OUR
COMMENTS - December, 2003
Don't Fence Me In - Defending Against Sprawl
A reading of the first "OUR COMMENTS" column posted in 1997 provides a brief explanation of why we purchased our tract of First Mountain forest land in Shelburne, New Hampshire. Our ultimate goal was to protect that small mountain tract from development, even though Shelburne at that time seemed to be free of the development pressures common throughout the southern portion of the state. Nearly 90% of the 42 square mile town's land consists of forestland located within the White Mountain National Forest or National Park Service's Appalachian Trail Corridor, or in large forest tracts owned by commercial timber companies. During the past ten years though, the commercial timberland north of First Mountain Forest has seen three new owners with the latest, an anonymous investor group, ready to close on a sale from MeadWestvaco Corporation before the end of the month. Some 629,000 acres of New Hampshire and Maine MeadWestvaco forest land will then be managed by Wagner Forest Management, Ltd. for the new investor group. MeadWestvaco has been cutting heavily on their New Hampshire lands and it is likely that Wagner will cut even more heavily to help recoup the investor's purchase price of just over $200 per acre.
Thanks to Shelburne's new zoning laws passed in 2001, and a contractual requirement by MeadWestvaco that the recently sold timberland be required to provide pulp to a Rumford mill, development of the Mahoosuc Mountains will be unlikely in the next 40 years or so. Shelburne lost population during the latest census count, but a number of new homes have been constructed on the available intervale land along North Road and the Androscoggin River. Still, change has been slow and the town is very much the little, rural village that we first encountered more than twelve years ago. That is not so at our home in Falmouth, Maine.
Our town there is struggling to retain its rural character, but the builders and developers are pressing to subdivide and build on as much of the land base as possible. Portland, which has an acute housing shortage, is on Falmouth's south border and exacerbates the problem. Falmouth is considered an upscale neighborhood and with average home prices starting at $300K, is certainly not easily affordable by Maine standards. Still, the housing boom continues. A builder just took out two acres of mature hemlock forest on the edge of a large wetland across the town line just behind our home and is putting up a large house there. A stream through the parcel flows south into Highland Lake and the logger removed almost every single tree on the lot, including both sides of the stream. Many of the trees exceeded 36 inches in diameter and a single hemlock, illegally cut from the lot behind, was nearly 48 inches in diameter. We still snowshoe through the woods there, but the experience is surely lessened by the new intrusion.
What is even more frightening, is that the same conversion of forest land to building lots coninues unabated for much of our drive from Falmouth up to our Shelburne cottage. Many of the forest parcels along State Route 35 from Naples to North Waterford have been carved up into 40 acre parcels and then further subdivided into two and four acre building lots. You first see skidders and logging trucks removing almost all of the forest, soon followed by the realtor signs. The builders and developers are smart enough to know that the forestry regulations are loose enough to allow them to strip the land without having to comply with the often more restrictive environmental protections required by site plans for building lots. Many of Maine and New Hampshire's smaller communities have an aversion to zoning laws and no restrictions are encountered for development. The majority of the citizens in those communities seem to still feel that they have an infinite resource in land and open space and see no need to conserve or protect their natural resource assets. It is unfortunate that we often cannot see our blessings until well on our way to losing them.
The last half of our drive up to Shelburne remains primarily as it has been, without any significant new development in these last ten years. I just hope that the inevitable tide of expanding population does not intrude as rapidly as it has in the other places I have lived.
Winter
came early to the First Mountain Forest this year and snow fall was 61 inches
by December 15, with most of that coming in two major storms. A front-end
loader had to open the driveway after the first 38 inch snow storm and I
have already had to shovel the roofs. The weather has been somewhat freakish
and each of the snow storms was followed within a few days by a day of torrential
rains. Much of the snow will have compacted from the rain, but the forest
remains snow covered and will be so for the rest of the season. It is now
time for winter sports, such as snowshoeing up into the Mahoosucs as we did
last year on the AT/Centennial Trail ,where we looked back at
First Mountain, Middle Mountain, and Baldcap Peak, as seen in the photo at
right.
Larry
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