Staff Writer
After 14 years of pro-active waiting, the Aroostook Band of Micmacs officially received 619.2 acres of trust land in Limestone and Caribou on May 6 around 1 p.m.
Contributed photo
There were smiles and tears when Tribal Chief Victoria Higgins signed the transfer of properties in Caribou and Loring into Trust. Present at the signing were Lisa Bennett, Marline Morley, Tribal Chief Victoria Higgins, Elder Paul Philips, CFO Cathy Jones, Clarence McDonald, John Dennis, Nicole Frances, Tanya Morley, Bernice Perry, Nicholas Paul, Dora Dow, Mary Pinette, Roger McDonald, Travis McDonald, Darrell Clemmet, Richard Dyer, Edward Peter Paur and Sarah Dewitt.
“The Tribe is to be commended for its perseverance and prodigious patience these long many years,” said the tribe’s attorney Douglas J. Luckerman.
“When Loring announced in 1991 or 1992 that it was going to be closing, the process began for the tribe,” Luckerman explained. “First, the tribe wrote a letter to the Air Force requesting a piece of the Loring land. The Air Force responded and suggested that the tribe work through the Bureau of Indian Affairs because federal agencies are at the top of the hierarchy when it comes to obtaining [military] land.”
“Somewhere in the early ‘90s, the tribe wrote a letter to the Bureau of Indian Affairs requesting that the bureau put a request in for land at Loring on the Tribes’ behalf. In 1995, a request was submitted to the secretary of the Department of the Interior and there were two requests that were made, one for the tribe and one for the National Wildlife Refuge which is up there now,” he added. “A year later in 1996, the Air Force submitted their Record of Decision (ROD) which sets down their determination as to who gets what land at Loring and they decided to approve the request for the Bureau of Indian Affairs,” he continued. “From 1996 until yesterday at about 1 p.m., the Tribe has been waiting to receive that land.”
"It's been roughly 14 years," said Richard Dyer. "There were a lot of obstacles in the way, [most of them being] environmental.”
"Around 1991, the site was listed as a Super Fund site, which means that there was a level of hazardous waste on the site that could impact human health or the natural environment in a way that the Environmental Protection Agency considers to be particularly hazardous,” Luckerman said, “so an agreement was signed in 1992 between the Air Force, the EPA and the state to clean up the contamination that was at Loring. Federal law required that the Air Force do that before they transfer any of the land. That cleanup had already begun in the ‘90s and was completed in about 2004 or 2005. It's taken us another four years to get it through bureaucratic processes.”
"One of the positives of getting the land in trust are the tax benefits for private entities to work with tribes and that's one of the reasons that it can be attractive to business entities and particularly entities that are working in the energy field,” Luckerman said. “The number of tax incentives that were put into the 2005 energy bill for tax incentives and there are many tax incentives in the recent stimulus this year, and so [the tribe] can partner with private entities.”
Partnering with businesses as well as communities is something that the Aroostook Band of Micmacs is open to.
"I think that Presque Isle decided a few years back that it would be better to partner with the tribe then to be obstinate about having us here,” Dyer explained. “Our relationship with Limestone is fairly new, but we have been attending some LDA meetings and we're going to be attending more in the future.”
“We want to make ourselves known that we're ready and willing and we have a lot to offer if people will be willing to partner with us,” Dyer said. “I think it would be a good symbiotic relationship which will be a great benefit to everyone concerned.
"It's a very exciting opportunity,” he added. “It potentially has some extremely positive aspects for the community in the Limestone area because of the financial magnet having land in trust creates,” Dyer said. “Communities often forget in this day and age, trust land, especially when the communities work with the tribe, can mean resources that towns and cities can't even fathom, the types of grants and funds and projects especially now with the stimulus acts are really mind boggling. It's really 'sky's the limit' for tribes and towns to work together to figure out which [grants] they want to get.”
Though nothing has been solidified regarding the use of the newly acquired land, which includes five fuel storage tanks with storage capacity of 13 million gallons, a coal handling station and yard in addition to some large buildings and 619.2 acres, thoughts and ideas are abundant and growing.
"We've been discussing the possibility of a vocational school to train tribal members in areas of green energy such as creation of solar panels or wind turbine blades,” Dyer said. “We've also been discussing a fish farm for land-based fish productions, a wood pellet manufacturing center, all of the things that we think are necessary in trying to cut back on oil and producing our own food.”
“There has also been discussion of perhaps a super greenhouse where we would grow vegetables similar to what they're doing down in Madison, Maine, which by the way is a really successful operation, as well as a couple of uses for the tanks, but we're not that far yet,” he added. “[To see] the future sort of wide open, we're examining all of our options and we're going to eventually land on some decisions,” Dyer said.
