If the recent Board of Environmental Protection hearings regarding discharge permits for the Androscoggin River was a retrospective of environmental issues surrounding Maine’s paper industry, the gambit announced afterward by L.L. Bean is a preview of coming attractions.

Maine’s most recognizable company declined to renew its contract for catalog paper with Verso, which has mills in Jay and Bucksport. L.L. Bean said Verso was unable to meet the company’s new standards for environmental friendliness in timber harvesting.

In its decision, L.L. Bean flexed the market’s muscle by making environmentalism a benchmark for doing business. Papermakers in Maine already feel environmental pressure from advocates and government – the market is a potent new voice in the debate.

Markets are uninfluenced by lobbying or appeals. Its impact cannot be delayed, like the Clean Water Act has been regarding the Androscoggin River mills. No commission oversees it, it accepts no testimony, and it cares little about preserving jobs and sustaining local economies.

And unlike the efforts of government and environmental advocates, the modern paper industry in Maine is unequipped to deal with market forces like those exerted from L.L. Bean. Divested of its landholdings, the influence of paper companies to dictate its forestry practices has waned.

This puts Maine paper at a disadvantage, not only to concerns of major clients like L.L. Bean, but also against global competitors. The control over large tracts preserved by papermakers in Brazil, for example, has been cited as key to that country’s assumption of superiority inside the industry.

And this isn’t the first time environmental forestry has impacted the Maine market. In 2000, Home Depot announced it would use Maine stores as a pilot for consumer education about “certified” lumber, after an expanse of the Allagash was hailed as environmentally sound by the Forest Stewardship Council.

Canadian paper consultant Neil McCubbin, on behalf of the National Resources Council of Maine, testified on May 9 before the BEP about Verso’s Androscoggin Mill; he said investing in environmental protection would improve the mill’s economic stability by lowering operating costs.

“It is well known that the American paper industry is in decline, with many mills having already been closed,” McCubbin testified. “It is widely accepted within the industry that only the more efficient ones, with lower operating costs, will survive.”

Verso refuted McCubbin, and claims he has grossly underestimated his costs to remedy environmental concerns at the Androscoggin Mill. It’s here the debate gets technical, as the science of papermaking takes center stage.

Yet Verso, and other mills, shouldn’t disagree with McCubbin’s simple conclusion: environmentalism, whether in the beginning of the process through timber harvesting, or the end through wastewater discharge, is critical to economic sustainability.

Now, not just environmental advocates are making this claim. With the decision by L.L. Bean, the free market is also going far to prove it.