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It’s what you need. To know.
FINAL EDITION
bangornews.com
SATURDAY/SUNDAY, MARCH 27-28, 2004
It’s Here To Stay
Organizers announce permanent folk festival
on the Bangor Waterfront
$1.50
UMS revamp
draws mix
of responses
Reorganization backed by many;
bill filed to cut chancellor’s job
BY ALICIA ANSTEAD
OF THE NEWS STAFF
W
hile Bangor prepares for the 66th
National Folk Festival in August to
complete a threeyear residency on
the waterfront, plans are under way
for a similar traditional arts and
music festival to take place next summer. The American Folk Festival on
the Bangor Waterfront in August 2005
will kick off what local festival
organizers hope will be an annual
event in the region, as well as a
model for a larger approach to the
city’s creative economy plan.
The name for Bangor’s new festival
was announced Friday night at a
champagne reception at the Bangor
Daily News. At the same time, the
new logo, which was created by the
NEWS graphics design team of Eric
Zelz, Jonathan Ferland and Shelley
Sund, was unveiled to applause.
“The festival is a window into the
city, not only what it has been but
what it is willing to be,” said Michael
See Folk, Page A6
BY WALTER GRIFFIN
OF THE NEWS STAFF
The proposal to reorganize
the University of Maine System
may look fine on paper but it
will take a lot of hard work by
those within
the system to
move the plan
from concept
to reality.
That
was
the consensus
view of the
university
presidents, faculty, students
Clark
and public officials reached Friday, one day
after the plan was released.
Most of those contacted said
that while they were still digesting the plan’s implications, it
appeared to present a positive
solution to a difficult problem.
While many voiced support
for the plan and indicated they
were committed to making the
transition from document to
real thing, a state legislator
whose district expected to lose
its learning centers reacted by
submitting legislation aimed at
eliminating the UMS chancellor’s position and the UMS
board of trustees.
Rep. Joseph Clark, DMillinocket, said he had been
thinking about filing his legislation for years, and that the
release of the reorganization
plan was the last straw. Clark
said the East Millinocket and
Milo learning centers were
“packed” with laid-off millworkers undergoing retraining
See UMS, Page A8
Kerry plans reform
of corporate taxes
Proposal cuts rates, targets jobs
Speaking at Wayne State University in Detroit, Kerry said
his corporate tax proposal was
WASHINGTON — Democrat- part of a comprehensive ecoic presidential candidate John nomic plan he will put forward
in
coming
Kerry on Friday unveiled his
weeks to creplan to deal with “Benedict
ate 10 million
Arnold” companies that he has
jobs during the
repeatedly criticized during the
first four years
campaign for reaping tax beneof a Kerry
fits while shipping U.S. jobs
administraoverseas.
tion.
But his proposal to end an
The
jobs
estimated $12 billion annually
pledge — and
in corporate tax relief is certhe corporate
tain to stir stiff opposition from
Kerry
tax changes —
some of America’s largest
multinational companies who were designed to highlight ecoare currently enjoying those nomic issues where polls conbreaks. And private economists sistently have shown President
questioned whether it would do Bush is vulnerable: an econommuch to halt the hemorrhaging ic recovery where job growth
of manufacturing jobs to for- has lagged badly, the loss of
See Kerry, Page A2
eign countries.
BY MARTIN CRUTSINGER
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Down East study yields data on world’s acid rain problems
BY MISTY EDGECOMB
OF THE NEWS STAFF
ORONO — Politicians drafting new
rules to govern air pollution have long
struggled to understand how the acid
rain caused by air pollution might
transform the natural environment.
Now, after 15 years and $8 million
worth of effort, a research project in
eastern Hancock County is beginning
to reveal the answers.
Index
Album
S5
Amusements C4
Business
B1-8
Classifieds F1-J4
Comics
J2-3
Crossword
J2
Dear Abby
J3
Dr. Donohue J3
Editorial A10-11
Home/Garden S4
Horoscope
J2
Joni Averill
C4
Lottery
A2
Obituaries C10-11
Outdoors
D6
Religion
C8-9
Sports
D1-8
Spotlight
A3
State
C1-12
Style
S1-6
Tom Weber C1
Weather
C12
Weekly Mutuals B6
WSJ Sunday B2-4
Vol. 115, No. 243
0
13781 00006
© 2004 Bangor
Publishing Co.
Periodicals postage
paid at Bangor,
Maine 04401
0 Publication number
USPS 041000
Bear Brook, a study area a few miles
east of Aurora, is becoming known
worldwide as a living laboratory for
the study of acid rain, according to
professor Ivan Fernandez, who heads
the plant, soil and environmental sciences department at the University of
Maine in Orono.
Fernandez
and
his
fellow
researchers have been creating an artificial pollution problem, above and
beyond Maine’s existing acidification,
at Bear Brook since 1989. Every other
month, a helicopter douses a 25-acre
area around the watershed of a small
stream with man-made acid rain.
The project was spurred by the federal Environmental Protection Agency,
in hopes that accelerating acidification
at a few carefully controlled sites
would provide a window into the ecological consequences of continued pollution. By comparing the results with
an untreated watershed nearby, scien-
tists could watch the changes as they
happen.
“You always learn more by tweaking
the system, by disturbing it in some
way,” Fernandez said.
Initially, the EPA hoped to create five
study sites on the East Coast. But with
budget problems and a shift of attention away from acid rain, Maine’s
experiment was the first and the last.
The U.S. Forest Service started a similar project in West Virginia at about
the same time, and these two U.S. studies are now among only a handful of
sites worldwide available to scientists
researching acidification.
Scientists who specialize in soils,
trees, plants and even soil microbes
have come from all over the world to
work at Bear Brook, and dozens of
papers have been published in scientific journals.
Most recently, Fernandez published
See Acid, Page A6
Fiery crash shuts down
section of I-95 in Conn.
This aerial
view shows
the buckled
highway in
Bridgeport,
Conn., on
Friday with
emergency
personnel still
on the scene
after a tankertruck crash
melted the
elevated
highway
section and
closed a milelong stretch of
Interstate 95.
Traffic snarled for miles by bridge-melting blaze
BY DIANE SCARPONI
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — Drivers on Interstate 95 were forced
to take a slow detour onto city
streets and back roads Friday
after a fiery tanker-truck crash
that could snarl traffic for
weeks along one of the busiest
highways in America.
The wreck burned so fiercely
Thursday night that it caused
the steel beams in an overpass
to melt and buckle, forcing the
closing of a one-mile stretch of
I-95, the main highway connecting New York to Boston and the
rest of New England.
“It’s a mess,” said salesman
Joseph Geharty, 52, who was
stuck in Fairfield on the way to
his Framingham, Mass., home.
“It’s not like I can do anything
about it, so I’m just trying to
See Tanker, Page A6
AP PHOTO BY DOUGLAS HEALEY