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Senator Susan Collins (R-ME)
The U.S. Senate, tonight, approved the Fiscal Year 2012 Transportation funding bill that includes a provision, written by Senator Susan Collins, that will allow the heaviest trucks to travel on federal interstates in Maine for 20 years instead of forcing them off the highways and onto Maine’s secondary roads and downtown streets.
Click Here to View Senator Collins’ statement following passage of the legislation.
While the Senate originally approved Senator Collins’ provision to make this change permanent, the House never approved a similar provision. As the top Republican on the Senate Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee, and a member of the conference committee charged with working out the differences between the two bills, Senator Collins successfully negotiated this 20-year compromise agreement. This bill will now be signed by the President.
Senator Collins has led the effort to allow trucks weighing up to 100,000 pounds to travel on Maine’s federal interstates –including I-95, 195, 295, and 395. Senator Collins has worked closely with Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), also a member of the Transportation Subcommittee, and this agreement for Maine is paired with a similar change for Vermont.
“This is a major accomplishment and I am delighted to have successfully negotiated this agreement. Moving these trucks from our downtown streets and onto the federal interstates where they belong has always been one of my top transportation priorities,” said Senator Collins. “The agreement that I negotiated to allow the heaviest trucks on the highway for the next 20 years will help shippers, truckers, and Maine’s job creators. More important, it will improve safety for Mainers who live, work, and go to school along the secondary roads, and busy downtowns where these trucks are currently forced to travel.
“I appreciate the strong support I received from so many public safety groups, including the Maine State Police, the Maine Department of Public Safety, and the Bangor Police Department, as well as education and industry groups like the Maine Motor Transport Association. Together, we were able to achieve a major victory that will make a real difference to many Mainers and our economy,” Senator Collins continued.
Senator Collins’ effort is supported by the Association of Police, the Maine State Police, the State Troopers Association, the Maine Department of Public Safety, the Chiefs of Police, the Maine Motor Transport Association, the Parent Teacher Association, and the Bangor School Department, who have all expressed the importance of safety in getting these heaviest trucks off our local roadways and onto the interstates where they belong.
Currently, the heaviest trucks in Maine are diverted onto secondary roadways that cut through our downtowns on narrow streets, creating a major safety concern. In most of the surrounding New England states and nearby Canadian provinces, the heaviest trucks are free to use the interstates, but not in Maine and Vermont. This puts Maine businesses at a distinct competitive disadvantage. Heavy trucks already operate on some 22,500 miles of non-interstate roads in Maine, in addition to the approximately 109 miles of the Maine Turnpike. But the nearly 260 miles of non-Turnpike interstates that are major economic corridors are off limits.
In 2009, a pilot project that Senator Collins wrote, was included in the 2010 Omnibus Appropriations bill. This one-year pilot project allowed trucks weighing up to 100,000 pounds to travel on Maine’s federal interstates. According to the Maine Department of Transportation, during the one-year period covered by the pilot, the number of crashes involving trucks on Maine’s local roads was reduced by 72 compared to a five-year average.
By Kevin Miller, BDN Staff
HOLDEN, Maine — Maine’s conservation commissioner said Wednesday that he believes state government and the diverse groups invested in the future of Maine’s vast natural resources can do a better job balancing preservation and economic development by focusing on their mutually agreed upon goals.
“Maybe opposites do attract,” said Bill Beardsley, commissioner of the Maine Department of Conservation. “Maybe there is more opportunity there than we think there is.”
Read full story on BangorDailyNews.com
By Nick Sambides Jr., BDN Staff
One of Maine’s pioneering logging environmental programs will get international recognition, possibly for the first time, when a group of Japanese logging contractors visits the state for three days next week and tours several logging contractor operations and mills, officials said Thursday.
The six logging professionals and a university professor from Miyazaki, Japan, will study the Trust to Conserve Northeast Forestlands’ Master Logger Certification Program…
…“They are from Himuka Ishin no Kai,” said Beth Ollivier, the trust’s executive director. “In English, that means Association of Evolving Forestry in Himuka, which is what they used to call the area they are from.”
Read Full Story on BangorDailyNews.com
BANGOR, Maine — The Northern Maine Development Commission will receive about $1.9 million to establish a Renewable Energy Industry Cluster with the goal of creating jobs by replacing or supplementing fuel oil furnaces in homes and businesses with wood biomass units.
Read full article on BangorDailyNews.com
By Kevin Miller, BDN Staff
ELLSWORTH, Maine — A new report commissioned by the state suggests that Maine can significantly increase logging of softwood trees over the next 20 years, providing a boost to the wood products industry while still maintaining a healthy, sustainable forest.
The report, prepared by the James W. Sewall Co. in Old Town for the Department of Conservation, states that past timber harvesting practices and the spruce budworm outbreak in the 1970s and 1980s led to a large crop of spruce and fir rapidly reaching maturity from an economic standpoint.
Read full story on BangorDailyNews.com
Secretary Salazar - Photo by Kevin Bennett of BDN
MILLINOCKET, Maine — Federal feasibility studies recommend against 50 percent of the proposed parks they study, and the dimensions of Roxanne Quimby’s proposed North Woods National Park would be controlled by laws and legislatures, not bureaucrats bent on controlling northern Maine, the federal government’s top land manager said Thursday.
Speaking occasionally and more often listening to more than 300 people at Stearns High School’s auditorium…
Read the full story and see a video on the BangorDailyNews.com
MILLINOCKET, Maine — A lack of wood is one of several logjams preventing a Chinese investor from buying both Katahdin region paper mills for $1, one of the area’s state representatives says, though industry insiders say the wood’s affordability might be the real issue.
Rep. Herbert Clark, D-Millinocket, told the Town Council during its meeting Thursday that International Grand Investors Corp. of Delaware wasn’t finding enough wood in the area to make the purchase agreeable…
Read entire story on BangorDailyNews.com
MILLINOCKET, Maine ― Town leaders will me
et today to discuss whether to publicly oppose efforts to turn a vast chunk of the North Woods into a national park, something they last did in 2000.
Town Manager Eugene Conlogue said he expects “lively discussion” when the Town Council meets at 4:30 p.m.
Read entire article on BangorDailyNews.com
AUGUSTA, Maine — Investors who recently bought a Baileyville mill were negotiating Tuesday to purchase two Katahdin region paper mills even as lawmakers and LePage administration officials scrambled to win support for a bill deemed critical to the potential sale.
Dan Whyte, vice president of Brookfield Asset Management, the current owner of the two Katahdin Paper mills, told the Bangor Daily News that talks “are in progress” to sell the facilities to International Grand Investors Corp. of Delaware for $1.
Read Full Article on BangorDailyNews.com
