Time to get out?
To the editor:
The Aug. 8, 2012, Star-Herald ran a front-page article on the Presque Isle bypass. In that article Kathy McCarty quotes MDOT Commissioner David Bernhardt saying, “… about 26 properties along the route [need] to relocate …” with the state having “a couple years, by state law, to acquire” the properties and “work with them, give it time to work so when we finally acquire [property] they’ll have had time to get out.”
We are two multi-generational families who have, for more than a century, held on to our land and operated our farms, which are located on the south and north ends of the bypass route. Since 2003, we have combed every study and attended every meeting open to the public. We have consistently supported a single option: “No Build.”
We are hardly surprised we will have to “get out.” Over the years, we have repeatedly asked heads of MDOT, Army Corps of Engineers, Federal Highway Commission, state assessors, city manager and council, and the community at large, “Where is it you wish us to get out to?”
There has never been a truthful answer to that, except for housing for which the state is only obligated to provide a “safe and sanitary” alternative. Promises to pay “fair market value” for the directly seized homes or acres for hot-top do not compensate for the upheaval of families’ lives, or for ruination of an entire farm slashed in two by a non-accessible road.
We are offering a bit of factual background on what began as the North-South Highway Project with the full backing of Sen. Susan Collins. The goal was to build a four- (more likely two-) lane highway to connect northern Maine with I-95 in Houlton and to improve the local economy.
The plan was to construct bypasses around Presque Isle and Caribou, to make a “footprint,” as Ray Faucher, Maine DOT, described it, for the I-95 extension. Bernard now confirms that the I-95 extension, a primary reason folks in the St. John Valley supported the plan, will not occur.
In 2006, MDOT and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) issued their Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Statement (SDEIS) on the Aroostook County Transportation Study (ACTS). Though Caribou’s was built first, the Presque Isle bypass was the lynch-pin segment for the 100-mile stretch from Houlton to Madawaska. Today, six years later, these bypasses are no longer intended to be part of an I-95 extension. Which raises the legitimate question of who do they serve?
The SDEIS revealed some startling facts for the Presque Isle Bypass, which the current city manager and council choose to ignore and probably wish those of us with long memories would forget:
“The Presque Isle Bypass alone has moderate economic effects during the construction phase, but relatively small effects thereafter” (4-27).
The Bypass was “predicted, in 2030, to result in 26 new jobs within the Study Area, and would not cause a substantial increase in area businesses” (4-104). The Study Area is the entire 100-mile stretch.
The Bypass was “anticipated to result in a population increase of 75 persons (by 2030) and would have negligible residential growth effects” (4-105).
The “maximum foreseeable secondary development” from the Bypass consisted of “three gas stations and two fast-food outlets” (4-105).
The Regional Economic Model (REMI) used to predict economic results of projects such as ACTS treats tax expenditures as cost-free.
REMI predicts (in 2003 dollars) the $120.8 million cost of the Bypass will produce a total combined personal income gain of just $3.79 million for all Presque Isle citizens between the time of the study and 2035. It also showed that the total gain would not be equally distributed among all Presque Isle citizens during that period.
REMI predicted that the Presque Isle Bypass would yield a total gain in retail sales of $230,000 between 2008 and 2035.
The Presque Isle Bypass “does not greatly improve Aroostook County connections with the rest of Maine, other states or Canada” (4-27).
The Presque Isle Bypass Economic Impact Study, published in November, 2007, concluded that
“the Presque Isle Bypass would only have modest impacts on business activity in and around the city’s downtown …” and
“Businesses that are negatively affected by the bypass should not lose more than 10 percent of their existing business activity.” Translated into reality, a 10 percent loss for some of those businesses means someone loses a job, or the business itself has to close.
These documents are chilling reminders of how MDOT, city managers and councils, Leaders Encouraging Aroostook Development, and other bureaucracies, along with individuals and special interest groups who will profit from the construction phase, operate and manipulate the public. They know few people will take the time and make the effort to read the reports and studies, attend meetings and speak up. When citizens question or object, the bureaucrats and monied powers resort to government-speak, imperialistic executive powers, and payola to get their way.
Economic development was the only reason cited by Faucher for this project, yet neither the N-S highway project nor the “footprint” bypasses offers concrete betterment for the bypassed towns or Aroostook’s population as a whole. At public meetings the majority of attendees consistently opposed the project, just as they did the recent downtown plan to bulldoze an east-west swath across Main Street.
The notion that any road building is good for the economy is wrong. The costs for losses are always omitted from the conversation. Actual homes, farms, businesses, livelihoods, human beings, will be lost and displaced. Those can be measured, counted, identified. One man or one company might enjoy profits from construction or the location of the bypass, but what of the tax-paying families, farms, and businesses who will be crushed by the project? When losses outweigh gains, the logic and the project are flawed.
The argument that the bypass will alleviate Main Street truck traffic is flawed too. That problem is caused by east-west trucks, not north-south. Sensible plans formulated and financed decades ago to add a connector route (now section 2 of the bypass) became snarled and stalled in the larger N-S highway.
These road projects are fiscal madness. Millions have been spent in the studies; many millions more are required to complete the bypasses. By 2008 the price of asphalt had more than doubled since the 2006 projection costs (in 2003 dollars) were made — so what are they today? MDOT is so far in the hole, it can’t even see the rim, yet this mess continues — to the detriment of citizen and taxpayers the length of Maine, and national taxpayers whose dollars pay for federal highway projects.
What kind of “development” is this bypass for a community that is losing population? Those of us along the route are given time to “get out.” And when we do, where shall we go and what will we do? The only sure thing for us is that the obligatory, minimalistic financial compensation will not cover our economic and generational losses. It will only drive us down and out, not up.
Pamela and Wayne Sweetser
P&W Sweetser Beef Farm
Dan and Lucille Stewart
Dan Stewart Family Farm
