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Developers Plan Feast on Thoreau's 'Silver Platter'

Prospect of vast swath of homes on Maine lake has locals up in arms

By Ambreen Ali,  Newser User

Posted Oct 1, 2008 4:33 PM CDT

(Newser) – It was once Thoreau’s “gleaming silver platter,” and now developers want to eat off it. A Seattle developer wants to put 1,000 hotel rooms and condos around Maine’s Moosehead Lake, Bloomberg reports. The proposed construction on mostly private land abutting a huge tract of forest has won supporters among officials eager to create jobs and pragmatists saying it beats haphazard construction.

Though Plum Creek Timber Co. has pledged up to 392,000 acres to conservation, opposition remains predictably fierce: Protesters recently tied up their necks with bicycle locks in front of regulators’ offices. The state’s land-use board will vote on the proposal today. “The new economy here is nature tourism, and if you destroy the nature you destroy the economy,” a lakeside resident says.

Plum Creek says as much as 392,000 acres of the land around Moosehead Lake in Maine will be conserved.
Plum Creek says as much as 392,000 acres of the land around Moosehead Lake in Maine will be conserved.   (AP Photo)
Thoreau described the Maine forest around Moosehead Lake as a gleaming silver platter.
Thoreau described the Maine forest around Moosehead Lake as "a gleaming silver platter."   (AP Photo)
Moosehead Lake is seen from aerial view.
Moosehead Lake is seen from aerial view.   (AP Photo/)
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