Cross posted at Dirigo Blue
If only reports like this were the norm:
GOP Teabagger candidate for governor Paul LePage broke onto the statewide scene less than a year ago, and already he has amassed a long list of exaggerations and gaffes. And when LePage uncorked another one Monday night, attacking the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, Maine Public Radio's Susan Sharon didn't ask another candidate what they thought of the statement from him, she actually went and dug for the facts herself.
And facts she finds.
Listen as she refutes Paul LePage's claim that environmental groups have too much power:
Susan Sharon: "Can you just give some examples of the DEP putting companies out of business?"
Paul LePage: "Downeast Peat. The peat fire-powered plant."
Back in the 1980s, Downeast Peat in Deblois was North America's first peat-powered power plant. Several peat bogs in the region were explored as possible sources of fuel. Because of water quality and other concerns, environmental assessments were required. When the original owner ran into financial problems, LePage says he was hired by the bank to manage the project.
"And the state of Maine made me do a three-month buffalo study," LePage says. "Did you hear what I said? Buffalo study. The next spring, they decided that they still didn't want this project to be built so they had us go out and count black flies. two months counting black flies. That tells me that the attitude of the regulatory agency was very adversarial to that project."
LePage says the regulatory agency responsible was the Maine DEP. He says one buffalo was counted, and it was located at the Acadia Zoo. But DEP spokeswoman Donna Gormley says there's just one problem with LePage's version of what happened.
"We went back through our files on Downeast Peat -- you know, we're talking 20 years ago. DEP did not require Downeast Peat, nor anyone else, to conduct a buffalo study or a black fly study as part of a permit requirement," she says. "We didn't do it 20 years ago and we don't do it now."
Because there aren't any buffalo in Maine? Maybe LePage meant to say that they State had forced DownEast Peat to do a wildebeest study. Or kangaroo study.
One thing for sure is: reporters in Maine will now be studying EVERY SINGLE UTTERANCE from Paul LePage.
His shtick may work at Marden's, a chain of discount stores here, and it may work in Waterville, where he is the titular mayor, but it ain't gonna work statewide.
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I am not from Maine, and so I don't know what the river, the Androscoggin, was like that separates Lewiston and Auburn. Both towns had textile and paper mills, most now closed. The river was used as the sewer for these mills, and the Androscoggin was so polluted it helped inspire the Clean Water Act.
LePage grew up in Lewiston. He must know what the river was like then, and what it's like today - cleaner, due in large part to environmentalists.
The very same people he is disparaging.
LePage would have Maine turned over once again to corporate interests, free from any interference from environmental groups, are even, one surmises, from regular people.
He would once again allow corporate interests to ravage Maine's wilderness and waterways, unfettered in their pursuit for profit, leaving the all the rest of us to clean up their mess.
We've seen this model before. We know the outcome. Why LePage thinks he can sell it to us without even trying to dress it up is beyond me.
But he is trying to do just that.
But we don't have to buy it.