic, but here in southern Maine, anyhow, recycling is better than burying or incinerating it with the rest of our garbage. Just make sure your plastic doesn't blow away into the nearest river or coastline when you set it out on the curb every week.

Plum Creek and Paranoia

This past Saturday, Maine's Land Use Regulation Commission held a public hearing in downtown Portland to vet public concerns over the massive development project that Plum Creek proposing for Maine's Moosehead Lake region. Several hundred Mainers turned out, and the majority came to declare their opposition to the project.



Frankly, Plum Creek's plan doesn't get me all that riled up. Environmental groups here in Maine have made much of the company's plan to subdivide 975 houselots in the remote Moosehead region - which sounds like an awful lot, but really, it's roughly the equivalent of adding another Limington (1141 households) or Readfield (867 households) into the north woods (source: US Census). I grew up next to Limington, and to tell the truth, those 1141 households across the Saco River were pretty benign.

So until Saturday, I'd been inclined to look at the Plum Creek "debate" as yet another instance of well-to-do, self-styled environmentalists getting worked up about the quasi-mystical Nature on the frontier in order to avoid thinking about the nature we use and abuse every day. After all, while the hearings were going on and street thespians were prancing around in moose costumes, international diplomats in Bali were struggling to drag the United States to sign a watered-down agreement that may end up being little more than an eleventh-hour doomsday pact. How's that for perspective?

But then I met the Plum Creek supporters - or rather, two particular supporters - who reminded me that as foolish as the environmental movement can sometimes be, at least it's not as blatantly desperate, greedy, and stupid as the fools who swallow and serve the gospel of a corporate panderer.

Upstairs from the big hearing room, Plum Creek had set up a hospitality room "for supporters only," and naievely thinking that I might have an intelligent conversation there, I moseyed inside. Within five steps of the door, a grumpy old man with a rental-cop authority complex stopped me and told me I had to leave, because the room was only for supporters.

Now, the guy's little bulldog demeanor was funny enough, so I laughed him off and asked him how he was so sure I wasn't a supporter. He essentially told me that I fit the profile, which I can only assume to be someone under thirty years old (I don't think my clothing - a hooded high-school football team sweatshirt, Dickies, and an olive green jacket - screamed "environmental terrorist"). I explained my position, gave him the name of my employer, which has adopted a neutral position to try to negotiate a consensus compromise, and generally assured him well enough to leave me alone for a while.

I took a picture of the room and helped myself to some coffee. But the geriatric bouncer really didn't like the photography, because he stormed back over and told me to use a styrofoam cup. This confused me - was my choice of a reusable ceramic cup how he was profiling me as an antagonistic Earth Firster? But no: he just wanted me to leave, immediately.

This was at the head of the buffet line, and within earshot of everyone in the room. I wondered loudly how Plum Creek could have its reputation as a steward of public access when this was how it treated sympathetic members of the public in its "hospitality room."

A second fellow came over and tried to lead me away from the small knot of supporters in the buffet line - the "good cop." His name was Ron. We had a slightly more productive conversation, but at one point he complained that "you people" want to cut off public access to the northern forest. I told him that I wanted no such thing, but that Plum Creek's sale of one thousand McMansions would fairly certainly restrict public access to large portions of the forest immediately, and introduce thousands of future complaints about hunting and industrial forestry from newly suburban neighborhoods in the forest. After about five minutes, he ended the conversation fairly amicably, and also asked me to leave.

Thinking back on it, I came to see these guys and their paranoid lack of perspective as representatives of all the things that are terribly wrong with Plum Creek. The corporation and its supporters have been working hard to establish an "us against them" mentality in northern Maine, and they were particularly resentful that they were subjected to a hearing in Portland. But these divisions are bullshit, and counterproductive.

The two men I spoke with, like many Plum Creek advocates, act as though they are defending a terribly abusive relationship. Plum Creek has worked hard to promote the idea of Greenville as a struggling town in need of a savior. As a result, Greenville and its more gullible citizens have resigned themselves to low self esteem and a slavish devotion to the company's plans. Sure, Plum Creek knocks us around sometimes, but we deserve it. We need it. And damn anyone who thinks otherwise.

The Plum Creek bouncers have a lot in common with the working stiffs who want George Bush to keep burning coal until we've got the Inferno on Earth. You could say "screw 'em," but they're already screwed beyond all hope.

Listen, Greenville, you've got a lot going for yourself - Moosehead Lake, mountains, and millions of acres of wild Maine forest. Stick up for yourself and don't take any more crap from Plum Creek's political machinations.

The Photo They Don't Want You to See

PS - This is the forbidden photograph of the inside of Plum Creek's "hospitality room" (read the previous post for the hilarious story behind it).


It looks innocent enough, but as I left I could have sworn I heard them start chanting in tongues. On my way down the hall I passed some shaved sheep that were being led back to the room I'd left. They were completely shaved and tattooed in unintelligible symbols that nevertheless filled me with a vague sense of dread. The weirdest thing was a few minutes later, downstairs in the big hearing room, when a big bloody mass of entrails just fell through the ceiling onto the LURC commissioners' desk. Probably just a freak accident.



Just kidding! Totally joking! Haha. You Plum Creek guys have a great sense of humor, you know?

Scenic Coast, Toxic Air

43.57 -70.21

Casco Bay haze
The harbor, a ferry, and oil tanks.

Mercifully, a cold front finally came through Maine last night and cleared away the humid blanket of polluted air that had been smothering us for most of the week.

On Tuesday, the ozone monitoring station at Two Lights State Park in Cape Elizabeth recorded the season's first violation of federal air quality standards, and on Wednesday, recorded levels of ground-level ozone went even higher, edging into the code-red "unhealthy" zone. We can't blame midwestern power plants for this one: ozone pollution is a local product of our own tailpipes and gas-fired power plants.

Strangely enough, this all happened just a few days after the Bush administration came out with a rare proposal to strengthen pollution regulations: specifically, to reduce acceptable levels of ozone from 80 parts per billion (where we were on Tuesday) to 70 parts per billion. This would have significant ramifications for Maine: Portland is just barely in compliance with the current limits, which are based on a three-year moving average, but the entire Maine coast usually has three or four days a summer when ozone exceeds 70 ppb - and we've already had three of those days so far in 2007, with the summer smog season barely underway.

When the new standards take effect and we start breaking them, the federal government isn't going to send in agents to arrest O3 molecules. Instead, they'll place restrictions on Maine industries, reduce our share of highway funding, and force gas stations to sell more expensive, cleaner-burning varieties of gasoline. This will improve air quality, in theory, but it will also put a substantial ball and chain on the Maine economy.

What's the Maine Turnpike Authority, which oversees our state's largest single source of air pollution, doing to help Maine avoid this unpleasant situation? Well, those traffic engineers are in estrus over plans lay down an expanded six-lane freeway just upwind of us, but they can't be bothered to build a sidewalk around the edge of their new Portland headquarters building. But that rich topic deserves an entire post of its own.

Stagnant Air: Don't Piss in the Bath

Mainers and the tourist hordes may have heard a cryptic warning of "stagnant air advisory" on the radio this morning. And indeed, the National Weather Service has colored the coast of Maine a dark shade of gray on this morning's weather map (right).

The simple explanation is that low wind speeds and high levels of UV radiation will force us to stew in our own juices for the duration of the day. The ozone will be particularly bad: as of 8 AM, ozone levels at Two Lights State Park in Cape Elizabeth were already twice as high as they were among the oil refineries of Texas City near Houston, an area that typically leads the nation in ozone pollution. And this was before the morning commute, when Maine motorists will send thousands of tons of volatile organic compounds out of their exhaust pipes to bake in the hot summer sun.

If you were planning on breathing today, you'll be more likely to suffer from the various effects of ozone pollution: coughing, wheezing, shortness of breath, headaches, general listlessness, aggravated pulmonary conditions, etcetera, etcetera. The Maine economy will probably lose a couple of million dollars to lost productivity today, and our lungs will age a little faster.

Since they're warning us not to exert ourselves outdoors, it seems like a good day to sit inside and think about air pollution instead.

Air pollution has always been a difficult cause for environmentalism. For one thing, you can't really see it. By most objective standards, cleaner air is more important than preserving a wilderness area in Alaska. But the Nature Conservancy can print glossy photography of unbroken forests to open philanthropists' wallets, while the American Lung Association is left behind quoting dry statistics on childhood asthma.

The other problem with air pollution as an environmental cause is the fact that our atmosphere is so big. You wouldn't want to piss in your own bathtub, but it doesn't seem as revolting when a cruise ship dumps tons of raw sewage at sea. Similarly, there aren't many non-addicts who would willingly spend time in a small, cramped smoker's lounge, but there's nothing especially disgusting about spewing a few hundred pounds of VOCs out from the tailpipe every day. Because we share the atmosphere with the entire world, we discount the marginal effects of our own behavior.

But today is different. Stagnant air means that we kind of are our pissing in our own bathtub when we burn our fossil fuels. It may get better tomorrow, when the winds return, but that just means that all this crap will be blowing someplace else. The atmosphere may be really, really big, but so is our capacity to foul it.

Put this in your cap and trade it.

I just received a press release from the NRCM's Sara Lovitz, who helped organize the New Coast Parade:

"Today, the Maine Senate voted 35-0 for final passage of “An Act To Authorize the State's participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative” (LD 1851, known as RGGI [that's the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative]).

"Today’s vote makes Maine the third northeast state to pass a law that requires power plants to reduce their emissions of global warming pollutants as part of a region-wide "cap-and-trade" system. Vermont and Connecticut have already passed RGGI legislation -- altogether ten northeast states are in the process of adopting similar policies, and five western states are not far behind...

"The bill would reduce global warming pollution from power plants by nearly 20% by the year 2019, and would enable Maine businesses to participate in a regional marketplace for emission reductions. RGGI can save electricity customers 5 to 15% on electricity bills, help protect against rate increases, generate an "energy savings fund" worth up to $25 million per year to help both residential and commercial energy consumers save money and invest in energy efficiency, and create a new "carbon market" in the Northeast, with opportunities for everyone from dairy farmers to high-tech companies."

This is great news for Maine's environment and its economy. Legions of capitalist agents - from multinational reinsurance companies and Big Oil to independent farmers and fishermen - have asked our government to assign rights and responsibilities to account for the costs of greenhouse gases.

The Yankee states fighting for the Union and emancipation true cost accounting for global warming pollutants.

In terms of allocating financial capital where it properly belongs, these new cap-and-trade markets will be to the age of global warming what Wall Street was to the twentieth century (and incidentally, I find it interesting how the extremist conservatives who would deny global warming's existence do so at the expense of their faith in American capitalism). Instead of sending billions overseas to fossil fuel-exporting kleptocracies, a price on carbon will divert more capital to foster innovative green technologies here.

Besides gaining greater efficiency in its whole economy, Maine will also benefit in the short term because our utilities generate relatively few greenhouse gases: because we produce more electricity from small hydro projects (and because wind power is our main source of growth in electrical generation for the foreseeable future), Maine ratepayers will reap the benefits as local power companies export carbon credits to other states.

Meanwhile, a string of five western states bookended by Washington and New Mexico are starting their own cap-and-trade scheme, and the proliferation of multiple regulatory frameworks is sure to incur big costs for Big Oil and interstate utilities. Some of them are even begging the crew they bought for the White House to enact a strong nationwide cap-and-trade system to save them the hassle of dealing with the states.

For more information:

The Northeast and Mid-Atlantic Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative

Press Release: Maine third Northeast state to pass "RGGI" law to cut global warming pollution from power plants

Plum Creek III

The third version of Plum Creek's plans for the Moosehead region came out last Friday. It's too soon to know the ending of this saga, but the latest plan leaves things wide open for yet another sequel.

The most visible difference in the new plan, available at www.plumcreekplanmaine.com, is that several housing development areas have been moved from the more remote stretches of Moosehead and Brassua Lakes to areas closer to the towns of Rockwood and Greenville. At the same time, though, the new plan seeks a good deal more land to be rezoned for development, as well as a large increase (500 to 800) in the number of accommodations and condos at a resort proposed near Big Moose Mountain.

Predictably, Plum Creek is crowing that "the revisions would reduce shoreline development on Moosehead Lake and nearby ponds and lakes by 40 percent" (Mike Muzzy, senior manager for Plum Creek), while critics complain that "the plan would double the amount of land on which the project would be developed, from about 10,000 acres to more than 20,000" (Jym St. Pierre of RESTORE: The North Woods). Between these extreme perspectives lies the truth: the new revision doesn't really accomplish much of anything - and it almost certainly won't change anyone's mind about Plum Creek.

A local citizens' group, the Moosehead Futures Committee, has come up with a homegrown set of reasonable recommendations for growth in the area. The group represents diverse interests in the Moosehead region, and has crafted a plan that accommodates substantial new development without raising hackles in the environmental community.

Had Plum Creek adopted their proposal in the first place, their resorts would have been ready to open this summer. Instead, I suspect that the only ones building new houses are Plum Creek's planning consultants, who have secured a long and lucrative tenure through this whole process.

News reports of the new plan:
Plum Creek Revises Moosehead Plan, Bangor Daily News
Critics Not Swayed by New Plum Creek Plan, Portland Press Herald

New on the blogroll

In the past week I've found some worthy additions to the blogroll here. And in spite of the Pine Tree State's analog tendencies, these are all local new media:

• A lot of political blogs seem like tabloids that are obsessed with DC instead of LA. Borrowed Suits is an exception: it brings some thoughtfulness to local and national political issues in long posts with progressive perspectives, and it doesn't mind digressing into other interesting topics (which is good, because there are a whole lot of topics more interesting than Maine politics).


• Portland Newly Seen will someday be a blog about Portland's urban landscapes. We're just waiting for the author, a newly-minted urban planner, to get her act together and start writing some posts.


• Finally, there's the new GrowSmart Maine blog. I made this one myself and am still writing most of the posts, so consider my self-promotion fully disclosed. The blog is just getting started, but look here for news on economic development and smart growth throughout Maine.

The new economy

An adaptive reuse of a smokestack: moving electrons instead of steam. In the former Scott Paper mill complex, Winslow, Maine.

Transit will not go gently into that good Pike...

The letter I'd written last week to the legislature's transportation committee received a somewhat overwhelming response. At the same time, other transportation and neighborhood activists in Portland have written to the committee to register their displeasure with the Turnpike Authority's "pave first, ask questions later" attitude.

All in all, the response has given me confidence that the Turnpike Authority faces a losing fight if it tries to ignore the National Environmental Policy Act and the state Sensible Transportation Policy Act - and any proposal to widen the Turnpike without improving the regional transit system would necessarily have had to ignore those laws.

One idea that's emerged is to have the Turnpike Authority pay for the budget shortfall in the state's Downeaster train service, as well as expansion of that service to Brunswick.

I myself am fond of the idea of letting the Turnpike expand, but dedicating the two new lanes to toll-free High Occupancy Vehicles (carpools, commuter vans, busses, and any other vehicle that moves more than one or two people).

We could also spend the Turnpike's money on Bus Rapid Transit service out to Windham and Standish on the state-owned Mountain Division line. Or new ZOOM commuter express bus routes (which could be wired for onboard internet access) north to Lewiston, west to Buxton, and east to Bath.

Ultimately, the Turnpike Authority's money is our money: we spent our tolls on the Turnpike because the Turnpike owns an effective monopoly on regional transportation.

So, how do you think the Turnpike Authority should spend your money? By strengthening its monopoly with an old-fashioned, SoCal-style widening project? Or is there a better use for transportation funds? Post your ideas in the comments, and next week I'll get to work on putting together a map of all your regional transit suggestions.

The Turnpike of the future

Today, the state legislature began hearing public comments on the Maine Turnpike Authority's request to widen Interstate 95 in the greater Portland area. As I have said in a previous post, this would be a perfect opportunity to install a regional system of commuter bus and rail services. The Turnpike Authority is flush with cash from its tolls, and it's also responsible for traffic nightmares in communities near Turnpike exits: here's its chance to atone.

Frustratingly, although this is clearly a Portland-area project, the early decisions are being made in Augusta, where the legislature must authorize the Turnpike Authority's plans. A representative from the Authority did visit the City Council a while ago, but City Councilor David Marshall reports that "the presentation made it clear that alternative modes of transportation will not be considered until the end of the planning process. At that
point in the process the deal is basically done." This stone-age way of doing things is clearly illegal (see the Sensible Transportation Policy Act), but it looks as though the Turnpike Authority (which might consider changing its name to The Museum of Eisenhower-Era Transportation Policy) will need plenty of reminding.

For now, we can remind our legislators that they have authority over the Authority. Any planning for the Turnpike should consider a range bus and train alternatives, and when considering widening, the Authority should also be forced to examine the consequences of increased traffic on surrounding communities (like Gray, where Turnpike traffic literally reduced the village center to a slum). Here's the letter I wrote to the Transportation Committee (Senator Dennis Damon and Rep. Boyd Marley, chairs):

Re: Authorization of the Turnpike Authority's Capital Program (widening between Scarborough and Falmouth)

To the Joint Standing Committee on Transportation:

A contemporary saw about highway planning states that "trying to solve traffic by building more roads is like trying to cure obesity by loosening your belt." Increasingly, planners from all disciplines are appreciating the costly futility of building new roads in a sprawling landscape.

Given the increasing expense - public and private - of our state's auto-centric transportation policies, the Legislature should include strong stipulations that the next Turnpike construction project, planned between Scarborough and Falmouth, will substantially diversify our region's portfolio of transportation alternatives.

First, and most importantly, the Legislature should require that the Turnpike Authority base its planning on the efficient movement of people and freight - not just vehicles - throughout the Turnpike corridor and surrounding communities.

By the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Turnpike Authority will be required to examine a range of alternatives in the widening project. In accordance with the Maine Sensible Transportation Policy Act, the Legislature should stipulate that EVERY alternative under consideration (besides the required "no action" alternative) include some combination of regional rail investments, expanded and new commuter bus (ZOOM) services, HOV and HOT lanes, and bike/pedestrian trails.

NEPA also requires that federally-funded projects examine "cumulative effects," i.e., effects beyond the immediate scope of any project. In this case, the Legislature should make clear that the Turnpike Authority must weigh alternatives according to their effects on nearby arterials and town centers. Local and state agencies should not bear additional costs or congestion as a result of the Authority's actions.

I will close by reminding you that automotive costs are beginning to rival housing expenditures among Maine households, and that traffic on the Turnpike alone generates more air pollution than all of the state's power plants combined. Please encourage the Turnpike Authority to make 21st-century investments in true mobility, rather than another 20th-century road
widening.

Yours sincerely,


Christian McNeil

Congestion charging for novices (i.e., for Maine)

One of the recommendations of the Brookings Institution's Action Plan for Maine is to "export" our tax burden: to find ways in which we can get people "from away" to help pay for the things that make Maine worth visiting.

One way to accomplish this, and to alleviate a major hassle for summer tourists, is to implement congestion charging on the Maine Turnpike during peak summer weekends. Tolls should increase according to traffic: if traffic is light and moving smoothly, tolls should remain at 60 cents; if traffic is heavy and congested, tolls should increase to whatever price will discourage too many additional motorists from using the highway - for relatively price-inelastic weekend travellers, this price could get as high as $10, or even higher. This policy would not only alleviate traffic on the Turnpike (drivers would be more likely to ride the bus or a train, or to travel during off-peak hours); it would also generate revenue that could be used to relieve other taxes, or to bolster alternative transportation like Amtrak's Downeaster.

To be really effective, variable pricing should also apply to Maine vehicles - after all, locals have better knowledge of alternative routes, and we generally have little reason or desire to travel on the Turnpike on summer weekends. Still, to make it more politically palatable, the Turnpike Authority could allow a 50% discount for Maine vehicles when traffic drives the tolls beyond a certain point (like $2).

Unfortunately, any sort of variable pricing policy is currently illegal, since the state legislature passed a law that forbade peak-hour price increases right before the Turnpike Authority was to begin an experimental pilot project in 1995. But that was 12 years ago: we've now seen examples of how variable tolling can succeed in places like California, Houston, and (on a larger scale) London and Stockholm.

In 1995, the Legislature reacted to concerns that tourists would be "insulted" by increased weekend tolls. But what's really more insulting: a $10 toll (that's the going price for driving in and out of New York City, by the way), or a five-hour traffic jam? I'm pretty sure that most of our tourists would prefer the former.

Miscellany

Here are some things I've been meaning to put up for a while. Watch out for the bullets:

• My analog reading material these days consists of economist Matthew Kahn's new book Green Cities, which seeks to evaluate global cities according to various measures of environmental health. It's got some good insights and with only a few equations it ought to be fairly accessbile to non-economists. Before you go to the library you can sample Kahn's writing and thoughts at his weblog: http://greeneconomics.blogspot.com.
  
  
• This sentence from Kahn's book caught my eye: "[One] hypothesis suggests that a nation is more likely to enact environmental regulation when its economy is growing and income inequality is falling." Which reminded me of themes discussed in the Brookings Institution's Action Plan for Promoting Sustainable Prosperity and Quality Places, another bit of reading I've recently finished. The Brookings report makes note of big demographic and economic dichotomies in our state: north and south, working-class and college-educated, the young workforce and older retirees, wealthy newcomers and struggling old-timers. Income inequality is growing here as it is all over America, and politics have become more divisive and less productive. The Brookings report recommends harnessing the productivity and wealth of richer residents to grow the state's economy and extend opportunity to its working classes. If Maine is to protect its civic integrity, it must preserve its egalitarian spirit.
  
  
• Thanks to May Shrink Or Fade and The Adventures of a Geo-Geek for adding me to their prestigious lists of links, and thanks also to their readers who may have found their way here.
  
  
• Finally, The Bollard has published an essay of mine that started as a draft blog post and quickly outgrew this format. If all these whizzing bullets haven't yet shot your attention span to hell, check it out here.

Plum Creek v2.1

Most Maine newspapers reported this weekend that Plum Creek will revise its development plans for the Moosehead region once again, and that public hearings on the proposal will be postponed indefinitely as a result.

Plum Creek offered no details on the scope of the plan's revision, but it does hope to submit changes to the Land Use Regulation Commission within a month.

In the meantime, it seems a fair speculation that rising interest rates and concomitant cooling of housing markets may have knocked some wind out of Plum Creek's schemes. Even though this is a "30 year" development plan, immediate development would have maximized the present value of Plum Creek's land: they had hoped to finish the proposed housing developments within the next five to ten years.

Now that interest rates are rising again, that schedule of construction will coincide with a period of comparatively low demand for new homes. Plum Creek will either have to charge lower prices for its real estate, or constrain supply with fewer houselots. Choosing the latter option will be more lucrative for the company while also appeasing the plan's many critics.

My hope and prediction is that the next plan from Plum Creek will have fewer houselots, and those that remain will be clustered closer to Rockwood and Greenville.

The Sensible Transportation Policy Act

The Maine Turnpike in 2015..

Did you know that Maine's Department of Transportation and the Turnpike Authority are required by law to "reduce the State's reliance of foreign oil and promote... energy-efficient forms of transportation"? And that they must give "preference to... other transportation modes before increasing highway capacity through road building activities"?

The Sensible Transportation Policy Act, passed in 1991, says all of this and more. It's a brilliantly progressive law. Too bad our transportation planners habitually break it.

After sixteen years of "sensible transportation," Maine has more roads, more freeway lanes, more traffic, and more pollutants from incinerated foreign oil, but state investments in bike/ped facilities and transit are virtually unchanged (i.e., virtually zero). Sure, we've got a train to Boston and a few scattered bike paths. But compare those investments (wildly successful in spite of their small scale) to the expenditures on new roads. We'll spend $50 million on the Gorham Bypass alone, even though it's going to generate more traffic and congestion in Standish and Westbrook, while energy-efficient, foreign-oil-independent sidewalks and bike routes scrape by with $750,000 a year.

The Maine Turnpike Authority is now looking to widen their freeway to six lanes through the Portland area. So far, environmental groups across the state are letting this one go without so much as a whimper (most of their leaders drive the same road, after all). But the Turnpike Authority is fabulously rich with toll revenues. What if we actually enforced the Sensible Transportation Policy Act, and told the Authority that they may only widen I-95 if they provide regional commuter bus service? Or a bike/pedestrian path running parallel to the freeway to connect the Maine Mall area to Portland, Westbrook, and West Falmouth?

Transit and bike/ped amenities like these would barely dent the Turnpike's budget, and they'd also provide fabulous enhancements to regional mobility. Instead of serving suburban commuters and weekend vacationers, the Turnpike could serve more of the people who actually live in greater Portland. There are already rumblings of these demands from local bike and pedestrian advocacy groups in Portland. The bigger environmental organizations may not yet be on our side, but at least the law is.

Photo: the riverfront bike path in Hoboken, New Jersey.
Budget figures from PACTS Destination Tomorrow plan

Plum Creek's economic benefits: a closer reading

This past weekend, the Maine Sunday Telegram published an op-ed column I'd written about the economic benefits of Plum Creek's plan for the Moosehead region. The article is reprinted in full here at the Natural Resources Council of Maine webpage.

The Telegram gave it the misleading headline "Plan no benefit to region's economy." I argued that the plan does provide some much-needed economic benefits to the region; however, most of those benefits come from investments in the region's forest and tourist industries. The most controversial aspects of the plan - the hundreds of houselots scattered across the wilderness - would contribute little, and might actually detract from, the region's economy.

The graph below shows the expected income, in thousands of dollars, from residential development of house lots compared with expected income from one industrial forest products facility (source: Dr. Charles Colgan, "Estimated Economic Impacts...", 2006):

Note how income from hundreds of house lots plunges to zero after peaking in 2015, while the income from one sawmill rises and exceeds construction income every year. Also, though Colgan doesn't break it down by individual counties, it's widely expected that most of the construction income from residential development will go to construction firms and workers from outside of the Moosehead region (mostly in Bangor, in Penobscot County). The bulk of industrial income, on the other hand, will go to long-term employees living within a feasible commuting distance of the mill, which is proposed to go on the road between Greenville and Rockwood.

Then there's the fact that the sawmill will have fewer demands of municipal services than nine hundred seventy-five new houses. And all of those houselots are going to take thousands of acres of productive forest land out of production, off-limits to the much more lucrative businesses of forestry and recreation.

So yes, Plum Creek's plan does have some economic benefits. But those benefits would be a lot less ambiguous if the company stuck to the business of forestry and struck the wilderness housing developments from its proposal.

TABOR tabled

A little over two years ago, I wrote this op-ed piece about Carol Palesky's first tax-cap proposal.

Voters rejected the second tax-reform referendum in as many years yesterday. And for a second time, we'll wait expectantly for our state legislature to take up the crucial issue of tax reform.

After the failure of the 1% tax cap in 2004, most people expected the Governor and the legislature to jump on the issue of tax relief. There have been a few initiatives, like the effort to regionalize services and to transfer more school funding to the state, but the near-success of TABOR tesifies to how unsatisfactory the results have been thus far.

Today's Press Herald argues that the voters who rejected TABOR were concerned more with this specific initiative than with tax reform in general, and that the next legislature will be expected to make Maine's tax system more equitable.

Only 37% of voters approved Question 1 in 2004. Last night, 46% of voters said "yes" to TABOR. If the legislature doesn't act quickly, we'll have another citizen-led effort to hack the state budget in 2008 - and the third time's the charm.

The million-dollar plan

Conventional wisdom regarding Maine's economy cites high taxes and closed mills, but conventional wisdom is also a handy tool for political hacks. GrowSmart Maine has commissioned a study from the Brookings Institution that promises us that Maine "stands within reach of a new prosperity-" if we follow their think tank advice.

I've only read a bit of the report so far, but the executive summary cites some striking statistics. For example, between 1980 and 2000, Maine converted more than 1,300 square miles (an area the size of Rhode Island) from rural fields and woodlots to suburban subdivisions. "In the 1990s only Virginia lost a greater share of rural land than Maine." Maine is not an especially small state, and most of it is rural, but nevertheless, we plopped houses on farms and forests faster than Texans could turn their plains to shopping malls and Florida could turn its swamps into retirement communities. This has got to be rough news for Mainers inclined to think of those other places as self-consuming sprawl-slums: Maine is doing even worse.

Here's another one: Maine's population was increasing faster than the populations of 24 states in 2000, and has had the 5th highest rate of domestic in-migration since 2000. The new arrivals are wealthier, older, and increasing Maine's average per-capita income simply by being here. On paper, this looks good: Maine's per-capita income is now almost as high as the national average. But if you have a town of four people who each earn $20,000 a year and a millionaire moves in, the per-capita, or average income of that town will suddenly get very high, even if the original four residents lose their incomes entirely. Similarly, we can have thousands of rich retirees move here and improve our economic statistics, but the lives of those who are here now won't necessarily improve.

Indeed, the report notes that "many high-paying manufacturing and forest jobs have been replaced by lower-paying consumer services positions," such that job growth statistics mask a reality of decline.

So, migration is causing some problems, but not as many as most Mainers would have you believe. New arrivals are giving us jobs in the state's most promising sectors, from organic farming (thanks, Casco Bay bobos) to health care (thanks, all you geriatrics), to financial services (thanks, Martha Stewart and all the rest of those midcoast MBAs). In fact, maybe we could harness the wealth of our new arrivals to offset some of the problems posed by their arrival... say, by lowering taxes, conserving rural land and enhancing downtowns, and providing job training for the rest of us?

Well, the Brookings Institution has some advice about how to do that, too. More on the the solutions in a future post.

Click here to read the Brookings report in its entirety.