Opinion ID: 2315937
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Compliance with Performance Standards for Timber Harvesting

Text: Equally without merit is Brickyard Cove's contention that the court erred in finding that Brickyard Cove had failed to comply with the performance standards of the Ordinance. Section 507(B) lists the following performance standards for timber harvesting: 1. Harvesting Operations (a) Harvesting operations shall be conducted in such a manner that a welldistributed stand of trees is retained. (b) Harvesting activities shall not create single openings greater than seventy-five hundred (7,500) square feet in the forest canopy. (c) Harvesting operations shall be conducted in such a manner and at such a time that minimal soil disturbance results. Adequate provision shall be made to prevent soil erosion and sedimentation of surface waters. Freeport, Me., Zoning Ordinance § 507(B)(1). Brickyard Cove failed to meet any of these standards. First, its clearcutting did not leave behind the requisite well-distributed stand of trees. Second, the court received credible evidence that Brickyard Cove's cutting opened a hole in the forest canopy larger than 7,500 square feet when the spread of branches away from the tree trunks was taken into consideration. Brickyard Cove's contention that the allowance for openings in the canopy up to 7,500 square feet permits clear-cutting of that area is without merit. A canopy is [a]ny overhanging shelter or shade, see Webster's New International Dictionary at 393, so a hole in the canopy results from the cutting of trees large enough to have overspreading branches, not the clearing of every shrub and sapling in the area. Finally, Brickyard Cove took almost no measures to prevent or minimize erosion, and it was erosion and silt in the mussel beds that alerted the Town officials to the cutting operation. We will set aside the court's factual findings only if clearly erroneous. See Harmon v. Emerson, 425 A.2d 978, 982 (Me.1981). Ample evidence in the record refutes any attack on the court's finding that Brickyard Cove failed to comply with the performance standards.