Sears Island: Army Corps rejects MaineDOT plan for Sears Island-based umbrella mitigation bank

"Army Corps of Engineers nixes Sears Island mitigation plan."  What a wonderful headline to read. "Nix" has such an air of determination to it. Walter Griffin of Bangor Daily News reports MDOT's discomfiture, and Islesboro Islands Land Trust's Steve Miller continuing affectations of surprise at MDOT's yearnings to dismember Sears Island.  With a few tweaks,  Miller judges the partition as "...not a bad concept" .

Walter Griffin summarizes:
"Under the proposal, the DOT wants to use the 601 acres it has placed in a conservation easement on Sears Island as a mitigation bank. The state contends that having a MUMBI designation on the island would allow it to use that acreage to offset any wetlands disturbed during DOT activities such as road or port construction."
 ...
"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is already on record as being opposed to the MUMBI proposal. The EPA determined in April that the plan failed to address aquatic resource restoration and would cause harm to the island's long-term ecological integrity.
 ....
"In the letter to Gates, the Army corps' regulatory division determined that the document lacked a statement detailing the "legal responsibility" for mitigation and "default and closure" provisions as required by law"......."if the corps approved the MUMBI, the DOT would have to obtain a federal permit each time it wanted to use the island site for mitigation."
...
"We have trouble with some of the details," [Islesboro Islands Land Trust's Steve] Miller said. "It's not a bad concept; however, we do have concerns. This focuses on preservation credits rather than the rehab or creation of wetlands."

FULL ARTICLE:
Army Corps of Engineers nixes Sears Island mitigation plan.
By Walter Griffin, Bangor Daily News
Nov. 26--Searsport, Maine -- The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has rejected the state's draft application to create an umbrella mitigation bank on Sears Island.

The corps announced its decision in a letter to the Department of Transportation sent earlier this month. The agency determined that the application was incomplete and suggested the DOT revise its proposal to meet federal guidelines.

"It merely slows the process and nothing prohibits them [DOT] from submitting the application again," Army corps project manager Ruth Ladd said last week. "It doesn't kill it because there is always the option to resubmit the application."

The Maine Umbrella Mitigation Bank Instrument, or MUMBI, is the first of its kind to be proposed in New England. Mitigation banks have been established in other regions of the country for years, she said.
DOT spokesman Mark Latti said the agency submitted its draft proposal on Oct. 6 and received the rejection notice a month later. He said DOT planned to file a revised application shortly.

"We are reviewing the areas that are deemed incomplete and we will be resubmitting to the corps for their review within the next few weeks," Latti said Wednesday.

Under the proposal, the DOT wants to use the 601 acres it has placed in a conservation easement on Sears Island as a mitigation bank. The state contends that having a MUMBI designation on the island would allow it to use that acreage to offset any wetlands disturbed during DOT activities such as road or port construction. The wetland bank would cover the entire state. The state has retained another 330 acres on the island for a potential cargo port.

Authority to create a wetland mitigation bank comes through the federal Clean Water Act and is administered by the corps and the Environmental Protection Agency. The corps has established an interagency review team, or IRT, to screen the state's application.

"The corps had to look at it and share it with the IRT, and we determined there were a few things the needed to be addressed and we sent it back to them," Ladd said of the draft application.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is already on record as being opposed to the MUMBI proposal. The EPA determined in April that the plan failed to address aquatic resource restoration and would cause harm to the island's long-term ecological integrity.

In the letter to Gates, the Army corps' regulatory division determined that the document lacked a statement detailing the "legal responsibility" for mitigation and "default and closure" provisions as required by law.

Stephen Miller of Islesboro Islands Trust expressed surprise last week that the state's application failed to meet the guidelines. Miller said that while he expected the DOT ultimately would succeed in gaining MUMBI approval, his group was concerned that the rules do not require the state to restore or enhance old wetlands that already have been disturbed.
"We have trouble with some of the details," Miller said. "It's not a bad concept; however, we do have concerns. This focuses on preservation credits rather than the rehab or creation of wetlands."

Ladd said that even if the corps approved the MUMBI, the DOT would have to obtain a federal permit each time it wanted to use the island site for mitigation.

"Just because there is a bank there's no guarantee they will be given a permit. The idea is to have mitigation that makes the most ecological sense," Ladd said earlier this year. "The umbrella sets up a framework for reporting and tracking. You can put a bunch of projects under an umbrella."

Sears Island estuary - a teeming autumn fish nursery

An environmental group with a special license from Maine's Department of Marine Resources has discovered a teeming autumn groundfish nursery in upper Penobscot Bay - directly in the path of a state proposal for a containerport and railyard.  Penobscot Bay's larval fish abundance  has been studied in spring and summer (13 pg pdf). On the other hand, fall and and winter abundances in the shallows of the bay are less studied. are less studied.

Rockland-based Penobscot Bay Watch says initial results from their November 1, 2009 survey reveal  juvenile cod, hake, perch, flounder, herring and many other fish, shrimp and crabs abound on Sears Island's shoals, often  in waters less than three feet deep. 
"We don't have final numbers on their abundance, but, extrapolating from the hundreds of fish captured in a single short pass of our beach seine, one could easily estimate more than a million young groundfish are on the 100 acre shoal, feasting on  great swarms of shrimp-like krill" said Ron Huber, executive director of the group. "This is apparently a quite critical habitat area for juvenile Penobscot Bay groundfish."

The nursery shallows adjoin long-disputed Sears Island, a 1,000 acre undeveloped island that shelters a large estuarine complex in the brackish headwaters of Penobscot Bay.  The island is surrounded by Stockton Harbor on its east side and Searsport Harbor on its western side. 

Debate over the island's future has split mainstream and grassroots environmentalists, with Sierra Club's Maine Chapter and Maine Coast Heritage Trust favoring the recent division of Sears Island into port zone and  privately managed conservation area, while fishery activists and  local citizens have filed lawsuits seeking to protect the fish nursery. 

Maine Superior Court Justice Jeffrey Hjelm is reviewing the cases, which ask him to overturn the state's decision earlier this year to grant the Maine Coast Heritage Trust a perpetual conservation easement on two thirds of the island. The plaintiffs contend that the easement is part of a quid pro quo designed to stimulate development of a port on the island's west side, with the "protected" east portion counted as compensatory mitigation "balancing" the dredging and filling of eelgrass beds and the island's forested wetlands that drain into them.  The moderate environmentalists have accepted the compromise, dropping their their decades of opposition to industrial development of the western part of Sears Island.

"If the state moves ahead and builds a containerport on this island, and dredges these shoals, the natural recovery of Penobscot Bay's groundfish will be jeopardized," Huber said.  We very much hope that Judge Hjelm agrees"

Penobscot Bay Watch - People who care about Maine's biggest bay

Island Institute: can't have it both ways.

An opinion piece in the latest edition of  the Island Institute's Working Waterfront tabloid  laments the high real estate prices on Maine's islands, prices which render housing  there unattainable for the average Mainer. This is in large part due to, the writer observes, the fact that  "Maine's islands are part of a global real estate market."

One part of that real estate market is, of course, the Island Institute itself, whose newspaper last time I looked was top heavy with adverts for high-priced island Mcmansions, and for the various contractors ready to build more of them.  The Institute does some very fine things, but theeir promoting high priced island real estate is not one of them.