It feels as though a line has been drawn in the sand. As corporate lust for a highway corridor through Maine grows, the mantra of “jobs, jobs, jobs” merely becomes a blanket of platitude obscuring the details of this unprecedented disruption and take-over of peoples’ lives and land.

It’s been said before and bears saying again — we are not the “hollow middle” of Maine. We are citizens who choose to live here in harmony with the environment that nurtures us. We do not seek more highways, parking lots or sprawling malls smothering the land. The paradigm for our survival is changing, and the infrastructure of the system that creates yet more highways is no longer sustainable.

It’s been noted that the transportation system already in place — the Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railroad — has seen increased traffic and growing profits. It does so with but a fraction of the environmental degradation that a four-lane highway and 500- to 2,000-foot corridor would cause.

Peter Vigue’s “vision” is flawed; and to those who live in its path, it is an affront and a threat. The vagueness of its planning and the refusal of those representatives who support the corridor to attend local public forums only raises more suspicions that we are merely obstacles in the grand corporate scheme.

I choose the cry of loons over the growl of traffic.

Wallace Frank Warren

Ripley

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