LINCOLN, Maine — They came in groups of twos and threes, typically men wearing blue jeans and flannel collared shirts and driving pickup trucks. From building to building they walked, carrying small notepads into which they jotted notes about the equipment and machinery around them.
They were potential buyers reviewing mill equipment at the former Lincoln Paper and Tissue LLC mill Saturday in anticipation of a multi-day auction sale of Lincoln and Expera Specialty Pulp Mill equipment at Hilton Garden Inn in Bangor next week.
Like archaeologists or surgeons picking through the bones of a giant beast that had once served them all, the potential buyers spoke quietly, analytically, and there was no great joy in it for any of them.
“It feels funny,” said Kevin Drost, a Lincoln resident and former LPT millwright. “It’s different, different to walk through it with nothing running.”
“It’s a crying shame, what’s happened to all the mills. It is a lot of jobs, a lot of history,” said Leonard Markie, a former pulp mill maintenance worker who lives in Mattawamkeag. “It seems something could have been done to save everything.”
“There’s a lot of stuff here I would like to buy,” Drost said, “but I would rather see that group they put together get it back up and running again.”
Drost was referring to former Lincoln Paper and Tissue sales director John McMahon and the engineers and potential investors that McMahon said were going to tour the mill on Saturday. As of 2 p.m., they hadn’t appeared, but the millworkers said they heard that the tour might occur on Sunday or Monday. Calls to McMahon weren’t returned on Friday or Saturday.
McMahon said that Lincoln’s was not like other paper mills that had shut down around the state over the last few years. This mill could generate all of its own power, and investment in equipment to produce recycled pulp on-site could feed the restart of the No. 7 tissue machine and provide an initial foothold in the North American market for colored tissue paper that he has said has only one other major producer.
Walking the mill grounds, there was stillness except for a persistent breeze that stirred the plastic wrapping on large pipes overhead that ran between buildings.
“You know it’s quiet here,” Drost said, “when you can hear the traffic coming down Route 2.”
Drost and Markie agreed that Lincoln is unique. They said they felt like America was turning its back on a manufacturing history that made it great.
“It seems like we’re just letting everything come in from foreign countries,” Drost said. “Let’s make it ourselves. I believe that we make a much better product than any that comes in from any foreign country. I am not saying we can’t buy stuff from foreign countries. But we need to get back the American way a little bit. This is almost a crime for this to be going like this.”
“It would be good to have the jobs back, but the towns have to realize that you can’t tax the heck out of the mills. Power, the cost of power, there’s a lot of things that can be done about that that I feel our senators and stuff aren’t looking at,” Markie said. “Wind power, the things they are putting in, to me is pointless. You are tearing out hydropower with the dams that are [providing] a lot cheaper power for the mills.”
“Maine’s noted for paper and tissue and it would be nice to have jobs and not have to travel out of state,” Markie added. “Now there’s nothing here for your kids to look forward to.”
About 20 potential buyers visited the mill on Saturday. The auctioning of Lincoln and Expera mill equipment will start at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday and carry through intermittently until April 26, according to the catalog of items to be sold.
BDN reporter Darren Fishell contributed to this report.