Brunswick citizens should turn out to have their say
On Wednesday, Aug. 21 there was a town citizens meeting concerning the Maine Department of Transportation with the topic being the congested intersection of Mill, Pleasant and Stanwood streets in Brunswick.
The real highlight of the evening was the Brunswick citizens’ participation. The room was packed and citizens contributed very positively from the individual and collective perspectives. I was quite happy and impressed with the involvement of Brunswick people.
I think town council meetings should be titled Citizens Meetings and I would like to think there would be as great of participation at town council meetings as there was at the Maine DOT meeting of Aug. 21.
Without greater citizens attendance at the town council meetings, we simply have a town, but not a community. The citizens voices and concerns are not present.
The Maine DOT meeting illustrated the town’s people are concerned, however these concerns have not been frequently voiced at town council meetings due to low or almost no citizens attendance.
Citizens should have more say in what happens in Brunswick, Maine ! Citizens should voice their concerns directly and not anticipate a representative to voice citizens’ concerns!
Joseph Ciarrocca,
Brunswick
Woolwich ought to oppose CMP line
I applaud the Woolwich Select Board’s plan to re-consider its support of CMP’s proposed transmission line in western Maine. Along with the environmental destruction of one of the last contiguous forest in the state, the whole idea of Hydro Quebec’s “build it and they will come” attitude has even more destructive implications that most Mainers and policy makers here in the northeast are unaware of or choose to cast a blind eye on. Canadian hydropower is dirty energy and a social and environmental injustice and a false solution to the climate crisis undermining a clean energy future.
Across Canada, 19 megadam hydropower projects are planned expressly to sell power to the US. NACLOR Energy is planning to dam the last portion of the Churchill (Grand) River in Labrador, and Hydro-Quebec’s Romaine will go online in 2021. Canada’s hydropower Crown (owned) corporations will continue to build these projects so long as there is a market in the United States for the power
By supporting the contracts for this energy, we are, all, complicit in drowning a province, boreal forests, poisoning ingenious people’s food supply with methylmercury and bankrupting a province for our unreasonable thirst for cheap energy to satisfy our consumer society and a few greedy shareholders. With the Amazon Forests on fire, the boreal forests of Canada and Maine’s own forests are all the more important as carbon sinks going forward.
Joan B. Saxe,
Freeport
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