PRE-FILED DIRECT TESTIMONY OF ROBERT KIMBER ON BEHALF OF THE FRIENDS OF THE BOUNDARY MOUNTAINS BEFORE THE MAINE LAND USE REGULATION COMMISION In the matter of the Rezoning Application ZP 709 TransCanada Maine Wind Development, Inc. and Plum Creek Maine Timberlands, LLC. For a 132 MW Wind Energy Plant in Skinner Township and Kibby Township, Franklin County, Maine Introduction My name is Robert Kimber. I live at 147 Intervale Road, Temple, Maine 04984. Mailing address: PO Box 525, Temple, Maine 04984. I am a semi-retired translator and freelance writer with a special interest in outdoor and environmental subjects. I say semi-retired because writers do not retire for good until they keel over. I have summarized those parts of my work and experience relevant to this proceeding in a résumé attached to this testimony as Exhibit RK-1. I will focus my remarks on “remoteness and the relative absence of development” and their bearing on scenic values and recreational opportunities, especially on backcountry recreation. These topics are closely related and cannot be treated in complete isolation from each other. Passages I consider most relevant to these topics from the applicable statutes, rules, and 1 standards are listed and quoted in the footnote below. 1 For the Commission to approve rezoning of a P-MA subdistrict to a D-PD subdistrict, it must ensure that the proposal “(1) Conforms with the objectives and policies of the Comprehensive Land Use Plan and 12 M.R.S.A., 206-A; (2) Incorporates, where the land proposed for inclusion in the D-PD subdistrict is in a protection subdistrict, a substantially equivalent level of environmental and resource protection as was afforded under such protected subdistrict; (3) Utilizes the best reasonably available site for the proposed use.” (Chapter 10, Section 10.21.G.8.b(1), (2), and (3). The pertinent sections of M.R.S.A., 206-A, both reinforce and add to these requirements: The Commission may not approve an application unless: “The proposed land use district satisfies a demonstrated need in the community or area and has no undue adverse impact on existing uses or resources…” (Title 12, 685-A, 8-A(B). “Adequate provision has been made for fitting the proposal harmoniously into the existing natural environment in order to assure there will be no undue adverse effect on existing uses, scenic character and natural and historic resources in the area likely to be affected by the proposal.” (Title 12, 685-B, 4-C) The purpose of the Mountain Area Protection Subdistrict (P-MA) as defined in 10.23.G (P-MA), paragraph 1, is “to preserve the natural equilibrium of vegetation, geology, slope, soil and climate in order to reduce danger to public health and safety posed by unstable mountain areas, to protect water quality, and to preserve mountain areas for their scenic values and recreational opportunities.” Title 12, 685-A(1)(A) provides a general definition of protection districts as “areas where development would jeopardize significant natural, recreational and historic resources, including, but not limited to, flood plains, precipitous slopes, wildlife habitat and other areas critical to the ecology of the region or State.” 2 The construction of the wind-power plant that would follow on rezoning Kibby Mountain and the Kibby range would sacrifice an important region, which, if left undeveloped, will continue to provide the people of Maine with far greater benefits than forty-four wind-power turbines can. But of greater import here than my personal opinion is whether the proposed project meets the criteria for approval spelled out in Maine statutes, in LURC’s Comprehensive Land Use Plan (CLUP), and in its Chapter 10 Land Use Districts and Standards (Ch. 10). I am convinced that it does not. But before I turn to specific points in the petitioner’s application, I’d like to make two general observations. 1. My first observation concerns the big picture within which TransCanada’s application has to be assessed, a picture of increasingly diversified ownerships and of increasing competition over increasingly rare resources in LURC’s jurisdiction. No one is more aware of that big picture than the members of this Commission, who have to deal in this one year with three major wind-power proposals and, at Moosehead Lake, with the most massive development proposal Maine has seen to date. As the CLUP notes (p. 47), “Many of the [LURC] jurisdiction’s values are closely linked to forest resources, including large-scale commercial forestry, ecological diversity, and recreation in a remote setting ….Fragmentation of ownership and associated changes in use and management threaten to undermine the integrity of the forest resource in a way that compromises these values.” In short, a wind-power project in the location and of the scale proposed by TransCanada is alien to the principal values of the jurisdiction and destructive of them. 2. Secondly, if there is any one concept implicit throughout the CLUP and underlying its goals and policies, that concept is the integrity of the jurisdiction—its wholeness, its soundness as a natural system. Forestry, ecological diversity, and recreation in a remote setting all depend on keeping the jurisdiction intact and on putting the strictest of limits on uses and management incompatible with those traditional uses and principal values. As the CLUP notes (pp. 46-47), now that the de facto protections of few roads in the jurisdiction and of large ownerships devoted primarily to forest management and outdoor recreation are no longer in place—controls that prevailed from late in the nineteenth century and through much of the twentieth—it now falls increasingly to the Land Use Regulation Commission to protect the North Woods’ principal values and traditional uses and to see that “the natural world remains the dominant presence” in the jurisdiction. (CLUP, p. 16) “Natural area…forestry…recreation”—these terms keep recurring in the CLUP in various permutations, leaving no doubt in the reader’s mind that the Commission’s broad mandate does not include encouraging residential sprawl or industrial development. Noteworthy, three of the jurisdiction’s four principal values (p. 114) focus on primitive outdoor recreation or the intrinsic value of natural resources: “Diverse and abundant recreational opportunities, particularly for primitive pursuits. (italics added) 3 “Diverse, abundant and unique high-value natural resources and features, including lakes, rivers and other water resources, fish and wildlife resources, ecological values, scenic and cultural resources, coastal islands, and mountain areas and other geologic resources. “Natural character values, which include the uniqueness of a vast forested area that is largely undeveloped and remote from population centers.” (italics added) Further, “Remoteness and the relative absence of development are perhaps the most distinctive of the jurisdiction’s principal values, due mainly to their increasing rarity in the Eastern United States. (italics added)… The value of natural resources is generally enhanced when they are part of a large, undisturbed area, especially one that encompasses entire watersheds or ecosystems” (CLUP, p. 114). “Remote, undeveloped qualities are also particularly sensitive to permanent changes in the landscape resulting from development. The remote character of a pristine pond, for instance, may be lost long before development threatens water quality or wildlife habitat. These values may be difficult to quantify but they are integral to the jurisdiction’s identity and to its overall character” (CLUP, p. 115). Among Maine’s “exceptional recreational opportunities” the CLUP enumerates are “approximately 100 mountain peaks over 3,000 feet high,” adding: “As exceptional as these resources are, it is the area’s remoteness and lack of development that sets it apart…For many users, these remote, undeveloped qualities not only enhance, but essentially define, their recreational experience, distinguishing it from excursions in more populous areas. As other recreational lands are increasingly developed, opportunities for backcountry experiences will become scarcer, and the remote values of the jurisdiction will become even more highly prized.” (CLUP, pp. 59-60) (italics added) I have quoted these passages from the CLUP at some length because they state unequivocally that the jurisdiction’s very identity depends both on its vast size and on the relative absence of development. To meet the rezoning criteria and receive project approval, the proposal must show consistency with the CLUP. But any large industrial project in the Boundary Mountains, such as the one proposed by TransCanada, would represent a massive presence of development and is totally at odds with the CLUP’s stated values for the jurisdiction, with the Commission’s lead policies for Location of Development (CLUP, p. 140), Forest Resources (CLUP, p. 136), and Recreational Resources (CLUP, p. 138), and with the traditional uses of the North Woods. In light of all these factors—the ownership and management shifts that threaten both to suburbanize and industrialize the North Woods, the Commission’s statutory commitment to protect the integrity of the jurisdiction, and the increasing demand for back-country recreational resources—we should be jealously guarding every inch of semi-wild land we have left for the benefit both of Maine residents and of the visitors who come here hungry to experience landscapes that still retain significant wild character. 4 Remoteness The words “remote” and “remoteness” occur over 100 times in the CLUP, often in conjunction with phrases like “undeveloped character.” Indeed, “remoteness and the relative absence of development are perhaps the most distinctive of the jurisdiction’s principal values.” One of the CLUP’s policies on Infrastructure states: “Require that new utility lines, pipelines, and their associated facilities be…(c) located so as not to inappropriately encroach upon or change the character of remote areas…” (CLUP, p. 142). In this project, new utility lines and the turbines associated with them would inappropriately encroach upon and change the character of a remote area.