Roxanne Quimby has purchased another nearly 5,000 acres of land near and adjacent to the thousands of acres she already owns east and south of Baxter State Park further jeopardizing access not only to existing snowmobile trails but to public lands owned by the state.
All the while, it appears that Gardner Land Co. has agreed to a purchase price of $6.1 million for the 8,000 acres known as the Valley Lands which was part of an option hammered out in the controversial Baxter land swap deal. The problem comes from the time frame that Gardner has given the Trust for Public Lands to raise the money to buy it.
This is just another continuing mess the state got us into when it secretly negotiated the land swapping fiasco to acquire the Katahdin Lake parcel which now the state owns and has limited access. I am still waiting for someone to answer the question as to what happened to the $5.5 million the state got when it sold 7,400 acres of public lands in order to get the Katahdin Lake deal? We were told that that money would be used to buy that 8,000 acre piece now up for sale for $6.1 million.
Kevin Miller, Bangor Daily News, has more of the story.
Tom Remington
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