*Action Alert *
*Funding of East-West Highway Feasibility Study*
*Coming up for vote as early as tomorrow, 2/28***
*Contact your representative today opposing LD 1671***
* *
*LD 1671, *An Act To Provide Funding to the Department of Transportation
for a Feasibility Study for an East-West Highway, has been voted out of the
Transportation Committee and is expected on the floor as early as tomorrow,
February 28. We need to flood the legislature with e-mails and calls
opposing this taxpayer subsidy of private profits at a time the budget is
being cut for programs which are critical to the health and welfare of the
people of Maine.
*Points to make:*
- *Public money for private profit. *Your tax dollars should not be
used to fund a financial feasibility study to attract Wall Street investors
for a private toll road that will benefit the highway investors and
Canadian energy and trucking companies, but not the people of Maine.
- *No way to limit the cost to taxpayers. * If the study requires more
funding than the $300,000 allocated in the bill when the DOT puts the study
out to bid, the sponsors will not need to bring it back before the
Transportation Committee or the legislature. *This means taxpayers are
signing a blank check for a private project.***
- *Not for Maine communities, or tourists. * This road will not be
accessible to Mainers or tourists for two reasons: 1) The tolls will be
controlled by investors and cost prohibitive for most except Canadian
transports. 2) The project will only have two interchanges, one north
of Dover Foxcroft to allow containers to be exchanged, and one at Route
201. **
* *
- *Diminished local economic opportunity, and community vibrancy. *There
has been no discussion of potential environmental impacts of this highway,
particularly impacts to Maine’s water and forests if the highway encourages
the export of water and wood chips. A financial feasibility study will
ignore these impacts. This kind of little to no value-added
globalization exploits resource-rich communities like ours. It leaves
communities in poverty because they no longer have value in their land to
sustain themselves, and in conflict because people are powerless to meet
their needs. Let’s support local economic initiatives, small business, and
community vitality.
- *No public voice + limited state regulation = an environmental and
community disaster.* As a private project, there will be no room for
public advocacy on any aspect of it after it leaves the State Legislature.
That is a huge infringement on individual rights, and local control. This
feasibility study opens the door to one of the most significant landscape
and cultural transformations Maine has ever seen, with no feedback from
Mainers.
- *Burning even more fossil-fuel – that doesn’t seem right. * Globally
and nationally, we are running out of oil. To meet our current demand,
people are considering dangerous and costly projects like moving Tar Sands
oil from Alberta, Canada to U.S. refineries. Building another road,
that would cause irreversible damage to the environment and local
communities, is moving in the wrong direction.
- *Jobs. A short-lived increase isn’t worth a long depression. *The
road will depress local land values, decrease tourist appeal, increase
pollution that makes the land less viable for farming and other local land
use, as well as exploiting the resources that are the foundation of Maine’s
value-added sectors.**
* *
- *A supercorridor for natural gas, and what else? *New information
that the highway might create a corridor for a natural gas pipeline from
Canada’s gas fracking fields in Quebec and New Brunswick to ports in its
maritime provinces and for liquid petroleum gas (LPG) to be trucked to the
fields to use a new gas fracking technology, adds to the urgency to stop
this bill and to conduct a thorough study of what this highway might really
entail.**
- For those with a Democratic representative, note that the D’s on the
Transportation Committee voted no in committee. Thank them and ask them
to speak out forcefully on the floor when the bill is brought up. They
are:
- Richard Cebra- R 693-6782 RepRich.Cebra@legislature.maine.gov
- Ann Peoples- D 287-1430 RepAnn.Peoples@legislature.maine.gov
- Charles Theriault- D 728-4526
RepCharlesK.Theriault@legislature.maine.gov
- Edward Mazurek- D 542-0017 RepEd.Mazurek@legislature.maine.gov
- George Hogan- D 423-4293 RepGeorge.Hogan@legislature.maine.gov
For more background go to www.defendingwater.net/maine/east-west-highway/
Action Alert! Funding of East-West Highway Feasibility Study
On February - 28 - 2012 ADD COMMENTS
