The word "bureaucracy" is not a well-loved term in independent Maine, but a bureaucracy known as the Land Use Regulation Commission has become conservationists' best friend as the Plum Creek Real Estate Development Trust prepares its spring offensive.

The mammoth Seattle corporation is renewing its plans to gain approval to develop about 975 house lots in the Moosehead Lake region.

Your Scribe is against it. How about you?

My objections aren't that pure. If I thought middle-income Maine people would dwell in at least some of the new units, I might like the project better.

But these large estates will likely start at $600,000 and crest at well over $1 million. Most buyers will use them as part-time starter mansions, and thus will not live in them for more than a month a year.

Proponents say that the multi-year construction project will create jobs.

Yes, there will be short term employment. But residents of that area have always survived, and will continue to do so. It's an unsavory thought indeed if those in the Greenville region become indentured servants to families making seven figures each and every year.

Who knows, if the Plum Creek proposal is defeated, perhaps smaller, more earth-friendly projects will emerge.

My biggest reason for objecting to the construction is I see it as just another revenue gusher for Plum Creek, an "action item" for some ambitious VP.

The land purchase made years ago now is a smudge on the balance sheet of this multi-billion dollar operation. Felling the first trees and cranking up the silent dozers will put this project into the active column, and thus be the first tangible evidence that the corporation will begin to make some big money.

Plum Creek starts a cash flow; Maine loses a beloved piece of wilderness.

This example of land devastation for gain by a wealthy corporation reminds me of one of the first stories I covered in my newspaper career.

It was in Northern California several decades ago, and a well-connected construction company wanted to dredge the wild Russian River (in Jenner, Calif.) to retrieve stone for its cement operation.

The company hired some well-dressed lawyers, rented some cash-poor environmental engineers and recruited some down-on-their luck locals to say they could use the jobs.

The proceedings were civil. The appropriate California authorities listened closely to both sides.

But each time I returned home after the hearings, I felt the stirrings of what later would be coined as a state of shock and awe: "We're giving up a wild river so a construction company can cut its costs on cement?"

The county board eventually denied the requests for permits. The Russian River still flows vigorously, atop some ancient and legendary rocks.

Let's hope that's what happens at Moosehead. Let's hope the LURC can find its way to say no to this inappropriate proposal.

It would be a tragedy to lose a storied piece of Maine wilderness to a profit-driven company whose caffeine-driven goal in spring of 2007 is to bulldoze Maine's land and its people.

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