My visit to the Governor's office - a final Baldacci freedom of information moment

Drove through the sleety rain from the Penobscot Bay coast to Augusta, pleasantly surprised to discover my  mp3  was full of Yes and Jon Anderson's Olias of Sunhillow. The miles melted away as the Camden Hills rose and receded, and the lakes shimmered past, their frozen edges portending icefishing in times to come.
 
Suddenly it was Augusta and then flash forward and the patient receptionist at Governor Baldacci's office  has registered my appointment and bade me wait in the seating nook under the grand staircase of the echoey empty Hall of Flags, where lobbyists awaiting the Governor cool their heels.  

The capitol is absolutely throbbing with political life forms (except in still-barely-Governor Baldacci's office, where the dutiful staff  have boxes piled up around their cubicles, but continue to answer constituent calls otherwise do the gubernatorial thing to the bitter end, when the lights go out on the Baldacci Administration.)


But in a flash Karla Black was there, leading me to the empty governor's conference room, where about two reams of paper documents await my inspection.   Ever efficient Black has provided mini-postits to stick on "keeper pages" that I want copied.

Then the door shut and I was alone with my roughly thousand pages of documents, and 2 hours to peruse them and select which to keep which not.  (For I know I have a great multitude of them already through a federal FOIA request of BOEMRE (pronounced "Bummer"). Why pay a quarter a page for 100s of pages I've already got?)

So I took the stack and split the trump into months.  Then It was time for the Great Sift:  I started speed reading these government emails (all of which were addressed to Karin Tilberg, the Governor's special assistant for renewable energy, either directly or she was cc'd,).  Key names like Maureen Bornholdt, Habib Dagher,  Aditi Mirani, Stacy Fitts.....like my own name.  

Hah! How they howled, it turns out, as I lashed them - the feds and state officials -by blog and by tweet, by facebook  and e-lists, and in the mainstream and  fishery press!  A handful of aroused coasters came down on the governor and politicians and bade them threaten not their livelihoods, forcing officials state and federal to parley to come up with rebuttals or, worse, to come up with means of ignoring the concerns.


On through the pages I plowed, in their tens and hundreds. Some months held but a mere dozen or two emails, another month  half a ream's worth.....An hour and a half passed before I sat back and surveyed the documents divided into keepers and leavers. 

Then it was time, and I stacked them into two stacks, picked up my debris, and returned to the quietly busy governor's office. (No sign of His Nibs).The receptionist pressed a button and Karla Black came out from the inner sanctum. From governor country. Public stay out.

Karla was a little surprised at how many  pages I wanted  - about 250. The last time there I'd only kept  dozen out of of  around 300 pages.

She warned me that the cost would be 25 cents/page. (I'd hoped it was a dime, like MDEP sometimes charges per page). But then she cut me a deal on postage, so we parted amicably amd I sailed back down Route 17, homeward bound.

Maine's Sea Wind Liberation bill: final action Monday

It has been positively Prufrockian in Maine's capital city if you care about the Wild Wind.

LD 1810 is a  bill offering the Dawn State the opportunity to lead America either into a confused beach head of fractured local economics and social unrest, or else divert the ocean wind farm wannabes further offshore.  That depends on whether on Monday April 5th the Maine Legislature finally  denies Maine's territorial tidal waters to intrusive, over-subsidized wind turbo farms like those set up on peaks and ridges of the Maine Woods.


Many more are planned  by  an alliance of utility investment groups, & high end compromise-prone state & New England eco-yuppy outfits, milking trickle-down gold from the Wind Giants. 


Then on March 24, 2010 this  ENGO/corporate hydra had its many heads handed to itselves,  for trying to wade out onto Maine's territorial sea mounts and ledges with similar "dumb growth" designs as they'd foisted on up lands.


The plan to infest Maine state  waters with  bladed towers has been left:

 "spread out against the sky / like a patient etherized upon a table.'   

 Yet similarly, final action on historic Wind Liberation legislation  too, continues to crawl glacially  toward the finish line. This time the final vote has been delayed to Monday - the very last day of the 2010 legislative session. And what amazing changes  the bill has gone through in the month since it first appeared! 

 An Act To Implement the Recommendations of the Governor's Ocean Energy Task Force" came out of that task force ready to force open every square mile of Maine state waters to industrial scale ocean windfarming.  But from the would-be invasion's beginning on March 11th,  Maine's two give-no-ground lobstermens associations held firm, letting wave after wave of windvaders, blades glittering above their briefcased ranks like sarissas, break futilely against their Ancient  Rights.   

But even granite becomes sand under repeated waves. At a major engagement  on March 18th,  Maine's lobstermen's 1st Legion, the MLA, was, to their everlasting ignominy, on the verge of giving up ground,  when a wild charge roaring in on shrimper, scalloper and groundfish boats savaged the invaders'  initiative, driving the windbaggers back mile after mile with their furious onset!  

Completely out of Maine state waters! Then, on March 23rd, as the Windies tried to reform, across the Line in federal waters, they were shocked to find Maine's oceanic cavalry  pouring from Bar Harbor  and other coastal towns in  coordinated small group forays through the three mile gate after them. This would be no Gettysburg, with the southern invaders again allowed to escape after their crushing defeat....

But escape they did, after being chased ten miles from shore, and vanishing, tails tucked,  into venture capital warrens - where no sensible fishermen goes.

Magnanimous in victory, Maine's fishing industry's terms were merciful: a ten mile no-windfarms buffer stretching out from Maine's shore, beyond which the Windies could practise their extraction industry - as long as (1)  the University of Maine held a controlling interest in those operations and not Wall Street, and (2) Maine electricity users had optional first dibs on the juice coming ashore in Maine from those offshore operations. 

Permission, too, was granted to test prototype offshore floating windsnatcher technology at  three tiny border sites off Midcoast Maine, to the relief of Bath Iron Works and Prock Marine, which would build the experimental wind-gathering machines, and even the mighty offshore behemoths that would be taken  by the University of Maine deep into the Gulf over the horizon.

Treaty terms made, it is up to the maine legislature and the Governor to ratify them. Bureaucratic dawdling has delayed the final signing of the agreement  by Govenor Baldacci, but  Monday is the final day of the legislative session, and already, witnesses have "heard the mermaids singing, each to each" and the governor grumbles "I do not think that they will sing to me."

* Quotes from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." by T.S. Eliot

Maine Ocean Wind Energy Bill - Shrink it or Sink it! Here's how.

Groundfishermen, scallopers, shrimpers!  Striper & bluefish anglers! Sea Kayakers & Windjammers!

Your future will be decided on Thursday March 18, 2010, when the Maine legislature decides  whether to open Maine's nearshore state waters to wind energy leasing, when it holds a work session on  LD 1810 An Act to Implement the Recommendations of the Governor's Ocean Energy Task Force  

Tell Maine legislators to either cut LD 1810 down from 38 pages to one paragraph. turn it into a "resolve", or kill it.     Information on  what to do, below

Are you a friend of continued commercial and recreational fishing in Maine state waters?

A careful reading of the state waters windfarm expansion  bill  LD 1810   leads to the conclusion that it is mostly not worth saving. After reading  the review details, below, tell your legislators to either

(1) turn it into a Resolve,  

(2) cut the bill down from 38 pages down to one page, or 

(3) give it an Ought Not To Pass.

Keep the pressure on Augusta from now to Thursday afternoon, and Maine's irreplaceable state waters commercial fishing grounds will be safe.  

(See the suggestions on what to do, below.)

Thursday afternoon, March 18th,  is when the Utility and Energy Committee will decide what, if any version of the bill LD 1810  will come out of their committee for a vote by the full legislature.

At the end of the March 11th hearing  on this bill, the U/E Committee was committed to seriously amending it,  for two reasons. Fisheries protection and the oil heat industry.

THE PLAN To protect Maine fishermen from losing fishing grounds to wind farm encroachment, sections of the LD 1810  relating to state waters must be deleted. This means delete everything in the bill but the following section in Part A: 

" 35-A MRSA §3402, sub-§3  is added:

3.  Transition to more efficient energy sources for home heating and transportation.   The Legislature finds that replacement of motor vehicles and conversion of residential and commercial heating systems in previously weatherized structures to more efficient energy sources, including electric heat pumps and electric motor vehicles, furthers state goals regarding energy independence and reduction of overall energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions and furthers the State's ocean and other renewable energy resources goals, including those established in section 3404, subsection 2.  "

Note this part of the bill if strongly opposed by the home oil heating contractors of Maine and they will probably get rid of it.

All the rest of the bill either (1) opens up Maine fishing grounds to leasing for windfarms or (2) lets wind companies "take" shorefront and inland private property to get their wind electricity cables ashore and transported via power towers as far inland  as needed to join the National Grid. 

There is no way to safely untangle any other part of the bill without the wind industry  investors from Boston and New Jersey using it to lease up to a 1000 square miles of  Maine's fishing grounds by 2012

THE PREDICTION The combination of opposition by Maine fishermen and by Maine heating oil people should be enough to KILL THE BILL. 

As a Compromise you could tell them to pass the bill as a resolution or resolve, then send  the ideas in it to all the groups, organizations and legislative committees like Marine Resources that pertain to or make up the saltwater commercial and sport fishing industries, and come back to the legislature in 2012 with whatever those various interests and communities have decided is acceptable.

Getting the legislators to gut the bill or convert it to a harmless resolve is possible because of the pressure you fishermen have already put on the politicians you have contacted. It has made them take notice. Speaker of the House Hannah Pingree,  Marine Resources Committee chair Leila Percy, and many other legislators are standing up for you. 

But to be sure, we need to keep the politicians doing the right thing all the way to the end of the work session Thursday. The wind industry's  mouthpieces areworking hard at stopping you from succeeding.  Send legislators emails. Phone them at home or in Augusta before Thursday afternoon.  Both are really powerful.  Email addresses and phone#s below, and a summary of things to tell them

WHAT TO DO

Email and phone the two committees of the legislature:

Be sure to mention LD 1810 in the email subject line 

* Send it to the Utility and Energy Committee Clerk Kristen Gottlieb Kristen.Gottlieb@legislature.maine.gov .Ask her to forward it to the committee's members. She will.  Tell the committee members that the bill is too risky to your livelihood and needs to be either turned into a resolve or given an Ought Not To Pass,

* Do the same for the Marine Resources Committee Clerk Marianne MacMasterMarianne.MacMaster@legislature.maine.gov Be sure to mention LD 1810 in the subject line

Ask Marianne to forward your email to her committee's members. In your email tell the Marine Resources Committee that it needs to hold hearings on this bill next year, since the Utility/Energy committee doesn't know a thing about fisheries, and shouldn't be trusted with deciding Maine fishermen's future.

Call and email your personal  state legislators Leaving a message for your legislator at any of these numbers makes a huge difference, when they talk to members of the Utility and Marine Resources Committees.   Do it!

List of all senators: Emails click here (207) 287-1540 message line

All Representatives Emails click Here (207) 287-1400 message

Tell them to 

(1) amend the bill by cutting away everything dealing with leasing state waters for windfarming. This cuts LD 1810 from 36 pages to 1 paragraph. Leave the state waters issues to be considered  AFTER the coastal fisheries and communities have weighed in on the wording, in 2012

Or (2)  turn the full LD 1810 bill into a Resolve, and run it past the fishing and sailing communities as well as the Marine Resources and Natural Resources committees for a year with legislation coming up in 2012;

Or (3) vote LD 1810 Ought Not to Pass Send it to Davy Jones' Locker, where it belongs. 

Our politicians are getting a lot of flack and pressure from the wind industry. As long as you contact as many of them as you have time to, once or twice more before the Thursday work session on the bill, the Legislature will not do anything they understand might risk Maine's fisheries getting overwhelmed by a sprawl of wind leases in state waters.  

They should be told again and again, the bill is too much, too risky, and too late in the session.   Either give it an Ought Not to Pass, Amputate it of all state waters sections,  or Turn it into a resolve. Nothing else is acceptable

 PS Here are recordings from the March 11, 2010  hearing on LD 1810 . 

*  Introduction 7 minutes 

* Senator Hobbins Sponsor of LD 1810 6 min
* Representative Leila Percy, Co chair Marine Resources Committee 2 min
* Beth Nagusky MDEP Energy Office 12 min
* Beth Nagusky questioned 18 min
* Senator Kevin Raye 8 min
* Rep Stacey Fitts, Co sponsor 12 min
* Rep Seth Berry 4:17 min
* George Lapointe. DMR  6 min
* George Lapointe Q & A  5 min
* Chuck Digate, Neptune Wind 
* Chuck Digate, Neptune Q&A
* Bob Baynes. Lobsterman  2 min
* Shawn Mahoney, CLF  7 min
* John Ferland, Ocean Renewable Power Co  9 min
* Lance Burton of Castine 3 min
* Bill Staby, Resolute Energy  4min
* J. Monroe, Blue Water Dynamos  11 min
* Ron Huber, Penobscot Bay Watch 7 min
* Bob Moore, Dead River Oil, 11 min
* Ned Bulmer, Maine Energy Marketing Assn  9 min
* Carol Lee ex head of Bangor Hydro 7min
* Caroll Lee, Q&A 6 min
* John Pierce of Harspwell 4 min
* Chris O'Neill, Saco 10 min 

It's your state waters. Deal with it.

Will MDOTset off wild cannibal fish spree in Penobscot Bay?

17,000 to One!
Robert Gregory, director of the Centre of expertise for aquatic habitat research with Fisheries and Oceans, Canada (DFO) says that the removal of eel grass reduces the number of age zero cod by some 80 per cent. And Other Canadian cod researchers put it thus: "Research has concluded the [eelgrass] habitat is an effective refuge from predators, where the 90-day survival rate of juvenile cod in eel grass compared to coarse/barren bottom was 17,000 to 1."

17,000 to One!

For Maine's transportation secretary David Cole , for State Senator Dennis Damon, both of whom surely know better, in company with Sierra Club (Maine Chapter) leaders, to be comfortable with a project that would take away Penobscot Bay's eelgrass and would degrade many acres more....Uh uh!

The wiliest most successful predator of age zero cod - those just out of the egg - are other cod, those a year and more older. Juvenile cod are habitat-limited populations, when insufficient weedy refuge exists for age zero codfish, still clutching their yolk sacs, to hide , they succumb to their hungry elders.

Baldacci's consensus pact w/ MCHT, Sierra Club and the shipping industries would allow mitigation off site , replacement of Sears Island's eelgrass meadows and shoals by wetlands protection or creation elsewhere. . Basically allow payment of a wergild to compensate for killing the nursery shoals off Sears Island. Taking out the eelgrass and kelp mud and cobble habitat structure to pave the way for a container port would set cannibal fish loose in Wasumkeag's maternity ward! Shan't happen!