Fronting the opposition
Lobster boats
A shellfish farm in Maine, with fog behind the trees.
-- University of Oregon photo
There’s been quite a recent pattern on the New England coast of rich people trying to stop such newish developments as shellfish and seaweed aquaculture and wind turbines. They often do this by setting up nonprofit organizations on whose boards they stick lobstermen and other local salt-of-the-earth types as PR fronts, or if not on the boards, as spokespersons.
(Shellfish and seaweed farmers are, as a group, far from rich.)
Thus it is with Paul Coulombe, the owner of the Boothbay Harbor Country Club and Boothbay Harbor Oceanside Golf Resort, and a big promoter of luxury shoreline development. Mr. Coulombe, who made millions from the liquor business and was a big supporter of the eccentric former far-right Maine Gov. Paul LePage, has given several tens of thousands to an anti-aquaculture outfit called Protect Maine’s Fishing Heritage Foundation. Its funding and some of the characters behind it remain a bit murky, perhaps intentionally.
Sometimes people oppose newish and environmentally (mostly) beneficial projects because they just don’t want to look at them. In other cases, they think that the new sectors will, or at least might, hurt their businesses.