Trying to Save Maine

Not long ago, industrial developers asked the 236 voters of Trenton, Maine, to approve the construction of an aluminum refinery and a nuclear power plant on the pristine shores of Union River Bay. A yes vote might have been expected. After all, countless U.S. towns beg for new industry to pay taxes and provide jobs. But the Trenton vote was a resounding no. A key factor was the Maine Times, a plucky weekly newspaper that lambasted the developers and explained precisely how their plans could pollute Trenton's air, land and water.

One year old this month, the Times is a unique statewide paper that tirelessly harasses would-be wreckers of Maine's environment. The attack is mounted by two Yale graduates, Editor John N. Cole. 46, and Publisher Peter W. Cox, 32, who raised $100,000 to pay for offset printing, two full-time reporters and a rented building in the hamlet of Topsham. Cole quit an incipient gray-flannel career in Manhattan to become a commercial fisherman, later edited several Maine newspapers. Cox is the son of Oscar Cox, a noted international lawyer. By no means opposed to all industry, they have warmly praised a few lumber and paper companies for enlightened use of Maine land. What they do oppose is destruction of the unspoiled Maine coast by high-risk industries like oil and aluminum. As Editor Cole puts it: "There is no such thing as a little rape."

Protests and Payoffs. With punchy headlines and a tabloid format, the paper unflaggingly alerts its 10,000 readers to each week's environmental toll --an oil spill off Casco Bay, a fish kill at Mystery Lake, a historic barn razed at the University of Maine. Much vitriol is aimed at the paper industry, a major source of water pollution in the state. The Times recently flayed a new wave of fly-by-night operators who reopen abandoned paper mills for "short-term profit and long-term pollution."

Happily, the muckraking pays off. Largely because of the Times, for example, one of those reopened mills closed last week. One article detailed how paper mills in the Pacific Northwest took the smell out of making brown paper, with the implication that Maine's mills should do the same. Another story started a cleanup of the Saco River by pinpointing 39 specific sources of pollution along its 125-mile length. In recent weeks, the paper single-handedly fought to ban snowmobiles from the virgin wilderness of Baxter State Park --successfully.

Naked State. Maine is the last state on the upper Eastern seaboard that has not been industrialized. Now its vast forests and ore deposits make it a tempting target for mindless exploitation. As Cole tells it, even the Mafia has joined various land grabs in Maine.

The big worry is the oil industry. Maine still has no laws regulating oil spills, offshore drilling and the like. Yet oilmen are now surveying the state's harbors, the only ports in the East deep enough to berth the industry's ever larger supertankers. The key trouble spot is Machiasport, where three companies plan major refineries despite thick fogs and tricky currents that pose serious risks of tanker mishaps and oil spillage. Devoid of controls, says Cole, "the state is standing stark naked to the oilmen."

Nonetheless, Cole has "no doubt" that the oil industry will gain entree to Maine's ports. But he and others are fighting hard for legal safeguards. And despite the pressures, he is optimistic. "Maine is still relatively clean," he says. "If enough people are concerned about the state, we can do something with it." By rousing such concern, the Times may ease the pain in Maine.

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