Dear Editor:

Wednesday, the 28th of March was a historic day for the town of Boothbay, and not in a good way. It reminded me of the Ides of March. On this day, your town decided to roll-over to the mega corporate bully and its legal threats. CMBG’s lawyers and town selectmen held private meetings to arrive at the consent decree. We, the Anthonys, were not invited — not allowed to give our side of the story. If you think for one second that a fair representation of the facts can occur when only one legal side is heard from, you are sadly mistaken.

CMBG’s arguments of lack of due process were a bunch of bull, but our overwhelmed selectmen fell for it, and in so doing, approved a decree that violates town ordinance. The result is a vacated BOA (board of appeals) decision that effectively denies us the legal ability to let a fair, unbiased judge, rule on a crystal clear ordinance violation that has taken us, and the BOA, a year of effort and expense to reach. To which, we say, “Et tu, Boothbay?”

Going forward the town has sent the message that it will have two sets of rules … one set for the regular people and another for the wealthy developer from away.

While we have stridently tried to keep this commercial development out of our backyard, our larger effort has always been the bigger picture - to prevent this from happening to anyone else, and to keep what should not be in the watershed, out. In this we have failed. We therefore expect the town will be spending much more money in the future cleaning Knickerbocker Lake water to basic drinking water standards than it has saved in legal costs, developers will be emboldened by the town’s yellow-bellied, precedent-setting decree and board members will realize the futility of their efforts.

Good luck going forward Boothbay.

Kevin Anthony

Boothbay