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Recently a Bangor newspaper printed an opinion piece by John Luoma which serves only to perpetuate misconceptions about the Allagash Wilderness Waterway. His piece, cut from the same cloth as the Natural Resource Council of Maine's distortions and misrepresentations of the past four years, says nothing new. He tries to raise once again the totally false issue of reducing vehicular access points to only two or three. His assertion that there be two or possibly three vehicle access points to the Allagash Waterway is one more instance of opinion being presented as fact. The statement Luoma quotes does not come from any application to the federal government. It comes from an informational report "...prepared by the Maine State Park and Recreation Commission to support the Governor's application..." (report foreword). Governor Kenneth Curtis' letters to Interior Secretary Hickel, which are viewed by the National Parks Service as "the application," never mention number or location of access points. Nor does the Allagash Statute of 1966 mention number or location of access points. This very same questionable claim was contained in an NRCM lawsuit challenging the state's managment of the Waterway. That lawsusit was dismissed last year by Justice Donald Marden who found neither this point nor the remainder of the suit convincing. Luoma is correct in mentioning the seven float plane access points (there were only 6 in 1970). What is missing in his discussion is that aside from the plane landings no public access points exist anywhere along the Allagash. Let me repeat for emphasis: aside from airplanes there are no public access points anywhere along the Allagash. Any land access, either by foot or vehicle, is only over private land. The report Luoma calls an application says on page 7, "The roads leading to the area are privately owned by the timber companies." That was true in 1966 when the Allagash was first formed, it was true in 1970 when Governor Curtis sought, in the words Senator Edmund Muskie's office manager, insurance against possible weakening of the Allagash Statute. It is still true today. Aside from airplanes, the only access to the Allagash Waterway is across private land. Furthermore, from May through November. there are privately operated gates on all the privately owned roads leading through the woods to the Allagash where user fees are charged. The landowners could at any time close these gates to the public; they are under no legal obligation to allow the public on their land. And Luoma makes reference to "unlimited public vehicle access" which never has been proposed by any state or private group. The number of vehicular access points has shrunk dramatically from the 28 which existed in 1970 (see the BDN April 9th letter from Roland Collins of Fort Kent). In Luoma's final paragraph he says the Waterway must not become "for everybody to drive in to, easily, at any point." This is an emotionally loaded exaggeration which has absolutely no basis in history, present state policy or anyone's desires for the Allagsh. Such scare tactics distort and undermine any discussion of the Allagash Waterway. Constructive discourse must be based not distortions and fears but on facts and reality. Peter M. Hilton |
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