The Maine political deal Inside the Bigelow story: How to achieve a political compromise but lose your Friends BY LANCE TAPLEY

Compromise is hell. I have come up from political hell to tell the tale.There’s a Maine law, the Bigelow Preserve law, passed by a citizens-initiated referendum 27 years ago. It protects from development the magnificent seven peaks of the 12-mile-long Bigelow Mountain Range. In recent years, a development group, the Western Mountains Foundation (WMF), expressed its wish to build a machine-groomed cross-country ski trail for tourists inside the 36,000-acre Bigelow Preserve as well as three "huts" — actually, $425,000 log lodges — around it. With the support of the Baldacci administration, the organization got a bill introduced in the legislature this year to change the Bigelow Preserve law to allow the trail to be built.

Friends of Bigelow, the grass-roots organization that pushed for the 1976 referendum — it prevented Bigelow from becoming a colossal downhill-ski resort — strongly objected to this change in the law and to other parts of WMF’s proposal. This spring, the opposing organizations and the state reached a compromise. Some daily newspapers held it up as an example for the settlement of the environmental disputes that dominate Maine politics.

Perhaps it is. But the following inside view — an anatomy — of the Bigelow deal shows how tricky the requirements are for political compromise and how high the costs can be, and how, at bottom, politics is an emotional activity. Emotion is a big reason compromise is so tricky.

For me, the deal was very emotional. I had access to this intimate view of Maine politics because I played a part in the story, a rare event for a journalist. I organized Friends of Bigelow 30 years ago and remained an activist.

IN THE MOUNTAINS, ARMIES FACE OFF

Larry Warren likes to build things. A tall, careful-speaking man in his 50s with a wry smile, he doesn’t look like Satan, but many members of Friends of Bigelow believe he is an entrepreneurial fiend. Warren is president of WMF, which is a nonprofit, regional economic-development organization. It has a board of directors, but Warren runs it pretty much as a one-man show.

As a businessman, Warren has a spotty record. When he was Sugarloaf USA’s president, the ski resort went bankrupt. On the other hand, he has built a small, successful mapping business and, when he was the town of Carrabassett Valley’s first selectman, was the force behind the creation of the popular municipal ski-touring center, which is leased to Sugarloaf. The village of Carrabassett Valley lies between Bigelow and Sugarloaf, about 35 miles north of Farmington.

For his trail-and-hut plan, Warren took as his model the Appalachian Mountain Club’s renowned huts in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, to which a hiker need carry only a small pack because bunks and hot meals are furnished. The AMC hut system draws hikers from around the world, and it pumps millions of dollars into the mountain economy. The eco-tourism economic potential is why Democratic governor John Baldacci and his conservation department, which administers the Bigelow Preserve, support Warren’s "Maine Huts and Trails" project.

Warren wanted the Bigelow trail and three 40-person huts to be the showpiece and first part of a 180-mile-long recreational path linking 12 huts from the Sunday River ski area near Bethel across the Maine mountains to Moosehead Lake. Users would pay $45 a night for a bunk and $10 a day for the trail. Hikers and mountain bikers would make use of the network after the snow melted.

Several years ago, Warren began gathering support by approaching mountain-area town and county officials and businesses oriented toward tourism. The first hut was to be in Carrabassett Valley on town sanitary-district-owned land not far from the preserve boundary. The next two were to be near Sugarloaf and on the shore of huge Flagstaff Lake, which provides the preserve’s northern border. The huts were to be an easy day’s ski apart.

The Carrabassett Valley town meeting responded to Warren with a $30,000 appropriation. The United Kingfield Bank committed to lend WMF $1 million if the group could get a federal agriculture department community-development loan guarantee. Warren began negotiations for a connection with Maine’s Hurricane Island Outward Bound School. During midweek programs, the huts would be places where young people are taught outdoors lore and self-reliance.

He gathered support, too, in Augusta, especially within the conservation department. Despite its name, the department has a pro-development history. In Maine, a poor state, "jobs" is the campaign rallying cry of every governor.

To some extent, Warren promoted his idea to environmentalists. I got a call from him every few months for a period of a year or two. I encouraged him. As far as I can tell, the first public proposal for a hut system for the Maine mountains was in my 1973 book Ski Touring in New England, in which I also advanced huts and cross-country ski trails for Bigelow as an alternative to the proposed downhill-ski development.

Trying to look at the big environmental picture, I felt the more eco-tourism in the mountains the fewer clear-cuts, chair lifts, casinos, all-terrain vehicles, snowmobiles, or other environmentally disturbing developments. Based on what I had seen in New Hampshire, I felt certain most Maine people would be in favor of a properly managed hut system. Warren’s huts would be inaccessible to cars, solar-powered, and compost-toileted. God knows, people these days ought to have more opportunities to exercise and enjoy the outdoors. As a writer and publisher, I had made a specialty of supporting outdoor sports and fitness. On a very personal level, I thought such a network could be fun. I knew Warren only vaguely, but I admired organizers who try to turn big ideas into realities from scratch.

Also, I believed a cross-country ski trail through eight miles of the edge of the preserve, if designed appropriately, wouldn’t damage it. The preserve was created for recreation, and it is not wilderness. The Bigelow law allows the state to harvest timber there, and snowmobiles use it extensively.

However, at the June 2001, 25th anniversary of the referendum, celebrated by Friends of Bigelow at a meeting that revived the group after many years of dormancy, the 25 or so experienced outdoors people in attendance convinced me that we needed to be critical of Warren’s plans.

They so thoroughly convinced me that I remember tipsily raising a toast to him at our dinner: "If Larry Warren is for it, then it must be bad!"

As I say, I hardly knew Warren. My remarks were uttered in the flush of anti-developer fellowship and partisanship.

Specifically, Friends of Bigelow felt it needed to raise objections to big, trail-grooming caterpillar machines. Warren wanted a smooth, wide trail for skate-skiers. In our view, the preserve law forbade these loud machines and what would essentially be a new road on which they would operate. A caretaker with a small saw could maintain a backcountry cross-country ski trail; that’s how existing trails in the preserve are taken care of, though they are not suitable for skate-skiing.

Our group also feared hiking-trail overuse if the huts were crowded close to the preserve. Hidden counters on the Appalachian Trail, which runs along the crest of the mountain range, recorded 16,000 hikers in 2002. Although the preserve has 30 miles of hiking trails, we feared Bigelow becoming overcrowded like some parts of the White Mountains, a congestion some blame in part on the AMC hut system.

Few of the Friends opposed per se a Maine huts-and-trail network, although during our anniversary meeting some Bigelow-area camp owners visited us and expressed fears that Warren’s system might perturb the serenity of their property — a classic "not in my backyard" protest. Soon, several would become active in Friends of Bigelow.

Our objections didn’t get fully expressed until we chose Dick Fecteau as chairman, in June of 2002, around a Bigelow campfire. A wiry, sly-looking, avid hiker from Farmington in his late 40s, he had made some money in (ironically) real-estate development. He had the free time to oversee a section of volunteer-maintained hiking trails for the Maine Appalachian Trail Club, including Bigelow’s trails.

Now he threw himself into rebuffing this latest threat to a mountain he loved. "It’s a resort," he said scornfully of WMF’s plan. A businessman, he thought Warren’s huts were too expensive to succeed financially. The total project cost was $8 million, and the debt service would be high. If Maine Huts and Trails went bankrupt, would the huts be sold to a company like L.L. Bean? Nobody could say, including Warren.

Fecteau vigorously attacked WMF’s attempt to get a Land Use Regulation Commission (LURC) permit for the Flagstaff Lake hut. (LURC regulates development in the wild lands.) He questioned the hut’s legality because it was planned for land designated by the Bigelow law to be in the preserve. Establishing the Friends as an official intervener-opponent in the LURC proceedings, he set the stage for a possible lengthy court challenge if the permit were granted. And he formally objected to the agriculture department loan guarantee for WMF.

At the same time, Warren moved his chessmen forward. Angus King had not personally pushed the huts-and-trail development, but, when John Baldacci was elected governor, Warren was given an extra man to put on the board. Soon, environmentalists heard rumors that WMF would have a bill in the new legislature to allow the machine grooming and that Baldacci would support it.

In early January, I interviewed Baldacci and wrote a piece for the Phoenix about his Republican-like views. When word circulated about Warren’s bill, I realized that there was great likelihood it would become law.

This likelihood existed because Baldacci’s politics has a guaranteed majority in the nearly evenly split legislature. Most Republican legislators reflexively champion business-development proposals. Normally, environmentalists count on Democrats to support their interests. But, because Baldacci is a Democrat, a lot of Democratic legislators would obey him.

In my fears about WMF, an amendment to the Bigelow law was topmost. If, in order to please a developer, the legislature altered a statute that had been initiated and passed by the people, it would be an appalling precedent for the Bigelow law as well as for other ballot measures past and future. It would eviscerate the initiative process.

Something had to be done.

OPENING THE BACK DOOR

In mid-January, Warren emailed me, asking for clarification on some point of the Friends’ position. I seized the opportunity, suggesting we get together to see if we had grounds for compromise. Surprising me a little, he was receptive. We made a date to meet for coffee.

I told Dick Fecteau that I wanted to meet alone with Warren. I had wondered if he would accept this. There was potential for rivalry — he the chairman, me the founder. But he, too, had fears about a legislative battle, and he agreed that one-on-one talks were efficient.

"I feel like Colin Powell sitting down with Saddam Hussein," I told Warren when we met at Augusta’s Barnes and Noble bookstore café.

Warren obviously had some hesitation about taking on the citizen guardians of the Bigelow Preserve, for he seemed eager to parley. We engaged in the odd friendliness of negotiating enemies.

Right off, though, I told him I didn’t want misrepresentations of our meeting, which was only exploratory. Many people on our side believed that he couldn’t be trusted, that WMF was only a stalking-horse for bigger developments, and so on. I had been amazed at the animosity toward Warren personally, especially from people who had never dealt with him. I had been around politics enough to suspect these feelings came out the exhaust pipe of the psychological engine of partiality. I had asked Fecteau to delay broadcasting to the membership the news about my meeting with Warren. I knew some members would not be keen on talks with the enemy.

In addition to expressing our objections to the preserve trail and the closeness of the huts to the preserve, I told him we were against huts that would not be affordable to most Maine people. I suggested scholarships or fees based on income. I expressed my strong antipathy to his introduction of a bill in the legislature. "That would be like declaring war on us," I warned.

On the other hand, I suggested that the existing law, which I had helped write ages before, would permit a snowmobile-sized grooming machine, if there were no alternative to a route through the preserve. Snowmobiles are allowed on designated trails. Here, I was getting out in front of Friends of Bigelow. I also sketched the prospect that, if we could reach an agreement, "we’d not only not oppose you, but I think we could actively support the hut-and-trail system." Warren’s face brightened. Here, I was way, way out in front of the membership.

He got back to me on the phone a few days later to tell me his board had authorized him to try "to reconcile differences." But, even if Friends of Bigelow agreed to a small groomer going through the preserve, he said, the state attorney general’s office apparently wouldn’t agree that the law allowed it — hence, the continued need for a change to the law.

However, moving the hut site farther up the east shore of Flagstaff Lake was doable, he said. He seemed quite aware of our possible legal challenge to his Flagstaff Lake site. And he described how he was trying to raise money for subsidies so school groups could use the huts inexpensively.

I liked everything except the information about the state’s legal opinion. I couldn’t imagine how the AG’s office could object to a snowmobile-type groomer, since machines of this kind maintained the extensive snowmobile trails in the preserve.

I am not entirely sure why no movement toward compromise took place in the next two months. Instead, both sides continued to fix for battle. Maybe everyone wanted to see what the bill’s public hearing would demonstrate. Perhaps the lack of progress was my fault. I was busy on writing and other projects.

During this period, Warren obtained Severin Beliveau, the governor’s friend and fundraiser, as his lobbyist. Warren told me Beliveau owned land in Rangeley that figured into his interest in the hut system. Their bill, Legislative Document 926, "An Act To Amend the Laws Governing the Bigelow Preserve To Allow for Cross-country Skiing," was published with an array of Republican and Democratic cosponsors, including the House chair of the Agriculture, Conservation, and Forestry Committee, Representative Linda McKee, a Democrat. Her committee would hold the hearing and vote on the bill.

We lined up opposition for the hearing at the same time we prepared to fight the Flagstaff hut in the LURC proceedings, hiring for this latter task attorney Pamela Prodan of Wilton, a quiet idealist who works inexpensively for environmental causes. The legislative hearing was set for mid-March.

Both sides also drummed up publicity. In the newspapers, Warren’s supporters called us "elitists." This was ludicrous. If I had to characterize the members of Friends of Bigelow, I might call them educated working class. Many are Maine-native, aggressive outdoorsmen and outdoorswomen who don’t want the traditional recreational uses of the region — vigorous hiking, sleep-on-the-ground camping, deer hunting — suppressed in favor of the recreation of affluent, catered-to city folks. Pay $45 a night to sleep in the forest? Ten bucks a day for use of a woods trail? These are absurdities. In this sense, maybe the Friends are in an elite.

In our publicity, we occasionally got strident, claiming at one point that the WMF development "would take business away from Western Maine towns."

LEGISLATIVE CONFRONTATION

On March 17, the winds still blew cold on the bare summits of the Bigelow Range, but it was a sunny, mild day in Augusta. The hearing room overflowed with equal contingents from each side. After squeezing into a front-row seat, I found that I was next to the new conservation commissioner, Patrick McGowan, whom I had met a few times in the distant past. As with Warren, an adversarial sociability developed between us. With an open face and an easy-going manner, he seemed to welcome my whispered asides.

Warren produced a long line of people who made economic arguments. Representative McKee enthusiastically noted that Warren’s idea "coincides with what the governor has in mind for the economic development of Maine."

"The legislature should keep faith with the people of the state," I testified. "It should not add language promoting development to a law that was initiated and passed in a vote by the citizens of Maine precisely to not have development."

More significant than rational argument — as the saying goes, legislators feel the heat more than see the light — was my list of threats. We could "fight every inch of the way" on this issue: lobby the legislature, get press coverage, sue if the LURC hut permit were granted, even sue the state over the snowmobile trails it built in the 1980s, which some of us felt constituted illegal development.

Yet I wanted to balance an olive branch on my sword.

"We can have peace," I proposed. "We can compromise. I can’t speak for all the members of Friends of Bigelow, but I am willing to sit down with Larry and try to work out an agreement on all the outstanding issues."

One member of the Friends, red-faced, almost screamed at the committee, but several spoke eloquently. I was gratified to see the Sierra Club and the Maine Audubon Society testify against the bill. More timid, the Natural Resources Council of Maine, the state’s biggest environmental group, testified "neither for nor against," but, by raising objections to the bill, in effect opposed it. All the environmental groups supported a trail system that didn’t impinge on the preserve.

Prodan, our attorney, asked a telling question: "Has anyone presented a convincing argument why this trail has to go through the preserve?"

Warren had always said it was because the Penobscot Indian Nation, which owns the woodlands in Carrabassett Valley immediately south of the preserve, wouldn’t allow a trail across its land. Prodan suspected he really wanted the trail in the preserve because of the preserve’s cachet and because the state wouldn’t charge him anything for it.

Now, unexpectedly, here was Ruth Jewell of the Penobscots directly addressing Prodan’s question: "We would like to open lines of communication with the proponents of the hut system" about the possibility that the trail could go through Indian land!

This was the hearing’s big moment. When she finished, both McGowan and I rushed after her into the corridor, took down her telephone number, and told her we’d be in touch.

Back in the room, I turned to McGowan.

"Am I going to get a chance to talk with you?"

"I’ll make it happen," he replied.

When the hearing ended, I introduced several of our members to Warren. Some reacted like I was introducing them to a wild beast. When they had been informed about my conversations with him, they had not been happy.