Op-Ed/Letters
Rain-assance or Reign of Sense?
Editor's Note: This marks the final entry in our series of pre-election pieces by local officials in advance of the May 20 budget referendum and townwide election. Macdonald, who has more than 10 years of past experience on the Conservation Commission and Planning Board, has offered these thoughts in the wake of this week's flood of York Beach.By Selectman Torbert H. Macdonald, Jr.
Selectman Torbert H. Macdonald, Jr.
This week we have the opportunity to stop and reflect on what direction we are developing and just how sustainable our efforts are. This year's ballot is full of plans for projects whose proponents are passionate advocates. The air is full of the rhetoric of grand schemes - "iconic" renaissances of traditional patterns such as York Beach replete with the allure of the solving all problems if you do what the proponents argue.
Instead, Mother Nature has brought us a rain-assance, which we may yet turn into a reign of sense. Vast patterns of human activity have been imposed on the natural order as if it would comply and defer to our dreams. Throughout the past 30-plus years homes and subdivisions have been built without regard to watercourses. The hard and expensive work of working with the limits to growth has been deferred or literally bulldozed.
I have for the last 20 years personally mounted an awareness campaign to warn of the dangers inherent in our development schemes - issues like respecting wetlands (our natural flood control system); proper citing of septic systems; planning that is watershed-based so that quantitative analysis may be done on the impacts of development; adequate drainage in our road system, and geological and hydro-geological analysis of development to prevent non point source pollution - only to have these concerns dismissed as minor or esoteric or irrelevant. Now that these aquatic birds have come home to roost, perhaps we may indeed create a real renaissance - a reign of sense - to control and manage the impacts of development.
The Iroquois Indian Federation, which gave Benjamin Franklin the inspiration for the structure of our governing Constitution, was itself governed by the principle of analyzing potential action in terms of seven generations back in time and seven generations forward in time. A proposal had to make sense in both directions before being implemented. We might well adopt this principle and call it sustainability.
From the viewpoint of sustainability the following budgetary ballot items can be analyzed as positive:
Article #23 Fix Pine Hill south drainage. This is also a moral obligation of the town to correct town-made errors of commission and omission that have destroyed this private property.
Article #22 Catch-up paving. Too few dollars, but a beginning.
Article #56 Drainage in Winterbrook and Orchard Farms. Again, the town has a moral obligation to correct road and drainage inadequacies that the town erroneously accepted as properly designed. If you balk at the price tag, please remember - you, too, are likely future beneficiaries of remedial drainage work. Almost no part of town is exempt from these needs.
Articles #72,73,79,75. These are all necessary catch-up and maintenance projects on roads, sidewalks, etc. Under the aware guidance of Bill Bray, the public works director, all current and future roadwork will include the necessary drainage work to ensure sustainability.
The following items do not, in my estimate, meet the test of sustainability:
Article #77: the $7.5 million arts wing. The intent of this project is noble but the execution of the idea is deeply flawed. As we enter the brave new world of permanently high-energy prices, with global warming now universally acknowledged, and with 150,000-plus Americans at risk in the oil fields of the Middle East, it is to me unconscionable for any major building project to be devoid of "green" or sustainable features. There is no solar here, with a perfect south-facing site wasted. The idea is fine, the execution unacceptable. Bring it back as a solar/green building.
Article #24. Despite the fear mongering rhetoric to the contrary, this expenditure to "control mosquitoes" will not make us any safer from insect born disease. The rains of this week make a mockery of the idea that anything can be done that would practically influence our land of 10,000 wetlands. No responsible medical authority (neither U.S. CDC or Maine MDC) is either strongly recommending or funding this larvaciding. The vendor is a monopoly purveyor of these services and this therefore is a monopoly price.
Remember - there have only been 200 cases of this disease in the entire United States since the 1960s - five per year on average. No drug company would waste their research dollars on such a small threat - that's why there's no vaccine. Furthermore, the town has no public health infrastructure and the Board of Selectmen is an unqualified default substitute for such. The BOS has no special knowledge in this area and, in my opinion, is backing larvaciding in order to appear to be decisive.
If we apply these methods and no cases appear (as is statistically extremely likely), the claim will be made that it was the larvaciding that kept us safe and you, the voter, will have a $75,000 to $100,000 item on the budget ballot in perpetuity.
The most effective prevention is personal prophylactic hygiene. Cover up, use DEET, don't go naked in the woods, etc.
The Selectmen also lack the qualifications to be granted the authority to "deal" on behalf of the public for either the Bog Road lands or the list of town-held property the BOS wants to sell. In both cases (Articles #12 and #13 special general referenda for Bog Road Land and Article #29 of the budget referendum for other town owned lands), there are no standards by which to judge either the lands in question or their potential uses, nor is there any necessary public hearing or process on the Bog Road land. This is too much power to grant a board that has yet to display the careful, deliberate decision-making capability necessary for true sustainability.
