Lance Tapley, of Augusta, is a veteran investigative reporter and a co-author of “The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration, and Abuse,” published by New York University Press. He has written several stories for Pine Tree Watch, a nonpartisan, non-profit investigative news service based in Augusta. Email: info@pinetreewatch.org. Web: www.pinetreewatch.org.
An isolation cell in the Maine State Prison in Warren. After 27 years, Maine still fails to comply with the court-ordered decree to improve treatment of the state’s mentally ill First in a three-part series. In April, while incarcerated at the Maine State...
Inside the Preble Street soup kitchen in Portland. Advocates: Inadequate funding undercuts consent decree’s potential for mental health care Second in a three-part series. Click here to read part one. Advocates for the mentally ill believe state...
Judge Evert Fowle presiding over a Co-Occurring Disorders and Veterans Court in Augusta. ‘Lack of will’, potential conflicts of interest plague comprehensive mental health solution Third in a three-part series. Click here to read part one. Critics of how...
If the giant, ever-growing Irving corporations were to have a larger presence in Maine, what effects might there be on Mainers’ daily life? Our final story in this three-part series looks at the Irving companies’ growing domination of Aroostook County and Maine politics and the corporate giant’s potential effects in Maine’s marketplace, in the state’s political world and, possibly, in the news media.
“Expansion is the thing” was the motto of K.C. Irving, the twentieth-century tycoon who created the Irving family empire. An investigation by the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting of the Irving-family domination of its New Brunswick homeland and of its growing economic and political influence in Maine suggests that this is still its motto — and that Maine is its expansion target.
Several books and a Canadian-government report have noted that the Irving family business’ power over the province of New Brunswick is probably unparalleled in the developed world. Our reporter, Lance Tapley, spent a number of days in the province, getting an unusual tour of the Irving refinery, and talking with both critics and supporters of Irving’s influence in the province.
Irving Oil has stopped and has no plan to resume shipping oil to its Canadian refinery via Maine rail lines. The decision was made earlier this year and confirmed recently in an email to the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting.
A Republican state senator among those leading the fight to pass legislation to benefit J.D. Irving’s proposal to develop an open-pit mine in the North Woods accepted a free private plane ride to Aroostook from Irving’s lobbyists and didn’t report it to the state ethics commission.
Sen. Thomas Saviello, R-Wilton, said he didn’t need to report the 2013 round-trip ride because its value was not over $300, the threshold for reporting gifts from lobbyists to the Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices, and because the purpose was fact-finding.
An Irving family company agreed to reduce by $150,000 the debt a leading Democratic legislator owed to the company – the same legislator, Democratic Rep. John Martin, who has been pushing to loosen state environmental regulations so that another Irving company can mine Bald Mountain in northern Maine.
The pulp mill in Old Town that has been propped up with millions in federal and state aid has tentatively won its battle to double its allowed pollution rather than fix or replace its aging boiler. The state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) announced on...
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