DOWN EAST SATURDAY

MAINE PUBLIC BROADCASTING - Popham Beach, near Bath, is one of Maine's most popular state parks, visited by an estimated 175,000 people every year. In recent years though, there's been increasingly less beach to visit, especially where the Morse River flows into the ocean. Since 2007, the sea has advanced more than 200 feet in parts. . . State authorities are also concerned by the ocean's rapid advance. A recently-constructed bathhouse -- part of a $1.4 million development -- is getting within feet of the water's edge. And in an effort to prevent it from getting any closer, conservationists have placed bundles of dead trees along the water's edge. State Geologist Robert Marvinney says when the bathhouse project was begun less than three years ago, the site of the building was four times as far away from the water's edge as it is now.

WGME - At a news conference in Augusta , a group of religious leaders from all over the state and the nation gathered to speak out in support of a bill currently up for debate in the legislature. It's titled "An act to ensure humane treatment of special management unit prisoners". If it passes, it would limit the amount of time prisoners can be placed in solitary confinement and keep mentally ill prisoners out of it entirely. The group says putting prisoners in solitary is inhumane. They say that segregation used in Maine prisons amounts to torture, and it needs to be stopped.

SUN JOURNAL - Bill Murray's math lesson of the day revolved around a bag of trash. His third-graders at Sherwood Heights Elementary School in Auburn started with an 18-pound bag of trash that the school custodian pitched aside. Armed with rubber gloves, the kids took out all the paper, plastic, anything that could be composted and anything that the class could reuse. "We took out all kinds of stuff that does not belong in the landfill," said Murray, a 1980 graduate of Edward Little High School. What was put back into the garbage bag weighed less than a pound. Many of Murray's lessons, regardless of subject, have a reduce, reuse, recycle spin. "It's an overall theme," said Murray, a first-year teacher at the school. "There is not anyone in this classroom that is not engaged," he said. . .

STRANGE MAINE - The Washington County railroad has gone all the other railroads in the country one better in the matter of accommodating its patrons. A passenger one day last week lost a set of false teeth out of the window. The loss was reported to the obliging conductor, who stopped the train, backed to the scene of catastrophe, where the missing molars were found and returned to their owner. - Kennebec Journal, April 10, 1908

PORTLAND DAILY SUN - Maine syrup makers produced 395,000 gallons of maple syrup in 2009, in what was considered a banner year, particularly for northern producers. Last year's output marked an increase of 65 percent over 2008 production of 240,000 gallons, which was considered a down year due to erratic weather; lingering winter cold slowed sap flow, and deep snow made it difficult for producers to get into the woods, producers noted. . . This year is stacking up as another potentially strong year like 2009. . . . "The weather has been perfect," said Kathy Hopkins, Extension educator with University of Maine. "When the nights are 20 or so and the day warms up to 40 or so, that's just perfect weather to stimulate sap flow."

MAINE PUBLIC BROADCASTING - A committee of lawmakers has reached a compromise that will allow a controversial police surveillance scanner to remain in use, under certain safeguards. . . The amendments include a provision to only store data on non-offenders collected by the camera for 21 days -- South Portland police currently keep the data for 30 days before purging it. There's also a provision. . . to ensure that this data is kept confidential. But most importantly, . . . there's an amendment to establish a working group to monitor the use of the ALPR. This group will include both law enforcement officials and civil liberties advocates who are concerned with privacy constitutional issues. . . . The MCLU says it is satisfied with the compromise, even though it falls short of the complete ban it had originally sought

REPORT: RED TIDE COMING BACK THIS SPRING

MAINE PUBLIC BROADCASTING - A large bloom of toxic "red tide" is likely in the Gulf of Maine this spring, posing a potential threat to New England's shellfish industry. That's according to federal scientists who have been surveying the region's seafloor for signs of the Alexandrium fundyense, an organism that causes the toxic algal blooms.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration survey found that the number of seed-like cysts of the organism was 60 percent higher than the level observed before the historic bloom of 2005, indicting a large bloom this spring.

While exposure to red tide in the water doesn't directly threaten humans, people can be sickened -- sometimes fatally -- by eating clams, mussels and other filter-feeding organisms contaminated with Alexandrium fundyense. In Maine, shellfish beds are monitored by the state, and closed when toxin concentrations rise above certain levels.

In 2005, a massive red tide bloom shut down shellfish beds from Maine to Martha's Vineyard for several months, resulting in millions in losses to the region's shellfish industry.

WIND TURBINE UPDATE

VILLAGE SOUP - For Ethan Hall, who lives 3,500 feet from a wind turbine on Vinalhaven, being subjected to the turbine's sound is like listening to a dripping faucet - "torture."

"I wouldn't be here if it was easy to get used to," Hall said at a Feb. 19 press conference at the Statehouse Hall of Flags. "The sound is different from anything I have ever heard. It is an intense pulsing. It is impossible to block or mask this noise."

Hall wasn't the only person voicing his opinion at the press conference held by the Citizens' Task Force on Wind Power -- a coalition of citizens advocating responsible, science-based, economically and environmentally sound approaches to Maine's energy policy - which is calling for a statewide moratorium on commercial wind turbines.

Doctors, lawyers and other citizens affected by the noise from the turbines spoke in an attempt to mandate better noise regulations before Maine goes any further with installing wind turbines around the state.

Explaining that the noise of the turbine in his backyard is very noticeable and not like a background hum, such as a refrigerator makes, Hall said he couldn't read, work or get good rest in his own home. In fact, there was nowhere on his property where he could escape the din. He also said state noise regulations were "outdated."

To make a point to those in attendance, a recording of a wind turbine was turned on during task force member Steve Thurston's opening remarks at the press conference. Later, when TV news crews tried to conduct interviews with the speakers, the recording was turned on again, forcing the news crews to ask that the noise be turned off so they could finish the interviews.

According to some, industrial turbine noise doesn't just bother humans. Jonathan Carter, director of Forest Ecology Network, spoke about the effect on animals. He said the turbines could have a profound negative impact, causing predatory problems, affecting reproductive success and creating other issues. . .

DOWN EAST TUESDAY

BUSINESS WEEK -  Maine-based L.L. Bean has taken the top spot in an annual ranking of the nation's leading companies for customer service. The fourth annual Bloomberg Business Week "customer service champs" rankings gave the No. 1 position to the Freeport outdoor gear and apparel company, ahead of USAA insurance and financial services company and Apple Inc. Bloomberg cited L.L. Bean for adapting to the way its customers now shop through the design and features of its Web site and its return policies. It also commended the company for keeping its back-office operations in Maine rather than moving them offshore to save money. L.L. Bean was ranked 24th on last year's list.

PORTLAND DAILY SUN - Total snowfall in Portland last February was 15.3 inches, 2.5 inches above normal, according to the National Weather Service. So far this February, only 1.6 inches of snow have fallen. . . The month has averaged 27.6 degrees in Portland, 4 degrees above normal for February, and the city is almost 3 and a quarter inches below normal snowfall for the year-to-date since January, the weather service reported.

MAINE COUNTY HEALTH RANKINGS

ICE FISHING CATCHES TRUCKS INSTEAD OF FISH

WLBZ - Things turned dangerous really quickly Saturday at the Maine Chevrolet Sebago Derby. The two-day event is one of Maine's largest ice fishing competitions, with prizes like a new truck, a boat or a big cash prize.

Wardens say the warm temperatures made the ice melt and shift, and after the day's events were through, they decided with derby officials to call off the second day and tell fishermen to get off the ice as soon as possible.

About eight cars and trucks parked on the ice fell through, seven ATVs and two snowmobiles went through thin patches, and 18 people fell into the water. A few people had to be rescued, but most either got themselves out or were pulled out almost immediately.  VIDEO

BATHROOM RIGHTS OF TRANSGENDER STUDENTS AN ISSUE

Bangor Daily News - New guidelines under consideration by the Maine Human Rights Commission designed to clarify the rights of transgender students in Maine has sparked a passionate debate over what some feel are impractical or abhorrent new requirements for public schools.

The commission's proposed guidelines, which are scheduled for further consideration on March 1, state that transgender students are guaranteed access to public school bathrooms, locker rooms and sports teams based on whatever gender they consider themselves to be. That means a boy who identifies himself as a girl is by law allowed to use girls bathrooms, locker rooms and participate on girls sports teams, or vice versa. Being "transgender" means having a gender identity that is opposite a person's biologically assigned sex at birth.

For some, including the Christian Civic League of Maine, the commission's guidelines are "the latest outrage by radical homosexual activists" which constitute "an impossible absurdity," according to a press release.

Paul Vestal, chairman of the Maine Human Rights Commission, told the Bangor Daily News that there is nothing new about the requirements for public schools and that the commission's guidelines do nothing more than clarify a law that has been on the books for five years.. . .

Representatives from several gay and lesbian rights groups participated in a Dec. 15 workshop with the commission on the guidelines. One of them was Peter Rees of the Downeast Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network based in Ellsworth. Rees said people who oppose rights for transgender students - such as allowing them to use locker rooms with people who are biologically of the opposite sex - fear something "that just isn't borne out in reality."

"What do they think is going to happen?" asked Rees. "That boy who is identifying as a girl is not going to be displaying herself in a girls' locker room. She's going to be acting as much like a girl as possible and being very modest."

The Maine School Management Association is another organization that has raised concerns about the guidelines, though on different grounds than the Christian Civic League. Bruce Smith, an attorney who represents MSMA, said he believes the commission's proposed guidelines go beyond what is intended in the Maine Human Rights Act. . .

Smith said the MSMA's chief concern is the safety of transgender students who use opposite-sex bathrooms or locker rooms and the fairness of biological males competing against biological females. He contended that his group and others were not invited into the discussion until it was too late to make a difference.

PORTLAND AIRPORT RANKED 5TH BEST IN NORTH AMERICA

The Airports Council International, representing airports around the world, has ranked Portland the 5th best place to land or take off in North America - behind Austin, Halifax, Ottawa, and Jacksonville. When limited to places of less than five million population, Portland moves up to third place in "airport service quality."

ACI describes its rankings as "a leading industry benchmarking tool, ASQ is designed to help participating airports to measure their improvement year on year, as well as to benchmark against their peers. A reliable monitor of airport service, ASQ is used by many airports as one of the key performance indicators of the airport's service."

WIND STORMS

Working Waterfront - On February 1, the Fox Islands Electric Cooperative, Inc. began an experiment in which the three 1.5 megawatt General Electric wind turbines on Vinalhaven will be randomly slowed down at night for one month...

Neighbors were asked, according to the letter, to fill out detailed logs for the month of February describing the sounds the turbines make. The turbines will be slowed down at random rates and times between 7 p.m. and 6 a.m. The Fox Islands Electric Cooperative, Inc. is owned by the ratepayers of North Haven and Vinalhaven.

It is the latest effort by Fox Islands Electric to address complaints from a few neighbors about noise made by the turbines. Since the $14.5 million wind project began producing power in early November of last year, neighbors have described the sounds made by the turbines as a whooshing and grinding noise or a low rumbling, sometimes producing a noise similar to a cement mixer or an airplane that never lands. Approximately a half-dozen neighbors say the noise has been so disruptive that it makes it impossible to live normal lives-that they can't sleep at night and that the noise is harming their health. Others say the noise is disruptive, but want to let the February experiment run its course. Other year-round residents who live within a half-mile of the turbine have not complained about turbine noise. Those neighbors who are not bothered by the noise say they can't hear it in their homes or that it sounds like a dishwasher.

The three turbines have produced over 2 million-kilowatt hours of electricity, as of February 1. The wind-power project cut the cost of the energy portion of the average ratepayer bill by one-half in December, compared to December of 2008, Farrington said. However, the turbines generated 20 percent more power than initially estimated for the month, he said.

Over the course of a year, the three turbines are expected to generate all the power needed on the two islands. But along with that power, the community is also coping with how to resolve the problems that the turbine noise is causing for fellow-islanders.

Portland Press Herald - Residents of Lexington Township near the Bigelow Preserve are asking southern Mainers to join their effort to block a proposed 48-turbine wind farm near their homes and the Appalachian Trail. . . Opponents say the turbines would be built along several Somerset County ridgelines within two miles of their homes, and that the development would destroy their peaceful and natural environment. Disputes around existing wind farms, and a case now pending in the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, show that Maine residents are not being protected from the visual impacts and noise from the turbines, they said.  The opponents also say the Highland Wind project would harm the state-owned Bigelow Preserve and other important natural areas, as well as an especially scenic section of the Appalachian Trail.

DOWN EAST MONDAY

Press Herald - Donaldson Boord had no doubt what he was watching.  Boord, a Marine Patrol Officer, was hidden on the shore of an island off Cushing as he watched a nearby lobsterman hauling another man's traps. He then stuffed the bright red buoys and ropes inside the traps and dropped them overboard so that the owner couldn't find them, according to Boord.  "I saw it no different than if I was in the back of the boat with him, and so did another officer" who was staked out in a different part of the island, Boord said.  For Boord and other state officials, it was a rare chance to punish someone caught in the act of "trap molesting," and to send a clear message that anyone taking part in the growing trap wars along the Maine coast could lose his license, and his livelihood.  Instead, officials in Maine's Department of Marine Resources are now worried the case will only make matters worse when lobstermen head back to the water this summer.  Despite the eyewitnesses, James Simmons of Friendship denied the charge. And, after a two-day trial last summer, a Knox CountyLincoln County proved the verdict was no fluke...Again, the jury quickly sided with the accused lobsterman... jury quickly ruled in his favor.  Then, last October, a similar trial in Trap cutting got so out of control last summer that disputes led to the sinking of boats near Owls Head and the shooting of a lobsterman on a Matinicus Island wharf.

Press Herald - A Boston-based company that's developing technology to convert energy from ocean waves into usable power is interested in testing prototypes in Maine.  If Resolute Marine Energy Inc. moves ahead over the next year or two, it would be the first test off the Maine coast of wave energy, which is already generating electricity in Europe, and growing interest off the West Coast of the U.S.  Resolute Marine has an eye on Maine's new offshore research center, two miles south of Monhegan Island.


Maine Public Broadcasting -  Since the Legislature enacted the state's school consolidation law three years ago, all but 15 percent of the state's students are in consolidated school units. Some districts were too large to consolidate. But some were too small. Now, a legislative panel has signed off on a plan that opens the door for those smaller districts to collaborate. Related Media Plan to Ease Consolidation for Smaller School Districts . . .State Rep. Patricia Sutherland, a Chapman Democrat, says the Education Committee's plan, and expected enactment by the Legislature, should provide an incentive to many non-complying school districts that were waiting on the results of the failed repeal effort last fall to move forward. . .At the state Education Department, David Connerty-Marin says that communties that want to resist consolidation can continue to do so -- but at a cost.  "There are a number of places where they flat out have no interest in consolidating with anybody and this doesn't change that for them -- they made that choice locally at the ballot box that they would pay an additional local tax obligation for education in order to remain separate," he says. "


Maine Public Broadcasting -     Maine's 2009 deer harvest was down for the second year in a row... According to an initial count, 18,045 deer were taken by hunters last year, six percent less than state biologists had predicted, and 14 percent below the tally for 2008, one of the lowest harvests in decades.  To put this into perspective, we must consider that the 2008 and 2009 winters represent the most severe back-to-back winters since 1971-72," says IF&W Deer Biologist Lee Kantar in a statement announcing the results.


EXPERIMENTING WITH DISTRICT HEATING

BLUE LOBSTER

Jean Scott came up with some nifty photos of a two pound blue lobster caught on Friday by Bret Gilliam of Small Point

DEPARTMENT OF GOOD NEWS

Portland Press Herald - The Maine Warden Service says witnesses who reported seeing a drowning snowmobiler on Moosehead Lake actually may have seen an otter enjoying a snack.

DOWN EAST NOTES

According to a survey by Market Decisions, 11 percent of the state lacks health insurance, with 47% of the uninsured adults having gone without it way for more than five years.

David Carkhuff in the Daily Sun has a list of churches that have been converted to other uses in Portland: Grace restaurant behind City Hall, formerly the Chestnut Street Methodist Church; the Maine Irish Heritage Center on Gray Street, formerly St. Dominic's Catholic Church; and the St. Lawrence Art and Community Center on Munjoy Hill, formerly St. Lawrence Church. . . The building for what is now the Children's Museum of Maine was built as a church and renovated in the 1920s by famous architect John Calvin Stevens to house the chamber of commerce, according to local preservation official Scott Hanson. . . A building on Congress Street that houses Coffee by Design "at its core is a mid-19th century church" . . . And now the Payson Park Evangelical Free church is headed to become condos.

DOWN EAST NOTES

Maine Public Broadcasting - Critics of the state's citizen's initiative ballot process are calling for big changes in the law, including one that would allow voters to retract their signatures from petitions if they felt they were misled when they signed the documents. Other proposed revisions before a legislative policy committee would require initiative proponents to state the costs of their proposal to voters and explain how it would be funded if adopted. . . Joel Foster of the Washington D.C.-based Ballot Initiatives Strategy Center says Maine scored a "D" in a national analysis in how well its citizen initiative process protects voters.

Press Herald - A proposal to prohibit sex offenders from living near schools and city parks is being met with skepticism by the City Council. At least five of the nine councilors either oppose the measure or question whether it would have unintended consequences. Meanwhile, the Maine Civil Liberties Union argues that the proposal offers only the "illusion" of protection and would in fact do more harm than good.. . . In Portland, an exclusionary zone of 750 feet would effectively ban sex offenders from the city's peninsula, except for neighborhoods near St. John Street and Maine Medical Center, said Councilor David Marshall. Because sex offenders are typically poor, he said, they would end up with fewer housing options. Some might decide to use false names and go "underground," he said, making it more difficult for authorities to monitor them. Others would end up homeless, Marshall said. He said the proposals sound comforting but wouldn't protect children. "It is not where the sex offenders are living that is unsafe," he said. "It's the behavior that is unsafe."

Water Tech Online - A study by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection has found that even properly disposed of pharmaceuticals may find their way into the drinking water supply. . . Researchers found small amounts of medications - including antidepressants, birth control pills and over-the-counter pain relievers - in landfill water, or leachate. . . The results of the study have been released at the same time that Maine legislators are debating a bill which would require drug manufacturers to collect and dispose of unused drugs.

Phoenix - Ben Chipman, a Green party member on Portland's Charter Commission, reports that the commission has preliminarily moved toward recommending instant-runoff voting as the method for selecting the city's mayor.

PETITION PAY TO PLAY SYSTEM UNDERMINES DEMOCRACY

Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting - The Maine Commission of Governmental Ethics and Election Practices calculated the total amount of money spent on signature gathering between 2006-2009 on issues from tax reduction to gay marriage. The total was $1,660,000.

Of that, nearly $1.2 million went to one California firm to gather signatures for groups pushing three ballot questions: vetoing same sex marriage, which was successful last year, and approving a casino in Oxford County and defeating the tax legislation, both of which will be on the June ballot.

Generally, according to public officials and those in the signature collecting business, the pay is anywhere between 50 cents to $2 per signature.

In his study of the citizen initiative process titled "Democracy Derailed," syndicated columnist David Broder quotes David Frohnmayer, president of the University of Oregon, a state that also allows initiatives:

"It's no longer citizens fighting the oligopoly. Now it's the oligopoly paying people to act as citizens.". . .

In 1994, the Maine Legislature was so concerned about the effect of per-head signature gathering on the integrity of the process that it passed a ban on the practice, while still allowing gatherers to be paid by the hour, for example.

"The whole thing gave me the complete total shivers," said Marge Kilkelly, who sponsored the bill when she was in the legislature representing the Wiscasset area.

But the law was struck down in federal district court based upon the argument that the law was not "consistent with the First Amendment" and might hinder the citizen initiative process. But the court also suggested it might have ruled otherwise of the state had presented any evidence of actual fraud.

Those concerns were not enough for the court to uphold the ban, partly because, "To the secretary's knowledge, no petition circulator in Maine who has been paid per signature as been prosecuted for forgery in connection with signature gathering."

But North Dakota was able to have a similar law upheld by the federal courts in 2001. That law prohibited paying per signature and required circulators to be state residents The court ruled that "these two regulations are designed to protect the integrity of signature gathering."

North Dakota's case was made stronger because, unlike Maine 10 years ago, it was able to cite at least one example of fraud: 17,000 invalidated signatures, some of which had been gathered by paid workers from Utah.

That state's law, the court said, ensures that a ballot issue "has grassroots support in North Dakota and that the initiative process is not completely taken over by moneyed interests and out of state special interest groups.". . .

REPRISE: THE PROBLEM WITH HIGH SPEED RAIL

Sam Smith, February 2008 - There's nothing wrong with high speed rail except that when your country is really hurting, when your rail system largely falls behind other countries' because of lack of tracks rather than lack of velocity, and when high speed rail appeals more to bankers than to folks scared of foreclosing homes, it's a strange transit program to feature in something called a stimulus bill.

One might even call it an $8 billion earmark.

I've watched this development with a sense of deja vu. Long ago, I was a rare critic of DC's Metro subway plans, not because I was against mass transit, but because it was a highly inefficient way of spending mass transit funds compared to light rail or exclusive bus lanes. At the time we could have had ten times as many miles of light rail for the same price of the subway system.

I was struck by Metro bragging about its record ridership during the Obama inauguration. Metro had finally achieved what it had, at the beginning decades ago, promised the federal government would be normal. We needed a first black president to get that many riders. Further, Metro doesn't even have the capacity to handle that many people on a regular basis.

Other problems included the fact that Metro wouldn't really compete with the automobile but with its own bus lines, that it was more of a land development than a transit scheme, and that auto traffic would increase as the subway encouraged new buildings but that a majority of the new users of these buildings would still come by car.

I mention these examples because they illustrate the sort of complexity that transit planning involves, a complexity that rarely gets any attention in the media or by politicians. There's nothing like something as streamlined as a bullet to make everyone put away doubts, analysis and comparisons and just sit back and say, "Wow."

The problem became permanently embedded in my mind after I asked a transportation engineer to identify the best form of mass transit. His immediate answer: "Stop people from moving around so much." So simple, yet so wise and so alien to almost every discussion of the topic you will hear.

If we were really smart, we would be spending far more effort, for example, on redesigning neighborhoods so travel isn't so necessary. What if every urban neighborhood had minibus service to help people get to necessary services? Or a business center with high quality video conference and other equipment so that more people could work at home often?

Instead we are planning to spend $8 billion so that people who already travel more than they should can do it faster and easier.

Of course, there are plenty of political reasons for this. The extraordinary power of the highway lobby remains undiminished, as does the fear of the trucking industry that freight trains might take a major portion of their business away albeit making more sense economically and ecologically.

The truth is that conventional rail and bus riders aren't powerful enough to get what they need. Even upscale liberals prefer air or high speed rail. In the end, there's no strong constituency for the ordinary rider.

As a result of such things, we can expect more than a fair share of hype and hokum as the high rail projects get underway. But here are a few real things to also keep in mind:

Building new conventional rail lines would have had a much stronger effect on the economy than merely speeding up existing routes. Beyond the benefits of construction and the system itself, there would be the economic opportunities created along the route, just as happened when we first built rail and our country at the same time.

Philip Longman in an excellent Washington Monthly article, writes, "Railroads have gone from having too much track to having not enough. Today, the nation 's rail network is just 94,942 miles, less than half of what it was in 1970, yet it is hauling 137 percent more freight, making for extreme congestion and longer shipping times."

When moving freight, speed is just not that important. An example can be found in a towboat pushing more freight up the Mississippi River than all the steamboats of Mark Twain's time. Why does this lethargic system work so well? Simply because it's not the speed but the capacity that matters. As long as what's on the barges keep coming, how fast it comes isn't that important.

Passenger rail capacity is also important. We don't know what the real capacity of these high speed systems will be but we can guess that the railroads won't have large numbers of spare trains waiting around for the Christmas season. Conventional rail uses easily coupled old equipment to adjust for peaks, but high speed rail is so expensive that it is more likely to fall short. For example, Trains for America describes the problem with the high speed Acela: "The trains now run with an engine at each end. While that step speeds turnarounds when the Acela finishes its route and then reverses direction, reconfiguring trains to add coaches would be 'very difficult and very time consuming, 'spokeswoman Karina Romero said. Amtrak also doesn't have any spare Acela passenger cars, so extending the trains would require buying more custom-built coaches, she said. "

Philip Longman notes that "In a study recently presented to the National Academy of Engineering, the Millennium Institute, a nonprofit known for its expertise in energy and environmental modeling, calculated the likely benefits of an expenditure of $250 billion to $500 billion on improved rail infrastructure. It found that such an investment would get 85 percent of all long-haul trucks off the nation 's highways by 2030, while also delivering ample capacity for high-speed passenger rail. If high-traffic rail lines were also electrified and powered in part by renewable energy sources, that investment would reduce the nation's greenhouse gas emission by 38 percent and oil consumption by 22 percent. "

High speed trains can also become a pollution problem. The progressive journalist George Monbiot has reported: "Though trains traveling at normal speeds have much lower carbon emissions than airplanes, Professor Roger Kemp of Lancaster University shows that energy consumption rises dramatically at speeds above 125 miles per hour. Increasing the speed from 140 to 220 mph almost doubles the amount of fuel burned. If the trains are powered by electricity, and if that electricity is produced by plants burning fossil fuels, they cause more CO2 emissions than planes."

A letter to the Cleveland Plain Dealer points out that "The population density of the major fast-train-using countries averages two-plus times that of Ohio (Japan's is 3.3 times); gasoline prices are 2.2 times the Ohio price; airport congestion is worse; and regulated airfares to convenient airports are higher than comparable U.S. destinations. What's more, arrival at a train terminal in a European or Japanese city often places you within walking distance of the major commercial and tourist locations. Not so in the United States . . . I have used high-speed trains many times and they are great, but building and operating them would be a major financial drain in Ohio. "

Based on the only example we have in the United States, high speed rail is substantially more expensive and serves a wealthier class of riders. For example, making a reservation on one conventional Amtrak train from Washington to NYC today would have cost $52 less than the high speed Acela. More startling is that conventional business class is $16 cheaper than Acela even though in conventional business class you get more leg room, much more space to stow your gear, a free newspaper and free coffee and soft drinks. And all this costs you is one extra half hour ride under more pleasant conditions.

Here's what the NY Times had to say the other day: "[The stimulus bill]
will not be enough to pay for a single bullet train, transportation experts say. And by the time the $8 billion gets divided among the 11 regions across the country that the government has designated as high-speed rail corridors, it is unlikely to do much beyond paying for long-delayed improvements to passenger lines, and making a modest investment in California's plan for a true bullet train.

A major reason for the high cost: building exclusive tracks for the high speed trains. Even though Acela, for example, can theoretically hit 150 miles an hour, it only averages 84 mph between NYC and Washington, in part because of stops and in part because it uses improved conventional tracks. It only hits full speed on about 35 miles in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

But this raises an important and almost entirely undiscussed question. Is the huge expense of exclusive track high speed rail preferable to spending the money on expanding conventional service to many times more passengers?

Even before the downturn, however, the Acela ridership reports were less than stunning. For example, in the last fiscal year the conventional northeast coast regional service rose 9.5% while Acela ridershp only went up 6.5%. Seventy percent of the ridership along the northeast corridor remained with the slower, cheaper trains.

Philip Longman, in his Washington Montly article, reminds us of alternative uses of conventional rail that seldom get mentioned. Some past examples: "The Pacific Fruit Growers Express delivered fresh California fruits and vegetables to the East Coast using far less energy and labor than today 's truck fleets. . . . The Railway Express Agency, which attached special cars to passenger trains, provided Americans with a level of express freight service that cannot be had for any price today, offering door-to-door delivery of everything from canoes to bowls of tropical fish to, in at least one instance, a giraffe. . . .

"High-speed Railway Post Office trains also offered efficient mail service to even the smallest towns which is not matched today. In his book Train Time, Harvard historian and rail expert John R. Stilgoe describes the Pennsylvania Railroad's Fast Mail train No. 11, which, because of its speed and on-board crew of fast sorting mail clerks, ensured next-day delivery on a letter mailed with a standard two-cent stamp in New York to points as far west as Chicago. Today, that same letter is likely to travel by air first to FedEx 's Memphis hub, then be unloaded, sorted, and reloaded onto another plane, a process that demands far greater expenditures of money, carbon, fuel, and, in many instances, time than the one used eighty years ago . . ."

The big advantage of high speed rail is that the media, politicians and upper class love the idea and are happy to promote it without asking any of the hard questions. But it's worth remembering that after Washington and San Francisco blew huge sums on subways, city planners finally got wise and started looking at less expensive transit systems that were more efficient in every regard except speed. And so, Washington is today finally working towards having its first light rail route in 47 years.

Let's hope it doesn't take that long to improve conventional rail.

DOWN EAST NOTES

Pine Tree Politics - Gallup published a new study that took a look at each state in the union, and compared the partisan gap between Republicans and Democrats in 2008 and 2009. The results showed that in a large majority of states, the advantage enjoyed by the Democratic Party has slipped – yet it does remain strong. Interestingly, Maine comes in as the seventh highest slip in support for Democrats, losing six percentage points. However, Maine still remains - according to Gallup - a net 13 point Democratic stronghold (48%-35%), earning the "solid Democrat" moniker.

After checking the tree's growth rings under magnification, the Maine Forest Service has declared Yamouth's famous elm, Herbie, to have been 217 years old when cut down recently. It was born in 1793, the same year that George Washington began his second term.

Morning Sentinel - Gen. George Washington's map of the 1781 Battle of Yorktown sold Friday for $1.15 million, making it the highest-priced artifact ever sold at auction in Maine. The pen-and-ink battle plan -- yellow marking the forward lines of the allied French and American armies, red showing the British formation -- was sold at the James D. Julia Inc. auction house on U.S. Route 201. . . It was prepared by the French Lt. Col. Jean Baptiste Gouvion for the Virginia campaign. "It's the record for the most expensive antique ever sold in Maine, at auction," Julia said. "I don't know where it stands in the world of maps, but it is certainly one of the most expensive maps ever sold." The second highest-price item in Maine was a Colt pistol sold by Julia at auction in 2007, which sold for almost $1 million.

Steve Pinkham has written a book, the Mountains of Maine, that comes up with some high altitude facts about the state's hundreds of mountains and hills. Reports the Sun Journal: "He counted eight Black Mountains, seven Hedgehog Mountains and six Sugarloafs." There are 26 Oak Hills. . . Along the way, Pinkham developed a list of superlatives. He calls Mars Hill 'Maine's most abused mountain,' with TV, cell phone and wind towers. Saddleback, he said, is the state's most expensive mountain: Its owner paid $17 million so the top wouldn't be developed. Beehive Mountain in Acadia earns honors as most-climbed in Maine.

MAINE SCREWED BY OBAMA'S HEATING ASSISTANCE FORMULA

Maine Public Broadcasting - Under a new formula adopted by the Obama Administration, colder states like Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and even Alaska are seeing a huge drop in emergency federal funding for low income energy assistance. In Maine, it translates to a decline of about 80 percent. Southern states, meanwhile, are reaping the rewards. . . Usually, every year, Maine gets a sizeable portion. Last year it was close to $30 million. But this year? Less than five. . . . "There's a lot of outrage going on about this and I think you'll see a lot of protesting over the formula," says Maine Congresswoman Chellie Pingree. Pingree says the problem is that the administration's new methadology relies on factors such as population, relative changes in unemployment, income and temperature. "They looked at states like ours where unemployment was stabilizing, or the weather hadn't had dramatic shifts for the cold and they went to states that had unusual temperature drops," Pingree says. "But I think what they're forgetting is: We already had a high unemployment rate, we're already suffering and have many elderly. And we're having a normally cold winter, which we always do."

SHOP TALK

Some strange things have been happening around here. Last night some of our readers trying to check in our main page, got our Down East edition, Coastal Packet, instead. The other day, they were sent to our ecology news archives. We've fixed both problems but want you not to be surprised at this sort of thing happening again over the next month and half. Just let us know when you find it.

What's happened is that Google, as part of its campaign to take over the world, has decided that it no longer likes the venerated file transfer protocol, or FTP. We don't know why it feels this way, but who are we to argue with a corporation that even scares the Chinese?

Although many readers may not know it, a few of the pages that seem to just ordinary subsidiaries of prorev.com are, in fact, produced by the Google subsidiary, Blogger.Com. By March 26, these pages must be free of FTP association or they will end up as uneditable files on our site, which has been served to the world for years by the ever-wonderful Turnpike.Net.

We have already converted two pages to the Bloggercentric paradigm. These are:

Flotsam & Jetsam is now at http://prorevflotsam.blogspot.com


Sam Smith's Essays archives is now at http://samsmithessays.blogspot.com

What is pending, however, is that our main Undernews page and our Coastal Packet page will both have to change as well. We are awaiting further instructions but, it might help if you printed this post out for future reference. Should you be unable to reach either of these sites, try the new links which will be:


http://prorevnews.com for Undernews
http://coastalpacket.com for Coastal Packet

Don't try them now; they won't work. And in the best of all worlds - remember those days? - you'll have a clear announcement that the change is occurring.

Finally, there is the unresolved problem of the RSS feeds for the above. If the current ones stop working, try loading the sites above into your reader. They should work after the change is made.

LICENSE PLATE SCANNERS: ANOTHER UNCONSITUTIONAL TOOL FOR COPS

Shenna Bellows, Maine Civil Liberties Union - Automatic license plate-readers scan and store the license plates of any car that an equipped police cruiser encounters-on the highway, in a parking lot, in a neighborhood. The scanner then checks the plate against databases, watch-lists and the identity and location of the scan is stored in a police database.

Justice Louis Brandeis wrote in 1928, "The makers of the Constitution: conferred as against the government, the right to be let alone - the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men." Mainers cherish our right to be left alone by the government - to think, say, and do what we want as long as we are not hurting our neighbors or breaking the law. ALPRs, like all surveillance, threaten those fundamental privacy rights.

There are three primary civil liberties problems with this technology itself - the cameras, the hot lists, and most seriously, the database.

First, surveillance cameras, in themselves, have a chilling effect on freedom of movement. People behave differently when they believe themselves to be under surveillance. This has been a theory behind prison architecture for decades, and indeed, we have come to expect cameras in situations where heightened security is at issue - at the bank or the airport. Cameras on police cars can be very effective, and indeed, the ACLU has supported them in situations that protect both police and citizens, by videotaping arrests and questioning of suspects. But there is a difference between the camera used to monitor interactions between law enforcement and the public and surveillance cameras that monitor the ordinary activity of us, the people as we go about our daily lives. In a free society, we have an expectation that we are not being monitored by law enforcement unless we are suspected of wrongdoing or involved in a situation that requires police action. All people in America are presumed innocent and law-abiding unless the evidence indicates otherwise. The very nature of these surveillance cameras turns that presumption of innocence on its head - into a presumption that we are all guilty.

Second, the cameras rely on "hot lists," lists fed into the camera by law enforcement to generate automated matches. Even if we can't agree that surveillance cameras in themselves have a chilling effect on a free society, then perhaps we can agree on the dangers of unlimited "hot lists." The technology that many of you have seen and you will hear described in more detail functions using "hot lists" that allow law enforcement to match a photographed license plate to a license plate number on a hot list. This technology allows law enforcement to use any hot list that they like or even to construct a hot list themselves. Imagine the potential abuse of such hot lists. Law enforcement could sweep the parking lot of a No on 1 or Yes on 1 rally. . .or a synagogue. . .or a mosque. . .or a church to record the license plate numbers, which would then enable law enforcement to use that list of license plate numbers to monitor the actions of those participants.

Think that wouldn't happen in America? Ask the Eastern Maine Peace and Justice Center or Senator John Kerry or others who have been subjected to FBI surveillance because of their political activities. We have further concerns about use of some federally compiled lists, like the so-called terrorist watch list, which numbers over one million names and includes names like those of the civil rights leader and current Congressman John Lewis as well as eight-year old Mikey Hicks. Hot list technology that creates an automated match makes this surveillance camera system even more powerful and potentially threatening to civil liberties than an ordinary camera.

Third, the most dangerous aspect of this system is the database that the camera creates and feeds. I have seen this database in my visit to South Portland to meet with law enforcement. The database contains the record of every car law enforcement has encountered with a photograph, date, time and location. This database contains a virtual map of the movements of ordinary citizens about the community. Lieutenant Frank Clark has described this in the newspaper saying, "Information is gold." He is absolutely correct. Already, other jurisdictions are sharing these databases with repo companies looking to repossess vehicles whose owners are behind on payments. The commercial and political interest in these types of databases is enormous. A journalist friend of mine said when I shared with him the details of this information, "I do want to know if the mayor is at the liquor store. That's news." The newspaper. . .or one's political opponents. . .might very well be interested in who visits the liquor store or the adult video shop or a psychiatrist or a family planning center. Commercial entities have a strong interest in who shops at their stores or their competitor's stores. You will hear from supporters of this technology that their interest is very limited, but we know from experience that inevitably mission creep expands uses of these powerful technologies from law enforcement to intelligence gathering to total information awareness, all at the expense of the privacy of ordinary citizens. . .

When the government invades our privacy by collecting information about our private, personal lives, the government then has a responsibility to ensure that we are kept safe from those who would seek merely to embarrass one of us or our neighbors to those who would do us harm. We are concerned that the hasty adoption of this technology has serious and dramatic implications for both our liberty and our security. . .

The three civil liberties problems with the technology itself include the cameras, the hot lists used to create matches, and the database. Each of those technological elements creates liberty and security vulnerabilities. The urge to use the newest, fastest technology is not surprising, but ALPR's simply place too much data mining power in the hands of the police and those who breach their systems.

SNOW DAZE: WASHINGTON AND MAINE

Sam Smith

In part because the media has misleadingly written endlessly about global warming rather than climate change, there are going to more than a few people in mid-Atlantic cities who think the recent snows prove it's all not a problem.

In fact, as a reader recently pointed out, change is just that. It is hard to predict. We know past data definitely indicates a shift but we can't define the precise nature of that shift because we haven't experienced it yet.

Just before the current blizzard, the National Wildlife Federation issued a report that suggested that we shouldn't be surprised by such things:

"Global warming is having a seemingly peculiar effect on winter weather in the northern United States. Winter is becoming milder and shorter on average; spring arrives 10 to 14 days earlier than it did just 20 years ago. But most snow belt areas are still experiencing extremely heavy snowstorms. . . Even as global warming slowly changes the character of winter, we will still experience significant year-to-year variability in snowfall and temperature because many different factors are at play."

Washington, DC, well illustrates the uncertain quality of change. The storm last weekend dropped the fourth largest amount of snow on the city in recorded history. But you need only to go back two years to February 6, 2008, and you'll find the city setting a warmth record for that date of 74 degrees. The coldest February 6 was back in 1895, when the thermometer fell to one degree.

It may help to keep in mind two principles:

- Change is change and doesn't fully define itself until it's happened.

- An average is only an average.

Having recently moved from DC to Maine, I gaze out my window at the remains of 22 inches of snow that hardly slowed things down at all in these parts and recall the number of my friends who said something like, "How are you going to survive those Maine winters?" and I think how grateful I am I wasn't back in DC this weekend.

In fact, Maine has two mre typical advantages over the capital in winter. We have a lot of sun and the cold is dry. Twenty-five degrees on a sunny Down East day is infinitely preferable to a 35 degree cloudy day in DC with the humid cold cutting through any protection you might be wearing.

Here's how I described it back the 1970s:

"The city lived for spring and fall, periods separated by muggy summer and by an unpredictable yet dull winter. In the fall, the gauze of noxious gas that stretched over DC all summer was peeled away, permitting the sun a rare chance to lounge unimpeded against the sides of buildings or ricochet off spires. The air conditioner's monotone was finally silenced and the hint of chill repulsed by a friendly jacket. But the spring was even better; you quickly forgot the snow that didn't come, or that did come but all in one blizzard, and you luxuriated in a few months of unadulterated color and life. Summer was awful and in winter it was best to heed the words of Mark Twain:

"'When you arrived it was snowing. When you reached the hotel it was sleeting. When you went to bed it was raining. During the night it froze hard, and the wind blew some chimneys down. When you got up in the morning it was foggy. When you finished your breakfast at ten o'clock and went out, the sunshine was brilliant, the weather balmy and delicious, and the mud and slush deep and all pervading. You will like the climate-when you get used to it. . . . Take an umbrella, an overcoat, and a fan, and so forth.'"

As for Maine, I don't have to check any data to confirm that the climate has changed. All I have to do is remember the Farm Bureau supper I attended as a kid where I overheard the straw hatted Harold Mann telling a companion, "Ayah. I remembah that wintah of ought eight. We had our first snow the middle of Octobah and come May 1st we were still on runnahs."

Sam Smith, Washington Post, 1987 - Al Thompson is superintendent of roads in Freeport, Maine, with a population about one percent of that of the District. But what Maine lacks in people, it makes up in roads, so Al Thompson has about 12 percent of Washington's asphalt mileage to look after.

Now Al doesn't have anything like the equivalent of Connecticut and Wisconsin avenues in his charge, and the local politicians tend to realize that nature often is impervious to memos, directives and policy guidelines. On the other hand, he works without the benefit of Snow Command Centers, Computerized Cancellation Centers and Codes Yellow. What he does have is five trucks with 12-foot dustpans and 11-foot wings.

How long does it take his trucks to cover 130 miles? Says Al: "An hour and a half, an hour and three-quarters." Then it takes another three hours for a second "cleanup" trip.

To put it in D.C. terms, that would mean, with the number of vehicles we've got (if properly equipped), you theoretically could sweep through the city in a couple of hours. Since it is clear our trucks are outmoded and not properly equipped, let's look at it another way: 25 good snow plows could, using the Maine standard, run through every street in the city in nine hours. . .

Now, before someone at the District Building picks up the phone to tell The Post about "complex urban problems," let me tell you about George Flaherty. He's director of parks and public works for Portland, Maine. Portland is about one-tenth the size of D.C. but has nearly 30 percent of its street mileage. He uses about a quarter of D.C.'s equipment and expects to have the job done in 8 to 10 hours.

I asked if he could explain the logic of a not-uncommon Washington scene: two snow plows working directly behind each other, sometimes with a Department of Public Works pickup truck in the lead. He just laughed and said, "No." Al Thompson agrees: "Doesn't do any good to plow over ice. Got to use salt."

And you don't wait until four inches have piled up before you start plowing. You start when you've got an inch and a half, and you stay ahead of the storm. And you don't leave it to the Almighty once ice-covered streets become mushy. You run the plows through and get the stuff off. Here, even downtown, we let the streets freeze again so the morning traffic reporters will have something to talk about.

"As soon as the storm starts, we salt all our major arterials," Flaherty says. In cases of major storms, "we will salt our critical areas just before it begins to snow.". . .

It will be argued that northern cities are willing to pay a high premium for clearing their streets because they get so much snow. But this year Portland budgeted, like most cities, for the best of all possible worlds: 25 inches, a winter roughly comparable to ours so far. With one-third the street mileage of D.C., Portland still planned to spend one-third more.

Why? Maybe because they know what bringing a city to a halt really costs. Here are some figures that will give you a rough idea of the costs of closing down D.C. for a day: the D.C. government spends $3 million a day on its payroll; the federal government spends close to $20 million a day for its D.C. payroll; private businesses spend another $30 million. What did D.C. budget for snow removal? Just under $1 million. Calculate the odds yourself.

OBAMA WANTS MORE NUKE PLANTS, BUT NO PLACE YET TO STORE WISCASETT'S WASTE

Maine Public Broadcasting - President Obama is calling for $54 billion in loan guarantees for a "new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants." His administration also announced this week that it is dropping plans for underground storage of highly radioactive nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain. . .

There are currently five nuclear power plants operating in New England: two in Connecticut, one in Massachusetts, one in Vermont and one in New Hampshire. Second only to natural gas, nuclear power is a major supplier of electricity to New England -- so much that a 2006 report found that nuclear plants could supply all residential households in the region excluding Massachusetts. . .

But Ed Lyman of the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Union of Concerned Scientists says a doubling or tripling of nuclear plants would have to occur before nuclear power could significantly cut greenhouse gas emissions, and Lyman says government subsidies should not be used to get them off the ground.

"The expansion plans in the 1970s fell of their own weight because of massive cost overruns, and taxpayers and ratepayers ended up having to bail out many projects," Lyman says. "And the economics of nuclear power is no different today than it was then. The fact is that without the loan guarantees and other subsidies, there would not be a single new nuclear plant built in this country."

And then there's the thorny issue of disposing and safeguarding nuclear waste. For more than two decades the federal government has been trying to find a suitable place for a central repository for highly radioactive spent fuel that is a byproduct of nuclear power. Nevada's Yucca Mountain had been investigated and debated and rejected and finally recommended for licensing as an underground storage site.

But this week the Department of Energy moved to withdraw the application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission after the Obama Administration eliminated funding for the site. Anti-nuclear activists cheered the move.

Patrick Dostie takes a dimmer view. "Well, what it means is that Maine Yankee down in Wiscasset now becomes sort of a defacto storage site for high level waste."

Dostie is the state's nuclear safety inspector who has seen the Maine Yankee Nuclear Power plant through its operating, decommissioning and storage phases. Before the plant shut down in 1997 because it was no longer economically viable, it was Maine's largest source of electricity. Today, Dostie says it has 60 casks of high-level spent nuclear fuel on the site as well as several that contain the cut-up guts of the internal reactor that were too radioactive to send to a low-level waste site.

Maine had hoped to safely dispose of some of this waste at Yucca beginning in the next ten years. Dostie says the delay is a reflection of the nation's political will. "It certainly puts a wrinkle in the so-called Renaissance. Obviously, you kind of always have to ask questions: Is it appropriate to build nuclear power plants when who knows how long it's going to be before we resolve the issue?"

DOWN EAST NOTES

Only 12 of Maine's 183 school districts are going to get more state aid in the next fiscal year. Overall there will be a $92 million drop in assistance.

Pine Tree Politics - The unbeatable Governor Angus King raised only an anemic $1305.00 in the entire year of 1997 in the lead up to his re-election campaign? In the January 2002 pre-election semiannual (i.e. just the second half of 2001), then Congressman John Baldacci raked in a staggering $329,258.97 for his budding race for Governor, which frightened potential primary challenger Chellie Pingree so much, she folded like a cheap suit.

Seacoast Online - The town of Vienna, Maine, facing the rising price of asphalt and the cost of road maintenance, [has] decided to convert several miles of their roads to gravel. And the selectmen in the town of Cranberry Isle (pop. 118) think they can save $500,000 a year that way.

Good Shepherd Food Bank, Maine's largest, serves 107.900 people a year.

Maine Public Broadcasting - Following a two-and-a-half hour debate, members of the Maine House voted overwhelmingly against a proposal to join a national compact created to elect the president by popular vote. Maine is one of two states that is allowed to split its four electoral votes, but the plan passed by five other states would require Maine to award all four of its votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Kennebec Journal - The Maine Green Independent Party candidate for governor says she's decided to forgo public funding for her campaign in light of tight state finances and will seek private funds instead. Lynne Williams . . . said that while she supports the concept of public funding for gubernatorial elections, she can't accept public money now that might be better used to help people in real need. With the state facing a $438 million budget shortfall, Williams believes the Legislature is poised to dilute the campaign fund and has made it harder for candidates to qualify.

THE SHAKER STORY

Many Mainers know about the Shaker community at Sabbathday Lake, but an article in this month's Down East tells about shaking as well as Shakers, including a time when ecstatic worship included "whirling, twirling, it was running, it was leaping, it was dancing, it was rolling on the floor."

Maine is home to one of the last communities of Shakers at Sabbathday Lake in New Gloucester. Part of a religious movement that began in the eighteenth century and spread throughout the Northeast before falling into decline at the turn of the twentieth century, the Shakers became famous for their craftsmanship and unconventional religious beliefs and traditions. The Shakers’ practices of celibacy and “ecstatic worship” (from whence came the term Shaker) prompted suspicion, disdain, and mean-spirited rumors from their neighbors.

The article is based on a new book by journalist Jeannine Lauber shows Shaker life as being different from popular perception. In this exclusive excerpt she documents an eye-witness account of the last ecstatic dance to take place among the Shakers of Sabbathday Lake.

Chosen Faith, Chosen Land is a study of the contemporary Shaker faith. The new book takes readers on a journey, in words and images, through the lives of America’s 21st-Century Shakers. Over a 15-year period renowned journalist and author, Jeannine Lauber, was granted excusive, unprecedented access to the private lives of the last remaining Shakers allowing her to reveal what it means to be a Shaker at Maine’s own Chosen Land that surrounds Sabbathday Lake in New Gloucester, Maine.

Jeannine Lauber pierces many of the misconceptions and myths about the religion - most notably that all Shakers are dead - and she offers a modern-day view of their faith and surrounding community.

WEDNESDAY'S MISSING WATER

Bangor Daily News - The Stonington Water Co. has a mystery on its hands.
Large amounts of water have been disappearing regularly from the system since October, and officials don't know how or why. It does not appear to be a leak, according to water company Superintendent Roger Stone, and the missing water is not running into the town sewer system. There's concern that someone may be drawing water from the system either deliberately or by accident.

Either way, the problem is getting worse.

"It's bizarre," Stone said Thursday.

Since October, approximately 1.2 million gallons of water has simply disappeared from the water company tanks. It always happens on Wednesday, Stone said. Water usage almost doubles on Wednesdays, based on Stone's regular inspections of the water tanks. Usage returns to normal the next day. . .

The problem appears to be getting worse. Stone calculates that about 200,000 gallons was missing in October; it increased to about 400,000 gallons in November; and to more than 600,000 gallons in December.

Stone has discounted a leak, although he continues to check the water lines regularly. A leak doesn't start and stop once a week, he said. There's no indication that the water is flowing into the municipal sewer plant either. . .

Stone has concluded that some individual or individuals are behind the water loss.

"Somebody's doing it," Stone said. "What we don't know [is] if it's malicious or not.". . .