Sears Island dodges Baldacci's and Damon's sneak attack

Great sighs of relief around the bay as wiser and more skeptical heads prevailed in the Maine legislature's Transportation Committee January 13, 2009.
An attempt by Senator Dennis Damon to ramrod a deal he'd secretly hammered out with Governor Baldacci through the committee, to reverse the Committee's November vote on Sears Island, has been derailed.  At least until Thursday, when it comes up again....
Listen to complete  audio clips of the meeting.


At the hearing, a clearly nervous Senator Damon admitted that his request to both introduce and vote on a brand new proposal was irregular, but attempted to assure committee members that he'd considered their points of view while dealcutting with Baldacci.

This displeased a majority of committee members who felt jsut the opposite, that their views were being ignored. Veteran committee members were mystified as to why they should reverse their earlier vote, as nothing proposed in the new deal decreased the likelihood that environmentalists, even those like Sierra Club that signed onto partitioning the island, would fight any incoming port developer wannabes. Not to mention the myriad other groups large and small that successfully fought off earlier Sears Island port attempts under McKernan, King, and present governor Baldacci's unsuccessful LNG port effort in his first term.

For new transportation committee members, this was their first encounter with Sears Island, and opinion ran among them that this was too much too sudden, too soon. As if Damon had become a frantic snake oil peddler, trying to hurry them into an uninformed vote.

A sufficient number of legislators objected to the Baldacci/Damon Plan, that Damon was compelled to agree to table it for future conderation - specifically this coming Thursday.

Between now and then, opponents of the Baldacci and Damon Plan, the"BaD Plan" will educate new Transportation Committee members as to the downside of the Governor's plan, reassure veteran committee memberrs that their november vote was right and just, and need not be brushed aside.

Island huggers will also put Senator Dennis Damon in the doghouse for falling in line with Baldacci's secret effort to thwart democratic process in the Maine legislature, going so far as to exclude Transportation Committee co-chair Ed Mazurek from their repeated behind the scenes dealmaking get togethers. Monday evening, Mazurek was unaware that Sears Island would even be on the Tuesday agenda, let alone a vote taken.

In a further sign of contempt for opposition, critics of the plan to split Sears Island were kept inthe dark about Sears Island decision being on the meeting. In November Damon said he would be sure all interested parties would be kept informed of upcoming committee action on Sears Island. Then January rolls around and Damon sets transportation committee final action for Sears Island, but DOESN'T tell anyone. Not the committee members, nor port oppos. Just port partisans and pale green groups.

Shame on you, Senator Damon, Governor Baldacci!

Sears Island - Legislators to get JUPC "progress" report & citizen opposition in the statehouse wednesday

Sears Island defenders to rally Wednesday outside Legislative committee hearing on island port/conservationist plan.

Augusta. On Wednesday October 15th 10 am in Room 126 of the Statehouse, MDOT, Maine Coast Heritage Trust and Sierra Club of Maine will give a progress report to the Maine Legislature's Transportation Committee on their Sears Island Joint Use Plan. The plan includes a proposed perpetual conservation easement on the eastern 600 acres of the island. In turn, MDOT will be allowed to designate the western 300 acres of Sears Island and more than 200 acres of intertidal land as an industrial port development zone.

Critics of the divide-the-island plan, including representatives of Fair Play for Sears Island and Penobscot Bay Watch, the Maine Green Independent Party, and numerous individual citizens of Maine - say legislative approval of the proposed division of the island would ignite a fast track for would-be container port developers along the side of the island facing Searsport.

Such a port would threaten Penobscot Bay's natural groundfish and salmon nursery shoal and degrade what scientists agree is the unique and irreplaceable combination of island/nearshore brackish waters ecosystems, which together host members of virtually all Maine coastal species, land and marine.

"Just leave this natural Noah's Ark alone," said Harlan McLaughlin of Fair Play for Sears Island

The Transportation Committee will be asked to approve giving Maine Coast Heritage Trust a 600 acre perpetual conservation buffer easement over the east side of Sears Island, with the right to develop a wal-mart-sized tax-exempt educational and entertainment complex within this "protected" area, and to charge admission to get on the island when hosting certain events.

The shipping industry gets the tacit nod by Sierra Club to terraform 300 acres of wetland-laced forest, and 100 acres of intertidal area, along the west and south sides of Sears Island. There the industry may clearcut, blast, bulldoze and grade the island, as long as the state's development standards are met.

"there they may build and operate a water-polluting, air quality-reducing, groundfish nursery-dredging, noisemaking container port and railyard/truckyard complex," said Ron Huber of Penobscot Bay Watch - "A stake in the brackish water heart of upper Penobscot Bay's estuary, with implications for the outer Bay fisheries."

This will reduce the quality of life of those living in the upper and lower bay towns - humans and wildlife alike! "You couldn't pick a worse place to portify," he said.

Another victim of the Sears Island affair, said Huber, is the reputation of the Maine Chapter of the Sierra Club, "which abandoned decades of protecting Sears Island in favor of a highly questionable win-win deal with industry." Huber said. Worse, Sierra Club's support for the Joint use Plan was made by a small select group of club officials. The state membership was not polled on whether or not the Club should support MDOT's Sears island plan.


Sears Island is the largest undeveloped coastal island on the Atlantic coast of the United States.

Let's keep it that way.

For more information contact:

Ron Huber, Penobscot Bay Watch 207-691-7485 coastwatch@gmail.com
Harlan McLaughlin, Fair Play for Sears Island. 207-548-9962

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Good and Evil clash on Sears Island

The drama: "Travesty Island," took place Sunday afternoon near the gate at the north end of our publicly owned island. Listen to 'Travesty Island'. Read the script.

A theatrical event in protest of plans to open Sears Island to development and in support of the island's wild nature, Travesty Island takes issue with the decision by Maine Coast Heritage Trust, Islesboro Island Land Trust and Sierra Club's Maine chapter, to support the Baldacci administration plan to designate more than a third of Sears Island as a 'marine transportation area', called by some the Wasumkeag ecological sacrifice zone.

In the pageant, giant "Grim Reaper" figures personifying the forces of industrial sprawl and ecological destruction faced off against a thin line of defenders barring them from the island, led by a Green Knight. Representatives of the island's wild animals and its marine life, its old forests and its fertile ferns and eelgrass beds defended their island home in a green wall.
They triumphed! Nature, in the guise of the goddess Diana, rose from the coffin of Sears Island port plan, resplendent. The porties were vanquished.

Sears Island containerport foes to grill JUPC tonight

Friends and foes of a state proposal to divide Sears Island into an industrial port zone and a conservation buffer area will square off at the UMaine Hutchison Center in Belfast at 7pm tonight (Wednesday June 25th).

Groups Fair Play for Sears Island and Penobscot Bay Watch will warn that the state's proposal would harm Penobscot Bay's most important fish nursery area as well as the island's unique and irreplaceable combination of forests, wetlands, meadows and ferns, and the wildlife that inhabit them.

They will also challenge the logic of environmental groups supporting the MDOT plan. On the one hand Sierra Club, Maine Coast Heritage Trust, and astroturf grassrooters "Friends of Sears Island" have signed an agreement that an industrial port on the island would be compatible with nature and is hence an "appropriate use" .

On the other hand; Sierra Club et al says, an industrial port will never happen because it would not be appropriate.

The reason the Sierra Club and land trusts are willing to play this charade is that the Maine DOT is poised to give them management authority over 2/3 of the island provided they approve of the potential portification of the rest of Sears Island.

The word "quisling" wil very likely be heard tonight at the Hutchinson Center

Sears Island Debate (2 sessions) - Sierra club vs Fair Play For Sears Island

WERU news producer Amy Browne hosted a debate and a followup discussion about Sears Island. the first is a debate between Maine Sierra Club's Conservation Chair and two representatives of Searsport based Fair Play for Sears Island. You can listen to a podcast of it here.

The second discussion, from later that day, is also available as podcast. Click here

Thanks to all for coming to WERU or calling in to the show. The issues are now laid open for all to see. (or hear!)

Sears Island - funeral march coverage starts

Two of our most important state media have picked up on the story of citizens discontented with the Sears Island port consensus process agreement- the "Deal of Shame" holding a funeral march on the island. Maine Things Considered ran the story Friday evening, and Maine Coast Now! the Courier newspapers of the bay counties and Augusta is running the story in its Saturday editions - available now on line. Thank you! to both media outfits for taking on an important story. See you on the causeway...