Mapping land use is a regional responsibility
Friday, May 23, 2008 - Bangor Daily News - Opinion Editorial
Ron Harriman - member of the Regional Open Space Steering Committee

In the early days of exploration, mapmakers would draw to the edge of their knowledge. In the blanks at the edge of the known world, they warned: "Here be dragons." When travelers finally braved these dragon-guarded "wastelands," they found rich and beautiful lands and hitherto unknown people and cultures. Not dragons.

The towns and cities participating in the Penobscot Valley Greenprint are about to venture off the map of their known worlds. They are going to approach land use from a regional perspective — a new concept in Maine. Sure, there are the unorganized territories, overseen from Augusta by the Land Use Regulatory Commission. But no towns in this state have ever before jointly envisioned the future use of the land they share.

Twelve municipalities have agreed to participate: Bangor, Bradley, Brewer, Eddington, Hampden, Hermon, Holden, Milford, Old Town, Orono, Orrington and Veazie. Together with The Trust for Public Land and the Penobscot Valley Council of Governments, they will begin to map a shared future.

As the world gets smaller, we can see more clearly that what I do in my back yard affects you. It is the same for towns. Where is your industrial zone? If it is near my planned residential housing, that’s a problem. Forests and fields don’t see the municipal line; neither do animals, and rivers and streams flow from town to town.

The towns of the Penobscot Valley Greenprint will start at the beginning by asking residents what they value about the landscape. Working farms and forests? Clean water? Parks? Trails? Hunting? Development?

Some say the deepest divisions in the state are born through high school sports. When asked what these 12 towns had in common, one official quickly said, "mutual suspicion." That is the first hurdle. With your help in answering these questions, we will find we have more in common than we think.

We share this land, these rivers, and our regional economy. We draw the richness and pleasure of living here from our setting: the bustle and cultural offerings of the city and university, the peace of Sunkhaze Meadows, the farms, fields and village centers of surrounding towns, and the jobs and economic opportunities of our commercial, industrial and business centers. And our setting, the reason we choose to live here, is also our greatest economic asset — a quality of place and quality of life increasingly rare in our modern world.

On May 28, at Old Town High School and on May 29, at Hampden Academy, residents of these communities and the Penobscot Indian Nation are invited to come and share their sense of what is most important when it comes to using open space and planning for our region’s future land use. Both meetings start at 6:30 p.m.

There will be bigger challenges, no doubt about it. Once we agree on our priorities, the rough terrain of what to do about them will still lie before us. There are plenty of tools we can use to navigate that terrain, but the first thing we need is a map of the territory. These towns are ready to draw that map, but we can only do so after hearing from residents of the region. In a state whose motto translates "I lead," your participation in this effort will help these towns show the way.

Ron Harriman is a resident of Brewer and a member of the Regional Open Space Steering Committee.