The Land Use Planning Commission (LUPC) recently adopted zoning rules that provide opportunity for rural business to locate and grow in new areas of Aroostook County. The rule changes establish a rural business development zone that can be used by businesses and property owners to accommodate business development in 30 towns, townships and plantations across Aroostook County that are part of the unorganized and deorganized areas of the state. The changes are a product of the LUPC’s Community Guided Planning and Zoning (CGPZ) initiative, which joins with local partners to help regions identify their land use needs and plan for the region’s future.

“This is an example of how state government can assist local communities in strengthening rural economies by removing regulatory hurdles that impede economic development,” said Governor Paul R. LePage. “The LUPC’s work with local partners in Aroostook County demonstrates that a pro-job planning approach can be taken without adversely impacting Maine’s environment.”

“The Governor has been very clear since day one that he wants to create more jobs and economic opportunities in rural Maine,” said Commissioner Walt Whitcomb. “I commend the hard work of our Aroostook County partners and the Land Use Planning Commission. Their work promotes a more user-friendly model for activities that impact unorganized and deorganized areas in Maine.”

In Aroostook County, the Northern Maine Development Commission (NMDC) and a citizen steering committee worked with the LUPC to develop new zoning opportunities and improve the business climate in the county.

“We recognize that home-based and other rural businesses are an important part of the economy in Aroostook County,” said Nick Livesay, Director of the LUPC. “The dedicated residents and other stakeholders who served on the steering committee, with support from NMDC and the Commission, have developed regulatory changes that give new opportunity for business growth in rural northern Maine.”

The rule changes developed in Aroostook County are the first to come out of the LUPC’s CGPZ initiative and become effective on May 9. Efforts to improve the effectiveness of land use planning and provide for economic development opportunities in the unorganized and deorganized areas of Maine have focused, in part, on the need for more locally guided and proactive planning for these areas. This is a result of 2012 legislation that called for more prospective zoning and emphasized the LUPC’s role in honoring the rights and participation of residents and property owners in the areas of the state that it serves. The LUPC will continue to collaborate with partners in Aroostook County to plan for future land use needs, and is working with local and regional partners on similar CGPZ projects in other regions including, in Franklin, Somerset, and Washington counties.

For more information about these and other projects, please visit the LUPC website: http://www.maine.gov/dacf/lupc

Commissioner Walt Whitcomb highlighted how the improvements directly benefit consumers. “We want visitors to our state parks to have an enjoyable experience, starting with ease in making reservations,” said Whitcomb. “Campers often have their hearts set on a certain site and on particular dates. It is important that our online service allows them to book what they want reliably, efficiently and securely. Awards and positive recognition from both inside and outside state government, reinforces our belief that we are meeting this goal. I want to thank all the people involved, particularly Charlene Daniels for her leadership helping implement these changes.”

About the Maine’s Campground Reservations service:

The Maine Campground Reservation service a web-based reservation system allowing users to reserve nights at any of Maine’s twelve state parks. Prior to this solution, users were provided an online form to request a campsite. When the season began, nearly 3,000 people would be vying for similar sites and dates, all of which had to be manually processed by the call center staff, a process that took almost a month to complete.

Reservations are now processed online by users for Sebago State Park on the first opening day and for all other parks on the second opening day which occurs one week later. The web-based system reliably handles the opening day rush, processing hundreds of transactions in the first fifteen minutes of each opening day. What used to take weeks to process now takes roughly a half hour. The Campground Reservations service was developed through a collaboration with Maine’s eGovernment partner, Maine Information Network, LLC, a subsidiary of NIC, at no cost to taxpayers.

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Gov. Paul R. LePage and the Maine Spruce Budworm Task Force released recommendations about how to respond to the upcoming spruce budworm infestation.

“Coming Spruce Budworm Outbreak: Initial Risk Assessment and Preparation & Response Recommendations for Maine’s Forestry Community” and other materials are available at http://sprucebudwormmaine.org.

“We are on the verge of another spruce budworm epidemic and our goal is to lessen its damage,” Gov. Paul LePage said at a news conference in the Cabinet room.

The eastern spruce budworm is believed to be the most damaging forest insect in Maine and North America. Outbreaks kill balsam fir and spruce trees every 30 to 60 years. The Province of Quebec has been mapping defoliation from this pest for more than a decade. In 2015, 15.6 million acres of Quebec’s forests were defoliated. Significant defoliation occurred south of the St. Lawrence Seaway. The infestation already has spread into New Brunswick.

“Severe defoliation is within 50 miles of Maine’s border,” said Dave Struble, state entomologist. “We are at the start of an outbreak. We don’t know how bad it will be or exactly where, but we are seeing a build-up of budworm populations here.”

The budworm task force was formed in 2013 to determine the economic and ecological effects another outbreak might have on the state and a strategy to minimize those effects. Leading the collaborative effort are Robert Wagner, director of the Cooperative Forestry Research Unit (CFRU) at UMaine; Patrick Strauch, executive director of the Maine Forest Products Council, and Doug Denico, director of the Maine Forest Service.

Task force teams, composed of leading experts on budworm and Maine's forest resources, focused on wood supply and economic impacts; monitoring and protection; forest management; policy, regulatory and funding; wildlife habitat; communications and outreach; and research priorities. A draft report of their findings was released for public review in November 2014 and presented to municipalities, environmental groups, the legislature, logging contractors and economic development consortiums.

“It’s like having a hurricane moving toward us from offshore,” Wagner said. “We know it is there, how it behaves and the kind of damage it can do. We can hope that it misses us, but if we don’t prepare for the worst, shame on us.”

The report includes about 70 recommendations on preparing for the outbreak, including increasing monitoring efforts, applying pesticides where appropriate, changing forest management strategies such as harvesting, and seeking ways to pre-salvage trees that likely would be lost.

“The budworm threat remains the same, but a lot of other things have changed,” Strauch said. “Our industry is governed by the Forest Practices Act now; pesticides are highly regulated and far more expensive, and there’s much less state and federal funding available. So the landowner community will need to figure out the best path forward. This report provides a framework to help landowners make good decisions.”

Denico, who has vivid memories of the last infestation, said he and other members of the task force are determined that this outbreak won’t take the state by surprise as the last one did. By 1975, not only Maine, but “the entire region from Ontario to Newfoundland was involved in the largest spruce budworm outbreak ever recorded.” (The Spruce Budworm Outbreak in Maine in the 1970's).

In Maine, budworm destroyed up to 25 million cords of spruce-fir wood -- 21 percent of all fir trees in the state, according to Maine Forest Service reports. Millions of dollars were spent on the “Battle of the Budworm,” as it was called, and the infestation cost the state’s forest-based economy hundreds of millions. It also had lasting effects on Maine forest management. 

“We were there, in the battle,” Denico said. “We remember and we’ve made a commitment that we won’t be unprepared this time.”