Sears Island - Sierra Club revisionists can't hide their guilt

It is astonishing to read in a recent article by the Portland Press Herald that that "the Maine Chapter of the Sierra Club...has long opposed development on Sears Island".

Not so. The New England Chapter of the Sierra Club long opposed any development on Sears Island. It showed its mettle by suing -and winning-in state & federal courts in the 1980s and 90s.  The Maine Chapter, which split off from the New England Chapter in 2000 & is run by a tiny cabal of ultra-moderates, blithely reversed those decades of successful opposition. It has always supported MDOT's Sears Island dismemberment plan.

Maine Sierra Club's failure to protect this part of natural Maine has caused outraged citizens to take up the slack. Three lawsuits are contesting the MDOT's attempt at privatizing publicly-owned Sears Island. Sierra Maine's betrayal of the Club's hard-fought legal victories has given aid and comfort to the industrialists

Another error in the article: Ms. Becky Bartovics did NOT represent the Sierra Club's Maine chapter through the three years of the Sears Island Joint Use Committee. 

That post was held by Joan Saxe, who, as the meeting records show, sat passively by as the industrialists at the table took and took and took. Bartovics was not even a member of the Joint Use Committee. She was an 'alternate', representing the Penobscot Bay Alliance, and was not supposed to participate unless Saxe or another greenie quit the Joint Use Committee.

Eventually, Saxe's passivity at the Joint Use meetings led to her removal. Bartovics switched labels, abandoning her PBA for the Sierra Club moniker, and finished the job of privatizing Sears Island, hand in hand with Islesboro Island Trust's Steve Miller, whose crocodile tears can't quite drown out his role pushing dismemberment of Sears Island.

PPH should've look at the actual record and not relied on Miller and Bartovics's self-serving revisions of their role in putting New England's biggest unprotected wild island & its vital-to-Penobscot-Bay-groundfish nursery shoal at risk. 

The new Sierra Club: Surrender on Sears Island

T"New" is a relative term. The Club used to use the courts to force good behavior among the pollution dischargers, oldgrowth clearcutter-wannabes, etc. The Sears Island island-whacker wannabes got what they deserved from the Sierra Club attorneys in the 1980s and early 90s. Under the new management, the Sears Island whacker-wannabes got everything they wanted from the Sierra Club "leaders" in Maine.

That is an example of the new Club in all its awful new manifestations. The worst thing (as far as New England goes) was the decision by a small handful of people to break up the New England Sierra Club into state chapters. Unlike the abovenoted New England Club, the Maine Chapter (1) does no litigation; (2) does no pollution permit oversight; (3) does no developer application reviews; does.....nothing, really.

Of course hiking and camping trips are still being organized (and those are very good things), but the fire of activism is out. The leaders squat upon the membership heap like immovable tin gods, batting down efforts to get the maine chapter to do any advocacy, blocking members access to the use of the chapter mailing list to recruit Clubbers to club advocacy projects, declining to participate in public forums to defend the official Sierra Club position on vital issues of the day in Maine, declining to respond to member inquiries about activities carried out by the very 'leaders' purporting to represent all 7,000 of us mere "members" when they do participate in state and federal policymaking. For in their arrogance, the Maine chapter's rulers (one can't call them "leaders), pretend to know what we all think. Pretend to act on our behalf.

Things aren't much better on the national level. Being on the e-list for the national Sierra Club "action alerts", one finds emails from Carl Pope popping up in the inbox with some frequency. President Pope's issues of concern vary across the environmental and conservation sprctrum, but several things never vary in these missives:

* Pope writes that the Club needs more of your money
* The money will be used to "urge" politicians and/or corporadoes to do the right thing.

That's right. No longer is there a Sierra Club Stick, or at best a very flabby, feeble twig. No litigation, or as little as possible. For now the Club has 'matured'. Like Weinstein Smith in George Orwell's "1984", the Sierra Club, under the tutelage of Carl Pope, "loves Big Brother."

Sears Island - A guilty Sierra Club flees the spotlight

WERU's recent effort to convene a Sears island panel in Bucksport featuring supporters and defenders of the state's divide-the-island initiative fell flat, when Sierra Club (and other NGOs who facilitated the state's "deal" splitting the island) fled in all directions, unavailable for speaking engagements or even for comment!

Sierra Club of Maine's leaders are suddenly all "too busy" with other concerns to spend time justifying their incredible sellout of Maine's biggest undeveloped island. Ditto for Steve Miller and Becky Bartovics. Not available for comment.

Why? Because the one hope, the one thin straw that Sierra Club of Maine, Islesboro Islands Trust & the other sellouts clung to, banked on - that the state of Maine would take a loooong time to decide if Mack Pt was container-portable -has been dashed.

Since June 15th in fact, when these eco-yups were told "No, it isn't suitable unless Irving Oil and Sprague Energy move out" at a secret MDOT mtg in Belfast where engineers from Fay, Spofford and Thorndike did a presentation on their report to MDOT.

To their dishonor, these guardians of the public interest did not then see fit to alert the public as to this fact. and to the looming assault on the west side of the island and its adjoining fish nursery shoals.

So will these three greenish groups honor the agreement they signed with great fanfare alongside of Governor Baldacci and the shipping industry? That agreement endorses a "marine transportation project" on Sears Island, if Mack Pt didn't fly.

Mack Point didn't fly. This was the entirely predictable result of the study, carried out by MDOT's hired consultant Fay, Spofford& Thorndike.

So what do Ken Cline and Joan Saxe of Sierra Club (Maine chapter) do? What will Steve Miller of the Islesboro Islands Trust do? Becky Bartovics who repped both Sierra Club and tiny "Penobscot Bay Alliance" at the Sears Island meetings with government and industry; what will she do? All three signed the agreement. Will their honor make them stand by as the state attacks the western side of the island and its wild groundfish nursery? Or rather, their cupidity.

They ARE busy. Still meeting monthly with government & industry. Money is starting to flow. Judging by the vigor with which green sprawl on Sears Island is moving ahead, the Sierra Club, Islesboro IslandsTrust and their greenwash entity called "Friends of Sears Island" are okay with the industrial port plan. They are getting each their pound of Wasumkeag's flesh.

John Muir's ghost warns Maine Sierra Club: don't side with port sprawl!

The spirit of Sierra Club founder John Muir - shown here awarding the Maine Sierra Club Chapter his Rubber Duck Award for "Quack Environmentalism"- joined our band of grassroots activists last week outside the Maine governor's mansion in Augusta. (photos here).

Inside, Governor Baldacci, Sierra Club and assorted hangers-on were receiving the 2009 Down East Environmental Award from the publisher of a local magazinethat is funded largely by real estate developers.

Muir loudly dressed down (short mp3) the present day Maine Sierra Club Chapter and its henchpersons: Islesboro Island land Trust, Maine Coast Heritage Trust and a handful of astroturn green groups for colluding with Big Government, Big Green and Big Trade in an attack on Sears Island, located at the top of Penobscot Bay in Midcoast Maine.

This latest skirmish brought to the state capital our fight to keep the western third of 940 acre wild Sears island from being turned into railyard and container port, and our estuary's nursery shoals from being blasted and dredged to let container ships come close to the island.
Did you know the difference between the old "New England Sierra Club chapter" that protected Sears Island through state and federal courts in the 1980s and early 90s, and the present day "Maine Sierra Club Chapter" that received an award for signing off on the dismemberment plan? As late as early 2008, Sierra Club Maine supported protecting ALL of Sears Island

So we go to Augusta on a hot May 22nd to challenge the Governor's Sears Island "environmental award" ceremony! Nature was on our side: way too hot to close the mansion's windows. Attendees at the Governor's Sears Island whackers award ceremony could hear our power bullhorned taunts and imprecations, and could see the coffined Rachel Carson speaking from the grave and the ghost, too of Sierra club founder John Muir, who gave Sierra Club a Rubber Duck award for "quack environmentalism".
The Kennebec Journal covered our protest as did WBZ TV.  In addition, Maine Public Radio included us in their coverage of the award event,    

Sears Island plaintiffs may subpoena Maine JUPC members

Members of the Joint Use Planning Committee may soon find themselves ordered to appear in Maine Superior Court, after preliminary motions for the cases opposing the partition of Sears Island brought by Harlan Mclaughlin of Searsport, Ron Huber of Rockland, and Doug Watts of Augusta, are resolved.

Sears Island Joint Use Planning Committee members that may be subpoenaed include Coastal Mountain's Land Trust official Scott Dickerson, Maine Sierra Club leader Joan Saxe, Islesboro Island Trust head Stephen Miller, Friends of Sears Island president Jimmy Freeman and Penobscot Bay Alliance chief Becky Bartovics.

It is believed that information will be elicited as to how these environmentalists arrived at a deal with state officials to dismember New England's biggest unprotected wild island into port zone and conservation easement zone without following state laws that require planning for the inevitable environmental damagesuch a project would cause.

"It will be a messy case," Huber said, "but like sausagemaking, what comes out at the end will be worth it."

Sierra Club calls Sears Island sell-out a historic........what?

Was it historic, this Sears Island legislative self-abuse, its attendant gubernatorial executive ordering, those hymns to holy compromise rising from the Bangor Daily News and other outlets, all primed by the Governor's public affairs crew and his tame enviros, that just went down over the last 90 days?

The Sierra Club Maine Chapter would say so. That is, its tiny politburo, in its omniscience, would say so. They can speak - or they claim to - for thousand upon thousands of Maine Sierra Clubbers - without ever contacting them. Such outreach is unnecessary, expensive, time consuming, intrusive - a litany of negative adjectives flows freely from the all-knowing Ex Comm's keyboards when inquiry is made. !

For they are the EX-COM and as such know what is best for you and I, for Sears Island, the bay, for Maine, for the Universe!

"It has long been the Sierra Club’s position" the Cabal intones, "that the island should be limited to compatibly managed marine transportation, education, recreation, and conservation."

How long is "long", one is compelled to ask.

To those who persist in raising a pother about Club democracy, the gauntlet is thrown: fight your way into our Cabal, and rule the Four Thousand along with us! Or to perdition with ye.

Mitigation Bankers to meet soon in Searsport - last step before divvying up Sears Island

Ah yes. That poignant little phrase of the Sierra Clubbers: 'Don't worry, they'll never build on Sears Island,' is about to enter the history books alongside the "Dewey defeats Truman " headlines of yore.

Why, Because MDOT has now resubmitted its umbrella mitigation bank prospectus to the Army Corps of Engineers for approval. (link is to the notice from June 2008 that was cancelled in November (pdf)) The Corps' mitigation bank officer Ruth Ladd wrote in response to a recent inquiry:

"Yes, there will be a new Public Notice on the resubmitted prospectus and there will be a public meeting in Searsport. I anticipate sending out the Public Notice on February 3."

THAT'S RIGHT. This direct result of the signing of the final order on Sears island, makes it now possible for MDOT to 'bank' the value of the "conserved" portion of Sears island for its first 'deposit' in its spanking new mitigation bank.

Why? So MDOT can then 'spend' that value compensating for the savagery it is about to inflict upon the salmon, sturgeon and baby cod who rely on the shallow brackish shoals that must be dredged to make Sears Island safe for container ships.

This time, thanks to the credulous JUPCians - Sierra Club in particular, Sears Island has been transformed into a 600 acre wad of mitigation cash - called by some a 'conservation easement', a 300 acre transportation parcel, upon which that wad will be dropped, and the great unspoken 500 acres of nursery shoal that will be wrecked. ('Not our issue,' intones JUPC, 'we're upland-focused. The Bay be d__ed')

So things should go just splendidly for MDOT and the island depredator it has waiting in the wings. The Army Corps of Engineers and Maine DOT will come to Searsport this spring, bearing mitigation bankers on their shoulders. Becky and Steve of Penobscot Bay Alliance and Islesboro Islands Trust respectively will proclaim their discomfort with the bank using their 600 acre playground as credit to despoil the rest of the island and its fish nurseries. Then they will exude sternly worded letters in a futile attempt at CYA.

Sierra Club too may register its displeasure, though not too likely; its headline story on Sears Island in the new edition of the Maine Sierran neglects to mention the umbrella mitigation plan even once.

If they do show, Sierra Club's Ken Cline - Joan'll be busy - will frown severely at the MDOT and Corps officials lined up at the front table and deliver a lengthy but meaningless lecture, aimed mostly at garnishing a few mea culpa soundbites. Commissioner Kenneth Cole will cough to hide his grin.

Crocodile tears shall flow in such quantities from the JUPC-ites as to threaten the very brackishness of the upper bay estuary, which is lapping quietly at the shore across Route One from the meeting.

But that's okay. Maine Coast Heritage Trust will again attempt to reassure the other sellouts that the environmental quality of Sears Island ain't so great anyway, so why give a ****?   "We do not have a wild island"  Scott intones. "We have an island that owned by the state of Maine that's been occupied for two hundred years by different levels of intensive use."

(Earth to Dickerson - It's had intensive use for over eight thousand years, Scotty.  Just not the 20th century, which non-exploitation being  why it IS a wild island.  But we forget: the immense archaeological and prehistoric assets of the island that would be paved over are not your Baldaccian charge, so they don't matter.) 

Finally the Army Corps andf Maine DOT will put an end to the farce, thank the assembled for their input, and then go on their merry way to the office of the port applicant, where a toast will be drunk to the Sierra Club and its little hangers-on in FOSI and PBA, for making mitigation to build a port possible.

Sears Island : Transportation Committee reverses 11/18/08 decision

Listen to the Maine Legislature's Transportation Committee get lied into voting to dismember Sears Island, privatizing 2/3 of it to a private land trust, and privatizing 1/3 of it to an industrial port operator. Click Here to hear the final debate and vote. (15 minute mp3)

Sears Island - The Smoking Guns: how Sierra Club and MCHT stopped their own Joint Use Plan

THE SMOKING GUNS
Emails from officials of Maine Sierra Club and Maine Coast Heritage Trust suggest that both NGOs were prepared to renege on their promise not to interfere with state efforts to attract and license a container port and rail yard covering the western third of Sears Island. (that is, once the MCHT had secured a permanent easement over the other six hundred acres of the island, and the Sierra Clubbers were free to begin work on a Sears Island education center program.)

Imagine these two groups' surprise when,  after reading these,  the Maine Legislature's Transportation Committee proved as faithless to them as they themselves had been toward Maine wild Nature!

From Ken Cline, Sierra Club's Conservation Chairman for Maine:

>From: kenneth cline
>Sent: Sunday, April 20, 2008 9:09 PM
>To: rrgab746@msn.com
>Cc: jsaxe@suscom-maine.net
>Subject: Sears Island
>
>Dear Mr. Gabey:
>
>Joan Saxe passed your message on Sears Island on to me. I am
>intrigued by your comments. In what way do you believe that Sierra
>Club has "sold out" on Sears Island. As someone who spent the better
>part of 6 years battling to save the island when very few

>environmentalists in the state seemed to know it existed, I would
>hardly sit idly by and watch it be destroyed. I am curious where you
>get your information on the matter and if that source actually has
>done anything recently on behalf of the island. If you actually care
>about the fate of the island, then write the newspapers, governor, and
>DOT to make sure that they understand how priceless a treasure Sears
>Island really is. We have ensured that 2/3 of it will be protected
>for ever, but we need all the help we can get to protect the remaining
>part. So independent of Sierra Club, I encourage you to start a
>campaign to help protect the island -- it is a much better use of your
>time than criticizing people who perhaps have the same goals as you
>and are working hard to pursue them. Please contact me if you have
>any further concerns.
>
>Ken Cline
>Maine Chapter Conservation Chair

=================================================
From Maine Coast heritage Trust's Scott Dockerson
>----Original Message-----
From: Scott Dickerson [mailto:scottd@coastalmountains.org]
Sent: Thursday, December 28, 2006 8:31 AM
To: Astrig Tanguay; Tara Hollander; Jim Grossman; Nancy-Linn Nellis; Jan
Flint; Bob&Marietta Ramsdell; Lorin Hollander; Jay&McCormick Economy;
Jim Freeman; John Hyk; Buck Bulkley; Becky Bartovics; Larraine Brown;
Jane Sanford; Joan Saxe; Stephen Miller; Elizabeth Banwell; Joelle
Madiec

Subject: current position. Port and Preservation--

We should expect to get some negativity from those who have not been
part of this long, negotiated SIPI process and do not have a full
understanding of our strategy.
This is how I strategically analyze the current position of the
Preservation and Port Affinity Group.

IF:
We obtain a Consensus Agreement at this time to recommend that
700-800 acres of the island will be placed under a conservation
easement and that 141-241 acres of the island may continue to be
evaluated by transportation interests as a future port facility,
under the terms of what we are negotiating for in the Consensus
Agreement;

THEN:
The majority of the island will be permanently protected for public
access, educational uses, and conservation; AND

We will have positioned our affinity group as by far the most
rational and fair vision for the future of Sears Island, giving us
considerable political leverage for not only securing the majority of
the island for conservation now, but also to ultimately press for
conservation of the entire island; AND
Increasing utilization of the island for public access and education
will build an increasing constituency for full protection of the
island; AND

The port interests will still have to demonstrate 1) need for a
facility that cannot be served elsewhere, 2) compliance with
environmental laws, and 3) financial capacity to construct and
operate the port; AND

Many conservation and environmental interests will continue to have
the opportunity to intervene in the regulatory process to contest the
port, an intervention that has prevailed for almost 40 years.

IF:
We stand pat on our original Preservation and Port Affinity Group
vision statement;

THEN:
The SIPI process arrives at stalemate except on some token agreement
items; AND
The Preservation and Port Affinity Group will lose some of its
political leverage as the rational and fair position, making future
efforts with the legislature and governor less probable for success;
AND
All 941 acres of the island instead of only 141-241 acres remains
open for port proposals, as well as any other industrial, commercial,
or residential development proposals.

In essence, I think we gain a great deal from entering into an
effectively negotiated Consensus Agreement, and have actually
diminished the risk that the island will be developed.

Scott
___________________________
Scott Dickerson, Executive Director
Coastal Mountains Land Trust
101 Mt. Battie Street
>Camden ME 04843
207-236-7091
scottd@coastalmountains.org

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Dickerson [mailto:scottd@coastalmountains.org]
Sent: Friday, December 29, 2006 1:03 PM
To:LorinH@aol.com
Cc: jsaxe@suscom-maine.net; bartovi@earthlink.net; jouelle@prexar;
clarion@midmaine.com; camping@ime.net; tarahollander@gmail.com;
tiger7@midmaine.com; jflint@srhsnet.com; rramsdell1@verizon.net;
mcjaye@adelphia.net; packrats@mainisms.com;
commissioners@waldocountyme.gov; buckstop2000@yahoo.com;
jouelle@prexar.com; jcsanford@verizon.net; iitsmill@midcoast.com;
ebanwell@midcoast.com; joellemfrench@yahoo.com

Subject: Re: security issues

Lorin,
This is how I analyze the security issue.
Our agreement to a Consensus Agreement requires that a permanent
conservation easement be placed on 700-800 acres of the island. I
estimate that placement of the conservation easement will take no
more than 12 months after the Legislature and Governor sign a bill
approving that one be placed.

If a proposal for a port comes forth soon after the Legislature and
Governor act on the Consensus Agreement, I expect that it will take
more than two years to proceed through its data gathering, planning
process, negotiation with the State for use of the island land,
financing arrangements, and permit process. The issue of port
security will be addressed during the permit process, though the
proposer of the port will be considering it during it data gathering
and planning process.

The placement of the conservation easement and associated public
access will predate the receipt of a permit for a port. Given that,
I expect that any port proposal will need to present a plan for
coexistence with the conservation easement and public access,
including across the causeway. If the port proposer choses to
attempt to stop public access, I expect that there will be a very
strong response by the public (which will have increased its activity
on the island by then) to oppose the violation of the intent of the
conservation easement and Consensus Agreement.

Again, I am offering my best estimates about probabilities. My
estimate is that once the 700-800 acres of the island are conserved
and truly open to the public, the issue of port security is likely to
either be neutral in terms of affect on public use of the
conservation area of the island, or will create another issue that
will mobilize the public to oppose the granting of a permit for the
port.

If my analysis of the probabilities is correct, then I think we have
no reason to deal with the issue of port security impact at this
stage of the process.

Scott

Scott Dickerson, Executive Director
Coastal Mountains Land Trust
101 Mt. Battie Street
Camden ME 04843
207-236-7091
scottd@coastalmountains.org

Sears Island: Governor says port plan "inoperable".

The intrigue continues...Maine's governor and legislature slide helplessly into civil war over  integrity of environmentalists on the Joint Use Committee, who suddenly seem unwilling to honor their committment to "appropriate" port development on Sears Island

Which branch of Maine government has the final decision over the island splitting proposal?  The Governor, says Baldacci's office. JUPC is my creature. I trust the greenies.  But wait.....'We don't trust  'em, says the Legislature's Transportation Committee co-chair Senator Dennis Damon. No green payoff until AFTER a port is fully approved.   

Speaking in indignant response to the legislators, three land trust executives cry out Hold on there! This is a done deal! Give us our pound of island flesh first! Trust the Trusts!

Maine's conservative blogosphere  warns of a: "Baldacci Ready to Roll Over for Enviros on Sears Island Port"  What type of roll? "Baldacci wants to sign off on the easement and leave the port deal to the whims of enviro lawsuits."

(Indeed, legal knives can be heard sharpening, as both shade-tree enviromental advocates and Big Green Law Firms  gear up in anticipation of exploiting this target-rich environment. The many litigation-worthy and appeal worthy legal blunders that MDOT and its Committee of Fifty have committed, but tried to brush aside, in the course of their three year drive to get  Sears Island divided, are now ripe for litigation.) 

Who is correct in this struggle over the people's public property?  Read the below article and be amazed:

Action on Sears Island sought

Baldacci questions committee’s delay  
  By George Chappell BDN Staff  11/22/08

AUGUSTA, Maine — Gov. John Baldacci remains committed to a “positive and productive future for Sears Island,” his office said Thursday.

The governor expressed his disappointment with a unanimous decision by the Legislature’s Transportation Committee on Tuesday to leave temporarily unsigned a negotiated agreement that balanced industrial and environmental concerns over the island’s use.

“The governor believes that the Joint Use Planning Committee's Final Report struck an important balance and is disappointed that the Transportation Committee decision effectively undermined the agreement, rendering it inoperable,” said Joy Leach, deputy director of communications for the Governor's Office.

Complete article here

Sears Island Smackdown! Wild island saved from partition....But Baldacci may try an end run around the legislature: updates soon...

Jaws dropped, incredulous grins spread among island-huggers today as the state/eco-Yuppie plot to divvy Sears Island up into container port and conservation zones fell apart.

Listen to a 4 and a half minute mp3 of the legislature's Transportation Committe on November 18th deciding they didn't trust  the Maine Coast Heritage Trust, Maine Sierra Club, the Friends of Sears Island and other compromisers  ( 4 minute mp3)

Why? Those conservation groups had  earlier signed a deal with Governor John Baldacci divvying up Sears Island, with 2/3 donated in perpetual easement to Maine Coast Heritage Trust  and one third made available to potential container port builders.   Complete recordings of  meeting here

Under the deal, the land trust and environmental groups would be given a conservation easement and permission to build and operate an environmental center. In return they would not oppose development of a port on the west side of Sears Island.

However, the Greenies were under the impression that they would get their conservation easement immediately, with the state to take applications for port proposals at some later date.

Not so.

Thanks to a last minute surprise proposal submitted by state senator Christine Savage, and seconded by Rockland Representative Ed Mazurek,  the legislators voted to "accept in principle" the final report of the Sears Island Joint Use Committee, but  will not authorize any  conservation easement on Sears Island UNTIL a container port development on the island has first been approved by the Army Corps of Engineers.

No land trust conservation easement,  no Sierra Club educational center. No Friends of Sears Island's trail maintenance contract....none of those until industrial port developers begin tearing away at the forests,  streams, fern meadows,  marshy streams, saltwater fish nurseries and other natural habitats of the western side of Sears Island.

Once a ballast water belching, smog-producing  mega container port is actually under construction on Sears Island, MCHT, FOSI and Sierra Club will get their pound of  bleeding island flesh. 

Say it ain't so, Joan, Jimmy, Scott!

The joint committee on transportation  arrived at its decision after about an hour of presentations and spirited discussions.

Jim Freeman of the Friends of Sears Island, Joan Saxe of the Sierra Club and Steve Miller of the Islesboro Island Land Trust signed the "consensus agreement on Sears Island". As signatories, they will have to actively fight the many fishermen, health advocates and other environmentalists who oppose the container port hell-plan for upper Penobscot Bay. 

As this is an impossible situation for the Sierra Club, the Deal is Dead.

Why? Because it's one thing for the Sierra Club et al to be compromising sell-outs. Its another for them to actually join the enemy's ranks, as Sierra Club leaders Joan Saxe and Ken Cline, and NFN/EF! activist leader Jim Freeman are starting to understand.

Expressions of horror filled the faces of those eco-compromiser wannabes, as well as the railroad  interests, MDOT and the town reps  as they wandered out to the state capital's parking lot in bewildered knots.

Patsies. Sold out just as heartlessly as they had sold out mother nature. Now the rats begin jumping ship. As the Portland Press Herald just wrote:

"Jim Freeman, a member of the group that crafted the agreement, says the committee's action in effect voids the deal and sends the issue back to limbo."

"The Quislings are running for the hills! " chuckled long term opponent of the Joint Use Plan Ron Huber of Penobscot Bay Watch. "Run Jimmy! Run! Get on the Islesboro Ferry, Steve! Hide yourself Joan and Ken! 

For now you must fight against the fishermen, seagrass huggers and the greater conservation community and  fight for the industrial free trade container port wannabes, if you are to gain your precious educational center and perpetual easement.   How will you ENGOs explain this to your funders and your members?  "We have to destroy Sears Island to save it"?

That won't fly. There are already voices calling for the now fully discredited leaders-for-life of the Maine Sierra Club to step down and let a  younger less jaded generation of Sierrans take the helm

Awaken, eco-signers to the Governor's charge! Renounce JUPC! Repent! Rejoin the never ending defense of the natural Maine coast against industrial  encroachment.

Deal of Shame: Fall '08 ME Sierra Club newsletter omits Sears Island!

It was positively astonishing to open the very latest newsletter from the Maine Chapter of the Sierra Club that arrived in the Penobscot Bay Watch post office box.

Surely, I thought, Sears Island must be the top feature - the Club's Gordian knot-cutting courage and cleverness adopting the "historic" Joint Use consensus compromise also praised by land trusters, Governor and railroad baronet alike.

No. Nothing. Not a word about Sears island.

Shouldn't the eight page Maine Sierra Club chapter newsletter be awash in minutiae of the MDOT plan this 940 acre island that the Club signed onto? The one splitting Sears Island into natural and industrial port zones.

For now the final steps loom:

MDOT must secure approval by the Legislature's transportation Committee of its Joint Use plan. Especially its private conservation easement with MCHT on 600 acres of public land on the 941 acre island Should this approval be granted (and this is by no means a sure thing) then a shadowy container port developer waiting in the wings will stride forth into the glare of the public spotlight.

UPDATE: According to an Army Corps of Engineers official, if the legislature approves the Joint Use Plan, the Corps expects to receive a Sears Island port development application before the end of November.

But according to the "Deal" that Maine Sierra Club signed months ago, the Club is committed to acquiescing in that developer's port plan, as long as it meets environmental standards. The Club can hardly protest that the island is not a good location, for as signatory to the Baldacci Consensus Agreement on Sears Island, Sierra Club's official position must be that the island is an "appropriate" location for one.

But in the newsletter not a word on 'port-appropriate' Wassumkeag.

Alas, Wasumkeag! "Island of the Shining Shore" to the Wabanakis for so many thousands of years! Both natural Noah's ark of coastal Maine plant and animal species, and a sheltering lea behind which Penobscot Bay's most important fish nursery and anadromous fish staging areas carry out their brackish water ecological duties, uniting river, bay and Gulf of Maine! Industrial sprawl is imminent.

For the leadership of the Maine Chapter of the Sierra Club is comfortable with Sears Island as but one more "issue" to use as bargaining chip in the unending game of influence in Statehouse evironmental politics. The chapter's webpage on Sears Island hasn't been updated in six months.

The rank and file of the Maine Sierra Club Chapter, it has been decided, won't be allowed to vote on whether their conservation group should stand shoulder to shoulder with a container port developer. Tsk Tsk.

No mention?

The Fall 2008 edition of the Maine Sierran discusses a lot of other things. It endorses four candidates, ponders transboundary forestry between Maine and Canada, invites one to "Sierra Club Maine's Annual Dinner", November 14th in Freeport; frowns upon continuing Bush admin machinations against the Clean Water Act; admits to being "stunned" when LURC gave Plum Creek a preliminary OK to commit sprawl at Moosehead Lake. Joan Saxe praises Governor Baldacci's "right direction on Rail Transportation"; two wind turbine proposals get the nod; "informed growth" regulations are examined, and a number of outings and hikes are offered. But, .......

Not a peep about Sears Island .

In 2005, Club leaders promised to "permanently protect the natural heritage and public access legacies of Sears Island"

Where did that promise go?

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

# # #

Sears Is. JUPC-ian bobble-heads try to shrug off the Sacrifice Zone.

"It's not Joint Use Planning you've been carrying out; it's Single Use Planning."

So said Ron Huber on behalf of Penobscot Bay Watch and Fair Play for Sears
Island at the October 3rd meeting of the Sears Island Joint Use Planning Committee.

The response (in so many words:) sorry! not our department. We don't have to care about the pollution and habitat loss that the Second Joint Use -port construction- would bring.

Why not?

Because Governor Baldacci only "tasked us" with protecting the easement area. That was the answer, summarized . Everyone nodded emphatically. They didn't HAVE to care about the other part of the island. Let the chips fall there as they may. Let that rabid dog sleep....we'll deal with it after it awakens and starts biting into the island.

After all, the land trusters have got their pound of flesh, all 600+ acres of it; the Sierra Club gets to host group events at a Wal-Mart sized educational/recreational complex plopped unceremoniously into the midst of the island's so-called "protected" area; the port wannabes have got carte blanche to do what they wilt in the western part of the island.

Huber presented copies of a "Transportation Area Advisory Council" proposal put togther by Fair Play for Sears Island and Penobscot Bay Watch to JUPC's members at the beginning of the meeting and gave a brief intro outlining the main points:

* In any conceiveable configuration of an industrial port, the 330 acre'Marine Transportation Zone" would be subject to the environmental impacts of dredging, land clearing and the chronic waste discharges associated with port, trucking and rail development and operation.

* An advisory council of scientific and environmental NGOs and agencies is needed to provide guidance to MDOT and other state agencies when they review development proposals and on carrying out environmental management of the 330 acre site and its abutting 120 acre nursery shoal.

The council membership could be (groups and agencies listed only as examples)

• Maine Department of Environmental Protection,
• Maine Department of Conservation;
• Maine Department of Marine Resources
• Fair Play For Sears Island
• Conservation Law Foundation
• Penobscot Bay Stewards
• University of Maine School of Marine Sciences
• Downeast Lobstermens' Association
• Midcoast Fishermens Alliance

Huber then used the public comment period at the close of the meeting to point out the importance of aggressive oversight of the marine port zone. He twitted their failure as a committee to get beyond planning solely for the "single use" of managing the on-island auditorium, nature center and hiking trails within the 640 acre portions of eastern and southeastern Sears Island, under a "perpetual" easement to be given Maine Coast Heritage Trust.

The 330 acre sacrifice zone and its adjoining fish nursery shoal? What about that? Is there no Planning for Sears island's "second use" of hosting an industrial port? Are MDOT's Joint Use Planners planning... not to plan? Just react to whatever port development wannabe shows up?

No planning on how to limit damage to Penobscot Bay's productive fisheries, tourism and recreation industries from the handful of possible commercial/industrial port types that could conceivably be built on Sears Island?

Compare this to the RTAC work done on the highways of the state. The Regional Transportation Advisory Committees went over the highways and bridges of our state with fine toothed combs.

So here's MDOT, the Sierra Club, the land trustees and otherJUPC-ites, studiously taking not the slightest interest or even notice of the shipping and port industries' pack of 800 pound gorillas poised to dredge, blast and bulldoze their way onto the island.

Or if they do, 'it's only to squint nearsightedly and say "Look! Something warm and fuzzy!"