PENOBSCOT BAY WATCH
People who care about Maine's biggest Bay
Step Down Chair Lessard!
For immediate release November 27, 2023
Contact Penobscot Bay Watch 207-691-4634 coastwatch@gmail.com
Longtime Maine Board of Environmental Protection leader needs to step down.
By Ron Huber
Fallout over powerful Board Chair's September 28th appearance at Dragon Cement meeting with town and other officials - as - (wink wink) solely Sue Lessard Bucksport town manager.
THOMASTON. Susan Lessard is partway though her third 8 year term on the Board of Environmental Protection (most of those years as BEP chair.) She has had a profound influence on this administrative entity that, in the right hands, ensures public satisifaction with the major development issues of the day.
But many worry that Lessard's hands have increasingly moved the Board to the beat of a different drummer: Big industry.
Her September appearance at a meeting with Thomaston officials and others on a major cleanup issue - but feigning merely being there as a private citizen not BEP Chair - while tipping them DEP secrets - suggests it is time for her to move on.
For since her first appearance on the BEP in the Baldacci administration, many have noted a seachange in the venerable Board that was created in the mid 1970s.
The quarter century long "Lessard Board" has rejected nearly every public effort to make Maine DEP follow the law, when industry applicants refuse to meet the state's environment standards but demand to be approved anyway
BEP has reversed course and methodically begun to reject citizen and NGO appeals of DEP decisions. It has sneered at Maine Supreme Judicial Court rulings directed to it. It has tightened Board legal standing requirements for appellants while loosening pollution standards for applicants!
It has become a sad poster child exemplifying "industry capture" of a "People's Board".
The Lessard Board has concocted ridiculous rationales for refusing to require that applicants prove they can meet the state's required pollution standards before approval. A monstrous rubber stamp - as long as the polluter wannabees promise to someday, some way, follow the law...but in the meantime...pollute away!
The once functional Board that historically has given all citizens s rights to have their voices heard and natures needs respected, is, thanks to Lessard's careful mismanagement, no longer capable of doing so.
Fallout over powerful Board Chair's September 28th appearance at Dragon Cement meeting with town and other officials - as - (wink wink) solely Sue Lessard Bucksport town manager.
THOMASTON. Susan Lessard is partway though her third 8 year term on the Board of Environmental Protection (most of those years as BEP chair.) She has had a profound influence on this administrative entity that, in the right hands, ensures public satisifaction with the major development issues of the day.
But many worry that Lessard's hands have increasingly moved the Board to the beat of a different drummer: Big industry.
Her September appearance at a meeting with Thomaston officials and others on a major cleanup issue - but feigning merely being there as a private citizen not BEP Chair - while tipping them DEP secrets - suggests it is time for her to move on.
For since her first appearance on the BEP in the Baldacci administration, many have noted a seachange in the venerable Board that was created in the mid 1970s.
The quarter century long "Lessard Board" has rejected nearly every public effort to make Maine DEP follow the law, when industry applicants refuse to meet the state's environment standards but demand to be approved anyway
BEP has reversed course and methodically begun to reject citizen and NGO appeals of DEP decisions. It has sneered at Maine Supreme Judicial Court rulings directed to it. It has tightened Board legal standing requirements for appellants while loosening pollution standards for applicants!
It has become a sad poster child exemplifying "industry capture" of a "People's Board".
The Lessard Board has concocted ridiculous rationales for refusing to require that applicants prove they can meet the state's required pollution standards before approval. A monstrous rubber stamp - as long as the polluter wannabees promise to someday, some way, follow the law...but in the meantime...pollute away!
The once functional Board that historically has given all citizens s rights to have their voices heard and natures needs respected, is, thanks to Lessard's careful mismanagement, no longer capable of doing so.
This is evident when it enthuses over grandiose, improbable plans brought forward by absentee investors with political connections but no facts that coyly hint at millions of dollars flowing into certain Maine pockets.. When the BEP spurns legal decisions they dont like - even from the Supreme Judical Court they reject them forcing the appellants to expensively start its appeal over at a lower court. And the board chuckles at its new found cruelty and disservice to nature
Maine needs to craft a replacement ,Sooner. Not later. One that is sensibly biocentric toward all species not just Homo sapiens and our food and fun species
I recall a BEP hearing about oil tanker safety where an industrial lobbyist challengedmy right as a citizen activist to speak. "We need MORE Ron Hubers!" t he BEP Chair admonished him.
We also need less Lessards.
Let's make the Board of Environmental Protection actually protect the environment.
Maine needs to craft a replacement ,Sooner. Not later. One that is sensibly biocentric toward all species not just Homo sapiens and our food and fun species
I recall a BEP hearing about oil tanker safety where an industrial lobbyist challengedmy right as a citizen activist to speak. "We need MORE Ron Hubers!" t he BEP Chair admonished him.
We also need less Lessards.
Let's make the Board of Environmental Protection actually protect the environment.
If it can't? Replace it with something that does.
Ron Huber is presently a resident of Belfast and has been Penobscot Bay Watch since 1992.
info: www.penbay.org *** www.penobscotbay.blogspot.com
Tel 207-691-4634 E: coastwatch@gmail.comn
.
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Ron Huber is presently a resident of Belfast and has been Penobscot Bay Watch since 1992.
info: www.penbay.org *** www.penobscotbay.blogspot.com
Tel 207-691-4634 E: coastwatch@gmail.comn
.
ReplyReply allForward
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