SEARS ISLAND CARGO PORT. A report to the Maine Greens
by Jim Freeman (May-95)
NOT FISCALLY RESPONSIBLE
The Maine Forest Products Council and the Bangor Investment Corporation, a Massachusetts-owned corporation---and owners and developers of Sears Island---are some of the forces pushing for the development of a Cargo Port on Sears Island. The Maine Department of Transportation (MDOT) is the state agency responsible for promoting and shepherding the process along in the public eye.
The current MDOT report on the Sears Island Cargo Port requires the annual shipping 670,000 tons of chips (equivalent to 250,000 cords of wood) to maintain a level of economic viability. These chips will likely be shipped to Korea and other far eastern markets for biomass and the production of paper. At this rate of export, there are an estimated 16 years of hardwoods in the Truck Service Region for Sears Island (an area roughly from Portland to Jay to Lincoln to Jonesboro). Well within two decades---and perhaps within one---Maine's forests in this area will be gone, and with them the jobs and quality of life those forests once represented. Woodchip harvesting has been going on in Georgia and Tennessee for some time and their forests are now gone and their sawmills stand silent.
With the forest resource base gone, the cargo port will no longer be economically viable, yet the people of Maine will still be paying on the initial construction bill. Mainers are being asked to pay $70 million for the construction of the port (in addition ot the $17.5 million already spent to build the causeway). With a thirty year bond, taxpayers will be paying $188.1 million. Yet well before thirty years, the port will stand idle, the forests will be reduced to scrub, small industries that relied on forests will have gone out of business, and the port bills will still be due. This doesn't sound like a good economic development plan.
SHIPPING CHIPS IS SHIPPING JOBS
Sometimes we hear that building a cargo port at Sears Island will help create jobs in the Maine economy. There is a tiny amount of truth to this, which makes it sound quite appealing. The whole truth, however, is that aside from a few temporary jobs constructing the port and a few jobs chipping trees and transporting the chips to the port, the port will be a net exporter of jobs from Maine.
The MDOT claim that economic development will result in Waldo County from the operation of the port fails to look at alternatives to their proposed Third World Economic Development Model of exporting unprocessed natural resources. The claim is that 176 permanent jobs for the operation of the port, and 117 permanent jobs in the woods. Maine taxpayers will pay $188 million over 30 years for 293 permanent jobs, permanent, that is, for the 16 years it will take to destroy the hardwood forests. We, the taxpayers, will pay $642,000, or $21,400 every year for each job for thirty years. ($188 million divided by 293 jobs.)
To put this in perspective, let's look at an alternative economic model that isn't based upon the export of natural resources as a raw material. Since 1990, Waldo County small business ventures have created 776 new jobs. Only one $86,000 small business grant went to Waldo County. The cost to taxpayers per job for thirty years is $3.27.
The future of the economy of Waldo County should be based upon decentralized, entrepreneur-driven small business development who are not asking for taxpayer subsidy and resource depletion for short term gain.
Small business creates far more and better quality jobs than centralized, taxpayer bond-driven big business mega-projects. The Greens believe economic development should benefit the local people and the land, rather than be driven by the pocketbooks of international financiers.
THE WORST WAY TO CREATE JOBS
A chart of how much value could be added to a cubic meter of wood was published recently (10-Oct-94) in the Bangor Daily News. This shows a way to measure how much our natural resource of wood is actually worth. The chart shows:
Use of Trees | $ Value/meter3 |
This translates directly into jobs, and similar numbers are inevitable for hardwoods. Every time we export four tons of hardwood as chips, we are losing one job; that means over 150,000 jobs a year are being lost by exporting enough chips to keep Sears Island Cargo Port viable. This does not even take into account factors in other affected industries, such as the impact on fishing from increased siltation in the Gulf of Maine watershed resulting from more runoff into rivers due to less forest cover; the decline of the availability of fuelwood; and the end of hardwood manufacturing as a Maine industry. Carpenters, sawyers, fishermen, small business people, papermakers, and taxpayers will all be negatively affected by having Maine adopt a Third World Economic Model of exporting unprocessed natural resources.
Maine's trees are a natural resource that can be used to create jobs. Those jobs may be in Thailand or Korea when the trees are shipped out as a raw material, or they could be in Maine when the trees are processed in Maine by Maine people into value-added products such as lumber, shingles, furniture, paper, pallets, etc. The major export through the Sears Island Wood Chip Port may well be jobs.
Mistakes and Misinformation
The causeway built to Sears Island already creates stagnation in adjoining shallow salt bays which were formerly warm shallow eelgrass nursery areas for groundfish. The loss of this nursery area represents one more nail in the coffin of the Gulf of Maine Fisheries. The connector should have been a bridge which would have allowed the continued tidal flushing of the eelgrass nursery beds.
For several years the MDOT accepted reports which said there were no wetlands on the island, yet the most casual observer could see those reports were wrong---there are many acres of wetlands on Sears Island. Overlooking the wetlands was clearly in the interest of the developers.
These are examples of how mistakes and misinformation have already been part of the project which is barely underway.
WHO WILL BENEFIT?
Some industries will benefit in the short term, particularly mechanized heavy equipment manufacturers. Banks which finance the equipment will benefit, as will insurance companies which insure the equipment. Trucking and railroad industry will benefit as they will transport the logs to the chipping port for as long as the forests last. Those who will profit most from this project are out-of-state corporations, their executives and shareholders.
WHO WILL BE HURT?
Mainers who use forest for producing value added products will be hurt. This includes local sawmills, lumber yards, and furniture makers. The fishing industry will see fish populations further depleted from additional runoff and estuary siltation, reduced nursery areas, and increased waterfront pollution. Firewood prices are likely to double as firewood sellers go out of business, unable to compete for hardwood stumpage against bids by the mechanized chippers. We can look forward to the development of new cutting areas in almost every town, and heavier truck traffic in already congested areas. These all lead to an increase in negative effect on tourism and the quality of life. People from Maine and other states who use the Maine forest for recreation and enjoyment will be hurt. Maine's environment is a huge asset not to be wasted; the number of people who visit our forests, mountains, lakes and shores every year is several times the population of our state. These people do not come up here to see industrial areas and cut-over forests. The upper Penobscot Bay region and the Sears Island Truck Service region represent a major draw of tourism to the state.
GREEN ALTERNATIVES
There are two areas to look for alternatives to building a port at Sears Island.
One is alternatives to the increase in clearcutting and chipping in Maine forests as a result of a wood chip port. This alternative is to improve the management of our forests for the purpose of growing a better grades of trees. This improved stock will benefit the hundreds of independent secondary wood producers in the state and ensure the future viability of these enterprises and the many more which will spring up around a quality hardwood forest.
The other is an alternative to this kind of development in the upper Pen Bay and Central Maine regions. In the Pen Bay area, expand Belfast Harbor for lighter vessels or barges. Develop environmental tourism as a focus of the Sears Island area, attracting people to the state. Where else on the eastern coast is there an easily accessible 900 acre island without a building on it? The entrance to park with a campground can be seen as a gateway to downeast Maine and the eastern Pen Bay region. Attract and develop recreational-based businesses. This creates an opportunity for kayaking and canoeing, which in turn can create a local market for light manufacturing industry for building and renting canoes and kayaks.
In Central Maine, refurbish the Belfast & Moosehead Lake RR; this will be a benefit to all the towns it goes through, and will again connect Belfast harbor with the Central Maine RR in Expand and refurbish the ports at Bucksport, Winterport, Rockland and Mack Point, not with a view to exporting chips but for the export of value-added wood products and high value items from Maine's other industries.
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