Dear St. John Valley Times:
Okay, Van Buren isn't the boomtown it was when Loring AFB assembled nukes. But cancer.gov says the US incidence rate for all cancer types rose from 1975 through 1992, the year the US last tested nuclear weapons, and has dropped since from 1993 to 2009.
And now Sunny Side Up Films is planning to use VB as a location in their movie, thanks to LaJoie Growers' Peruvian blue potatoes, which SJVT says they began growing about 11 years ago.
The LaJoies grow some of their potatoes in Cyr Plantation, which received a Federal Empowerment Zone designation in December of 2001. Empowerment Zones were created by the Democrat controlled Congress to stimulate businesses and job creation in distressed communities in 1994, the year Loring closed.
Hud.gov says each rural EZ received $40 million Health and Human Services grants and qualifying businesses received a 20% credit for each EZ resident employee's qualifying wages (up to $15,000), 0% tax on capital gains on property kept for 5 years and increased tax deductions on equipment.
Part of President Obama's deal with Republicans in December, 2010 to extend the Bush tax cuts was to revive the Federal Empowerment Zone designations, which had expired on December 31, 2009. But the Empowerment Zones were only extended to December 31, 2011, while the Bush tax cuts are still in effect.
A potato is a terrible thing to waste.
References at:
think this is a photo by paul cyr of evangeline at the van buren acadian village
Keith Taft
98 Main St.
Apt. 101
Van Buren, ME
04785
Tel: (207) 399-8735
"The Assembly Area included structures dedicated to the assembly of weapons in preparation for
loading on bombers, or the disassembly of the weapons upon return. The main structures in the
area were Buildings 216, 232, and 233. Other buildings in this area included a fire station and a
power station." (5th paragraph down)
"During 1952, the North River Depot received the Mark-VI nuclear bomb, the first nuclear weapon delivered to the Air Force since the Fat Man bomb of WWII. The new bomb's nuclear material was in a "capsule" that would be inserted by the air crew just prior to dropping."
Page 153 of the Cyr Plantation 1870 -1970 Centennial Book by Frances Levasseur says the LaJoie Family's "homestead" farm is in Cyr Plantation and was owned by Norman LaJoie in 1970, whose father was Gilbert LaJoie, the son of William LaJoie, who came to Van Buren from Edmunston, NB in 1874