Southern Aroostook Development Corporation hosts annual board meeting, presents awards

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BUSINESS AWARDED — Southern Aroostook Development Corporation Executive Director Jon Mclaughlin presents David and Jonathan Harbison of Harbison’s Plumbing and Bison Pumps of Houlton with the organization’s Outstanding Business Award at Wednesday’s annual meeting. More information on Bison pumps can be found at www.bisonpumps.com.
    HOULTON — Houlton Regional Hospital’s Health Education Center was the site Dec. 12, for the Southern Aroostook Development Corporation’s (SADC) annual breakfast meeting.
    About 50 attendees from around the state were on hand to hear about projects that SADC has been working on for 2012 and to hear of proposals in the work for the upcoming year.  In addition, they heard a presentation from Executive Director, Jon McLaughlin, entitled, “Things Are Bad in the Houlton Area…or Are They – You Decide!” in which he outlined the many positive things that have happened in the region the past year.
    Matt Kearns, vice president of business development for First Wind, headquartered in Boston and Portland, was the guest speaker for the meeting. Matt spoke about financing and operations of wind mill operations within Maine, updated the group on the status of the Oakfield project, gave a history of First Wind operations and his thoughts on future projects within Aroostook County and the need for additional electrical utility upgrades to the Aroostook grid in order to wheel electrical power in and out of the County in a reliable and more cost effective fashion.
    In addition to the regular slate of business that needed to come before the board members in attendance, which resulted in Terry Wade of Smith & Wesson being nominated to another term as president and chair of the board, two very special awards were given.
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CELEBRATED — Cathy O’Leary, left, was honored Dec. 12 with the Southern Aroostook Development Corporation’s “President Award” by Terry Wade.
    The “President’s Award” is given to an individual that the incumbent president feels has done a superb job of representing the southern Aroostook region well in economic development. It is given at the discretion of the SADC president and is not awarded every year. In fact, in the past 15 years only two such awards have previously been awarded.
    This year, Wade thought a worthy candidate came to the forefront as being one that best fits the requirements of a recipient. For her efforts in handling her daily workloads, while taking on the task of being interim town manager for a much longer time frame than expected, and doing an exceptional job at both while promoting continued economic development projects, Wade chose Cathy O’Leary, Houlton assistant town manager, as the SADC 2012 President’s Award recipient.
    The award reads “In recognition of: outstanding service to the citizens of the town of Houlton, and residents of southern Aroostook, for her steadfast belief and guidance during her extended interim town manager role, in the continuation of the economic development projects of the Southern Aroostook Development Corporation.”
    In addition to the President’s Award, this year the executive committee wanted to start honoring an outstanding business with an award.
    The first recipient of this award is a local business that came into being after the devastating ice storm of 1998. Local business owner, Dave Harbison of Harbison Plumbing and Heating, determined that there had to be a way to use a hand pump in an existing well casing to extract well water in emergency situations such as the ice storm. Hand pumps have been around for well over 100 years. The only problem is that they were only able to draw water from a very low static water level. For Haribson’s idea to take shape, the pump had to be able to become a deep-water pump capable of lifting water from at least 200 feet.
    Harbison and his employees brain stormed and in 1999 came up with the first version of such a pump. Since then the pump has been refined several times and is sold in many different configurations. Not only are they sold in all states in the U.S., but to several developing Third World countries. The majority of sales are Internet based. Bison Pumps, an entrepreneurial idea of Harbison, is flourishing and utilizes the very latest in computerized manufacturing technology and currently employs 10 people. His son, Jonathan, joined him a few years ago and so the spirit to expand continues. 
    Bison Pumps’ award reads “In recognition of true Aroostook County entrepreneurial spirit that has created a thriving, global, manufacturing business from a start-up idea in 1999 to a major southern Aroostook employer in 2012, creating a product that has become a life saver in developing third world countries and trusting in the Aroostook workforce to bring their product to life.”