The mountains, the water, the forests, and the energy of our state are under siege by corporate interests. Maine Earth First! is working in solidarity with community organizations on four distinct campaigns, known as the “4 W’s.”  Wind: the fight against industrial, grid-scale wind power placed in remote, sensitive ecosystems; water: the fight against the privatization of water; waste: the fight against biomass and waste incineration; and woods: the fight against the development of wild places and the decimation of Maine’s forest lands. These four deeply interwoven campaigns are united in their fight against large corporations’ colonization of the North Woods and in their effort to build support for the restoration and protection of the North Woods Bioregion. They also share a strong ethic of ecosystems rights and the rights of life over the rights of the government and corporations.

In 2005, Plum Creek, the country’s largest private land-owner, announced its plans to re-zone over 20,000 acres for resort and high-end housing development in the treasured Moosehead Lake region of Maine (see past EF!J issues).  Since then, Maine Earth First! has been fighting the proposal,  which threatens to further fragment the largest area of undeveloped land east of the Mississippi River. Maine EF! has utilized a wide variety of tactics from paper wrenching, to office actions, to media stunts.  Maine Earth First! has been fighting this development plan since the beginning and we will be there every step of the way until we kick Plum Creek out of the North Woods and preferably off the planet!

Recently, Earth First!ers engaged in another action against Plum Creek and the governmental decision makers of the state.  On the first day of Fall, 2009, Maine Earth First! occupied the Land Use Regulatory Commission’s meeting at the Ramada Inn in Bangor, Maine in anticipation of a re-zoning approval. Six people were arrested for disrupting the planned vote that gave a green light to the largest development proposal in Maine’s history.  We have since learned that Plum Creek has been paying their supporters to participate in the public process arranged by LURC-while the rest of us did our work in that process on a purely volunteer basis.

Although LURC voted in favor of the development plan, it is not over yet! There are a lot of Mainers and folks around the country pissed off at Plum Creek and LURC who are willing to put up a fight.  All six later plead not guilty and are seeking a jury trial.

Maine Earth First! will not back down from the fight tomake sure the eco-yuppie resorts are not built and that the Moosehead Lake region will one day outlive Plum Creek’s irresponsible ownership. Join us this summer at the Round River Rendezvous, where we will be putting a wrench in Plum Creek’s development plans and any other corporate interests that dare to threaten the North Woods!  We  also hope to join up with other campaigns throughout the country that are fighting the greedy interests of Plum Creek.

Industrial, grid-scale wind power is on the fast track to devastate the wild, remote mountain ridges of Maine. In 2008 the state legislature voted in favor of a law that created an “expedited wind area.”  The expedited area includes almost two-thirds of the state and requires only one permit for wind power development, by-passing normal environmental regulations and giving LURC and the Bureau of Environmental Protection (BEP) the authority to add parcels to the area at will.  This unconstitutional law was drafted by a “task force” which was hand-picked by governor Baldacci and includes many industry representatives that stand to profit immensely from the law.   The efforts to make Maine a wind-energy producing state ignore the fact that industrial-scale wind power does nothing to wean our culture off of our fossil fuel addiction.  No coal-burning facilities have been taken off-line with the creation of wind-turbines, and the electricity is not being used to power local communities.  It is just adding more energy to the grid to be consumed by southern New England.

Currently, TransCanada has submitted an application to the Land Use Regulatory Commission (LURC) to build 15 turbines within the expedited wind area on Sisk Mountain. TransCanada, a $35billion oil company from Alberta, Canada, responsible for the environmental devastation associated with tar sands oil (the most resource-intensive form of fossil fuel extraction), has also submitted a separate proposal to add another 631 acres of Sisk Mountain. to the expedited area for an undisclosed turbine development plan.  Nearby Kibby Mountain has already been devastated by the construction of 44 turbines over 400 feet tall.

Sisk Mountain is located in the Boundary Mountains of western Maine in the Chain of Ponds area. Sisk Mountain and the Boundary Mountains are habitat for the Canada Lynx (listed threatened species), historic nesting grounds for the golden eagle, home to the Bicknell’s Thrush, yellow-nosed vole, rock shrew and northern bog lemming and thousands of migratory birds that pass through the range annually.

Allowing these sensitive mountain ecosystems to remain intact as wilderness corridors and carbon sinks provides an opportunity for these forests to regenerate. Further deforestation and ecosystem destruction is totally counterproductive in the struggle to mitigate global climate change.  We can re-wild the North Woods to its natural forested state, stretching from Maine to Minnesota, adding to this planet’s overall stability. That is why Maine Earth First! is working to restore, re-wild, and regenerate the shattered ecosystems that exist here and to create long-lasting means of protection for the North Woods ecosystems through the support of the people who live in them.  The government and oil companies are capitalizing on the current climate crisis by creating these greenwashing schemes in order to get carbon credits and stimulus money and to dupe the general public into thinking that they actually give a shit about stopping climate change.

Maine has been coined “the Saudi Arabia of wind.”  The Round River Rendezvous will provide industrial windpower’s opponents in the state with a chance to collaborate on the challenges of fighting industrial wind power.  The Round River Rendezvous will also bring together other folks fighting against TransCanada’s tar sands projects throughout Canada – providing an opportunity to network on how to bring down this corporate energy giant!

One of the local organizations that has been fighting TransCanada and working to defend the mountains of Maine is the Friends of the Boundary Mountains (FBM).  For more information about this issue, visit www.boundarymts.org.

Water is Maine’s natural heritage.  Unlike many other regions, Maine still has intact hydrological systems including pristine lakes, rivers, streams and ponds.  Hundreds of springs bubble to the surface throughout the state from ancient sand and gravel aquifers, a legacy of the last ice age.

In Maine, surface water is governed by “reasonable use,” but ground water is not protected.   Therefore, Maine treats groundwater as the personal property of the landowner and allows unlimited quantities to be pumped out. Nestle’s Poland Spring is now the top-selling water brand in the whole country and they have been subverting local democratic processes and exploiting rural communities throughout southern and western Maine.  However, communities throughout Maine have been rising up against the corporate control of our life-sustaining resource.  Towns like Shapleigh and Newfield have successfully passed local ordinances that stop Poland Spring from stealing their groundwater and selling it out of state.

With clean drinking water becoming increasingly rare throughout the world, it is important for the Earth First! movement to address this serious threat. At this year’s Round River Rendezvous water privatization and the effects of commercial water extraction on the environment will be a common theme of workshops and presentations.  We are inviting several members of the water movement to come and speak.

There is a growing movement in Maine dedicated to protecting our water resource and fighting corporate control of the water.  Defending Water for Life is a local organization that has been fighting Poland Spring wherever they pop up.  For more information about this issue and contact information for groups fighting against water privatization, go to www.defendingwaterinmaine.org .

is a treasure

to be protected

as a commons

held in the public trust,

not a commodity

sold in the

global marketplace

to the highest bidder.

All of life

must have access to

a sufficient quantity

of clean water!

Maine has historically been referenced as a “Paper Plantation,” but in the past decades it has become a “waste plantation” as it has become less profitable to make paper. Industry investors have turned their focus away from paper production and toward selling electricity created from burning wood and waste, calling it green biomass energy. Massive quantities of waste are being imported into Maine, which has some of the weakest rules on dumping and burning in the country, large stretches of land with few people, generous subsidies for anything biomass, and many paper mills with dumps and incinerators already in place.  Burning waste ensures the continued employment of these incineration facilities, but provides little in the way of employment for the people of Maine, who have been abandoned by the very companies that have destroyed our resources.  Ironically, more responsible methods of composting and recycling waste would employ a lot more people, but would not employ the machines in which those earth-raping companies are truly invested.

Some of the largest dumps in the Northeast are in Maine, threatening diverse wildlife habitat and wetlands bordering these dumps. Community groups are forming to work on fighting these monstrosities, and are increasingly working together with still others who are opposing destructive infrastructure developments. In the past five years, this organizing has successfully stopped the construction of a waste incinerator, two dump expansions, and a new commercial dump that would have been located on the Androscoggin River.

With Maine’s dumps looking towards biomass, Maine is now in the position to fight this growing “green” energy giant.  Biomass is becoming the next “hot thing” in green energy; posing huge risks to ecosystems wherever it is proposed while lining corporations’ pockets with dirty money.  Maine is just one of the places where biomass incineration is threatening to wreak havoc on our forested landscapes.  During the Round River Rendezvous we hope to bring together other organizations and folks working to stop biomass in their communities.

As Maine continues its unfortunate history as a resource colony, the corporations only become more and more greedy.  All of these campaigns are connected to larger, even more insidious plans, collectively known as “Atlantica,” including the development of a large east-west highway across New Brunswick, the entire state of Maine and the rest of northern New England.  This highway plan would facilitate the trade and sale of water, wood, and energy from fossil fuels, wind, and waste to the cities of the Untied States. The highway would allow for a large corridor for pipelines, power-line expansion and rail traffic exporting these resources throughout this country and Canada. With growing concern surrounding climate change, more and more false solutions disguised as “green energy” are popping up around the world.  Maine has become a regional epicenter for “green energy” creation, and the powers that be just have to figure out how to distribute the power.  Maine Earth First! has been working to illuminate these larger connections, and hopefully we can call their cards and stop the east-west highway before its starts!

Maine Earth First! is striving towards an alternative vision for the protection and re-wilding of the North Woods Bioregion.  All of the W’s pose  distinct challenges, but the organizing that has emerged from each fight has brought about new ideas and energy for what we want the North Woods to be.  The Round River Rendezvous will be a chance to present these ideas and visions while exchanging ideas and information with others from across the continent.

With so much at stake here, we are hoping to launch sustained, long-term direct-action campaigns to stop these corporate debacles, and we hope that as many of you as possible will stay on after the Rendezvous to help us protect the North Woods.