To the editor:
Our financial problems started long before this recent recession; and it’ll get worse after the FY 2010, when state government will have to look deeper for more funding. As I see it, the biggest problem is low incomes for most of the state’s work force-keeping the income tax base low. As more and more workers retire and the younger generation having to look elsewhere for good-paying jobs, the income tax base keeps getting smaller and smaller. And the only way to generate enough money for the general fund is to raise taxes and cut government spending. But the state can only cut so much before hurting everyone. Not to mention putting such a burden on state workers.
Workers outside of Maine are being paid twice as much, sometimes a great deal more, for the same work that is being done here. Factories and mills from Fort Kent to Kittery have closed. Some because of this recession and some because of cheaper overseas labor. So our young people have to leave Maine to seek employment.
Because of low wages, outside developers are exploiting this state; buying up huge tracts of land which Maine folks can’t afford. Let alone the expensive houses they build on this land … more often as developments.
I am seriously concerned about the financial crisis of this state and I am worried about the integrity and the way of life here. So in January, I wrote a letter to Governor Baldacci expressing my concerns and offering a viable way out of this crises. But as yet, he has not replied. The following information was sent in the letter to the Governor:
Maine is extremely rich in mineral resources. But because of DEP’s excessive regulations, these resources will never be mined. There’s mineral gems in the western mountains of Maine, huge copper, gold and other precious metals … oh yeah and oil in northern Maine, and off-shore oil deposits. In 1988, I talked with Getty’s site engineer at their operations near Pickett Mountain in T6-R6, and I was told that all of the explorations were complete and they were now just waiting for DEP’s permit, to start the operations. The mining would all be underground and would last for 25 years and for the first 2 ? years, they would mine only gold and then go after the other precious minerals there-huge deposits of copper, molybdenum, lead, nickel, silver and oil. This engineer said he found oil at 1,100 feet.
He told me about the huge copper deposit at Bald Mountain, west of Ashland and said if a third copper deposit could be found, that a crushing plant would be built in the Ashland-Masardis area near the B&A railroad tracks. The ore would be loaded into rail cars and hauled to either Searsport or Bucksport and loaded onto freighters and shipped to India for processing.
Just imagine how this would rejuvenate a struggling railroad and put people back to work.
Since talking with this engineer, Chevron Resources have located the third copper deposit in T8-R3, west of Monticello in Aroostook County. Oil has also been found in Merrill, a short distance off rt. 212, at a depth of 75 feet. Chevron’s engineer said they knew there was oil there just by looking at the rock composition in a nearby gravel pit.
In 1990, I found a gold deposit; along with sulfur and puritite that assayed richer than the richest gold mine in the Lower 48. I then talked with Chevron Resources, BHP Utah, mining companies in China and South Africa and they all said the same thing; “Until Maine adopts some regulations that we can live with, there’ll never be any mining in Maine.”
Some time later, I was talking with a person from DEP’s Presque Isle office and this person said that as long as he had anything to do with it, there would never be any mining in this state. The environmentalists are concerned about using mercury and cyanide in processing the ore and polluting the water. But mercury and cyanide are no longer used. It is now done by using electricity. And besides, remember Getty’s engineer said that the ore would be shipped to India for processing.
Mining companies have been able to operate environmentally safe elsewhere and it probably could be done here also.
I have talked with the local representatives in the area and after some researching, he said that environmentalists had infiltrated every department in state and that it would be difficult to pass any resolution that would allow mining.
Employment would increase exponentially as the mines were being developed and operated. New plants would have to be built, the railroad would be rejuvenated, roads to build, carpenters would be put to work, as well as new mining operators, equipment operators, truck drivers, geologists, engineers and the list goes on and on.
Opening the mines would have a ripple effect across the state, putting people back to work with good-paying jobs and a future. They could afford things that those from the outside take for granted … that perhaps we here might have considered to be luxuries. We could afford to send our children to college and some of those graduates would come back to Maine to live and work. We could afford health care and health insurance, comfortable housing, a new vehicle. A 3-phase electric power line would have to be brought into the mines. Electricians would be put back to work and best of all, as the incomes got better, Maine’s tax base would also get better.
Myself, I would like to see us return to the 1950s and ‘60s when gas was .25 9/10 cents and heating fuel was .17 cents. We can’t go back, but people in this state deserve better than what our last legislature just came up with.
It seems pointless to try and preserve the state so it’s so pristine, to the point when people who helped make life here so attractive to outsiders, that we have to move away to find jobs with better pay. What’s more important, preserving this state so it looks like an untouched, unused state park where no one can live? Or maybe DEP working with the mining companies who have interests in this state and making this state once again a working state?
I would like to see a committee formed, not just with legislators and members from DEP, but with some people from the general community to study and investigate some of these rulings that seem so restrictive to the mining companies.
Bethel
