Another meeting - perhaps the ultimate Joint Use Planning Committee meeting? - shall be held October 3rd noon to 3pm at the Searsport Congregational Church.
Nearing the end of its mandated life, the Committee staggers toward its finish line, flogged ruthlessly by MDOT Commissioner Cole. There it hopes to hand off a completed sellout ...er..agreement, splitting the island into kill zone and conservation zone, to a skeptical legislature.
Said mission accomplished, JUPC will give up the ghost; but out of its corrupted remains shall arise a new entity, a rather oily Phoenix, its eye fixed firmly on the conservation piece of the island, its tail cocked at the sacrifice zone's hundreds of acres of forest and eelgrass.
This Frankensteinian Son of JUPC will be the creme de la creme or should we say the slime de la slime condensed from JUPC's membership, sworn to steadfastly ignore the industrial savagery to be waged against the western side of Wassumkeag, while dealing harshly, ruthlessly against litter bugs or fern poachers in the conservation zone.
Will the meeting hall at the Congregational Church in Searsport susurate with murmuring voices of surrender, or resound with cries of disagreement with the ongoing machinations of the Sears Island Joint Use Planning Committee,
The 300 acre industrial zone.
This area, the most at risk of harm, the most in need of detailed and cautious oversight, has been completely abandoned by the moderate conservation groups, compromisers like Sierra Club's
For while the list of do's and don'ts regarding the conservation zone expands like popcorn, the list of do's and don'ts on industrial activity and the permissible levels of degradation of the abandoned portion of the island and adjoining bay remains at zero. Nada. Zip. A ghost.
The unspoken 800,000 ton gorilla hulking on the western third of the island, poised to rip up its forests, fill in its fern gullies, culvert its brooks and dredge away its seagrasses shall not be acknowledged.
This studied blindness among JUPC members needs at least to be acknowledged
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