Asphalt bungle

A farmer’s faux-pas makes for friends in deed

by Max Alexander

If you should ever wake up on a fine spring morning and discover that the eighth largest road-building company in America thinks your little town would be an excellent place for a 56-acre granite quarry with an asphalt, cement and rock crushing plant, here is what you must do:

First, you must listen carefully to the phoebes, vireos and grosbeaks in your oak tree. They won’t tell you what to do, but you may never hear them again.

Then you must form a non-profit opposition group, and join it.

I am not a joiner by inclination, typically finding a way to distance myself even from causes that merit participation. I dropped out of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association after learning they forbid coffee at their annual fair (oh, please). I’m not antisocial but I count only a few close friends, most of whom go back with me for decades. I’m perfectly happy working alone at home for days on end. I don’t say any of this with pride; I strive to open more doors in my life — and opportunity just came knocking.

Here then is the backstage view of Maine’s development woes: As coastal communities in the southern half of the state cope with suburban sprawl and Wal-Mart contagion, rural farm towns like mine are being raped for the raw materials to pave that sprawl. It doesn’t take a seventh-grader with a laptop to see that the “two Maines” of the future will be a black-topped coastline (parking lots, discount centers and gated communities) serviced by a have-not backcountry of industrial sputum.

When the dust settles — and strip mines make plenty of dust — it’s all about gravel, a primary component of road-building. But this is not just another gravel pit. That’s because natural gravel, like fossil fuel, seems to be running out. The solution now is to blast schists of granite ledge out of the earth, then mechanically crush it into gravel-like aggregate. Add limestone and sand, and you have cement; add petroleum and you get asphalt.

Add one hundred trucks per hour on town roads where children wait for school buses. Add the Damariscotta Lake watershed, in which the site is located. Add the town’s major aquifer, under or adjacent to the blasting zone. Add plummeting real estate values, which in fact are impossible to add because no one has been able to sell a house here since the proposal was announced. Add a zoning ordinance that prohibits manufacturing in the district. Add a town planning board with open contempt for the zoning ordinance they are charged to enforce — and disdain for tree-huggers who try to tell folks what the hell they can do on their own land.

Add a thoughtless farmer, who would despoil his ancestral ground and trample the right of his neighbors to quiet possession of their own homes, in the name of supporting hi family. (Others in his position get jobs.) Add the Lane Construction Corporation of Connecticut, which earns $350 million a year — more than enough to lease 56 acres of granite from the farmer.

Add torches and pitchforks on a starry night humming with blackflies, and you get a public hearing in Washington in May.

At the hearing you must demand that the planning board, whose chairman is a used-car dealer, retain qualified experts to evaluate the complex proposal. When the board ignores your advice, you must petition your selectmen to fire the planning board. When they refuse, you must vote the selectmen out of office next March — and vote in candidates from your new organization.

If possible, your organization should have a good acronym. After we kicked around the Washington Land Association, someone at a meeting yelled out “Land Association of Washington!” And so L.A.W. was born. I take pleasure in hearing the dark-suited lawyerýfor Lane Construction refer disdainfully to “L.A.W.” in his condescending presentation. Then you’ll need a website (www.penbay.org/law01.html) and an email list that includes just about everyone in town. You’ll want to print up lawn signs that say “Lane, Lane, Go Away!” and put them all around town.

If you’re lucky, you’ll have a lawyer like Bo Marks, who happens to live next door to the strip mine site. Bo, the president of L.A.W., put his own practice on hold to secure a paper trail for the inevitable court challenges. The fight has exhausted but inspired him; when the dust settles, he may even decide to specialize in zoning law.

You may find in your town a bearded, old-school activist like Dave Martucci, who specializes in irony and also happens to be president of the North American Vexillological Association. Vexillology is the study of flags, which can come in handy; Dave once protested that an annual town meeting could not legally come to order without the presence of an American flag. He went on to observe that the solid green curtain draping the stage was in fact the flag of Libya, and did the town of Washington want to hold its annual meeting under the standard of Muammar al-Qaddafi? An American flag was quickly procured.

You might have a citizen like Vic Oboysky, a polar bear of a man and a former U.S. Marshal from New York City. Vic is our unofficial investigator, spending hours quizzing citizens in other towns where Lane has operations, as well as poring over court and municipal records from Augusta to Belfast. Vic is the sort of fellow who knocks you over with a friendly backslap. He introduces himself at public meetings as “Bigmouth,” except in his New-Yorkese it comes out “Bigmout.” He’s also a town fireman, and I believe he would make a great selectman.

Or you could turn to someone like Sandy Bourrie, who raises Arabian horses just over the hill from the Lane site. Sandy is a gentle force who knocks on doors, gathers signatures and gets timid neighbors to speak up. She would also make a good selectman, if not a governor.

Soon you might notice a new spirit in your town, and in yourself. At that point you might step back and appreciate the higher wisdom that is behind even adversity like strip mines. When the dust settles, you may even have a few new friends.

Max Alexander can be reached at malex@midcoast.com.