The people of Bucksport and surrounding communities are rising to meet the global challenges of peak oil, resource depletion, environmental degradation and climate change, addressing them locally through an Environment and Energy Committee formed in 2006.
It’s a big committee with 19 members and 12 associate members. The group held a public forum on environmental issues in January to look at results of a survey on selected issues taken in the autumn of 2007. The survey drew 304 responses from l88 households.
Topping the list of five concerns with 221 votes was the impact of global climate change on human health, forests, wildlife and food and water supplies. A wide-ranging discussion at the forum revealed that Bucksporters are deeply concerned about these matters, reflecting rising public and private recognition that climate change must be our local and global priority for the foreseeable future.
“I was surprised,” said Pam Person, committee chair. A member of the League of Women Voters, Person is a veteran advocate who seems to know everybody in Maine. She didn’t expect the citizens of a mill town to identify climate change as their number one concern.
Hard behind climate change were issues of air emissions, ranging from high ozone to what’s being burned in outdoor furnaces. Running a close third was the need for renewable energy and increasing energy efficiency. Actions were recommended to look at natural gas for downtown businesses and solar lighting for Penobscot Narrows Bridge. Bucksport town manager Roger Raymond recently launched an initiative to explore wind and tidal turbine generators. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has received an application for a permit to study a tidal site in Penobscot Narrows.
A fourth question addressed the disposal of paints, gasoline and similar toxics at the Bucksport Transfer Station, The fifth question asked about people’s concerns over waste discharges into both salt and freshwater.
The diversity of the Bucksport community including Orland, Verona Island, Prospect and Stockton Springs was apparent among forum participants: Ken Gallant, environmental manager for Verso Paper Company, Town Councilman and former harbormaster Michael Ormsby, business people, farmers, teachers, representatives of Penobscot Energy Recovery Company (PERC), the chamber of commerce and the Orland planning board and a reporter from The Bucksport Enterprise.
A handout listing 36 things anyone can do to cut use of gasoline, diesel, heating oil, propane and electricity — some low cost, some no cost, all money saving — provided insight into the thoroughness with which the Bucksport community is investigating ways everyone can begin to change energy habits.
For information call Pam Person at 469-6770 or Mary Jane Bush, planning director for Bucksport Bay Healthy Community Coalition at 469-6682.