Sears Island History. November 2008. Sears Island Joint Use Planning Comm's plan to divide the island was turned back.

Sears Island  2008

Nov 29, 2008

Jilted Port Huggers Lament Oversight 'Poison Pill'. OP-ED

Several of the creators of the foundered JUPC plan for partitioning Sears Island fired back at their critics and at the Maine legislature today with a co-signed op-ed in the weekend Bangor Daily News. READ OP-ED BELOW

Do the trio admit to having made mistakes? Of course not. Do they fault their decision to exempt their Plan from impact review under the federal highway administration's own environmental law, even though it was appropriate?  Not a bit. 

Do they renounce their bizarre decision to acquiesce with MDOT's demands they sacrifice hundreds more acres of the island's forests and streams than would logically be needed for a port? Nope.

From the 30 acres the state previously found an acceptable acreage for a port, did they  give up without a whimper 270 acres more of the island's forested, stream cut western shore.Ayuh.- and by definition the thousand acres of nursery shoals  in front of those 300 acres that would have to be dredged and filled? Suppose so. They never thought about that.

Do they regret bypassing environmental review of their giant vague plan purely for the sake of shortening the process?  Not a bit. Like mindless robots, they were "charged by the governor" to ignore the environmental consequences  of their plan for the upper bay's brackish estuary, which a port would sit in the amidst of.  

But the rest of us know better . Stand tall, Legislature! 

Strip MDOT from Sears Island's title and deed. Place it under the state's Public Reserved Land status, with attendant payment-in-lieu-of-taxes to Searsport. Not under the privatizing thrall of  overgrown,  privately-held Maine Coast Heritage Trust and its hangers-on. Should a port become a necessity, the need so great it justifies biting a chunk out of the island and fish nursery shoal, why, public reserved land is legally open to such compromises. But a port isn't a necessity. as the three essayists note.  Not for the foreseeable future.  Read their essay (below or  the online version,) and weep.

They just don't get it.  Read the letter to e editor of the Bangor Daily News

Letter by leaders of the  Sears island Joint Use Planning Committee

Sears Island decision a missed opportunity for Maine.                                                                        by James Gillway, Dianne Smith and Scott Dickerson

"On Tuesday, Nov. 18, the Joint Committee on Transportation of the Maine Legislature made a deeply flawed decision concerning the future of Sears Island. Unless corrected by future action, their vote on the recommendations presented to the committee by the Sears Island Joint Use Planning Committee continues indefinitely the 40-year stalemate concerning the island’s opportunities for both economic development and conservation."

The transportation committee accepted every recommendation of the JUPC, but added a contingency that poisons the potential of real progress for many years, perhaps indefinitely. The JUPC’s key recommendation is to dedicate 330 acres of the island for potential use as a marine port and 601 acres for outdoor recreation, environmental education and ecological protection."

These recommendations were developed through an intensive, 3-year planning process by more than 50 different representatives of transportation, industry, conservation, outdoor recreation, local business, state agencies and town governments. This complete spectrum of interests achieved a consensus to reach beyond gridlock and produce the first comprehensive resolution of this long-contested issue."

The poison pill that the transportation committee inserted into its decision is the contingency that before the conservation land can be established, a port proposed for the island must receive all permits. This decision was neither fair to the people of Maine nor prudent for the future of the island, as demonstrated by these facts:"

The 330 acres for potential port use was delineated by DOT staff and is more than three times the area required for development of a container port."

Finding a private entity to fund and partner with the state to develop a port, design facilities, conduct studies, and proceed through regulatory review will take an unknown number years."

During the past 40 years, six major developments, including one port, have been proposed for Sears Island. Not one has ever received the permits necessary for completion."

Any permitting process for a port on the island must consider alternative sites. Improvement and-or expansion of the existing port at Mack Point might be sufficient to serve the need, further delaying satisfaction of the committee’s contingency for a permit for an island port."

A 2006 economic analysis of the conservation program as proposed for Sears Island determined that the conservation land — including a small visitor, education and maintenance center, multiuse trails and related public access facilities — would attract a projected 23,000 visitors each year who would inject $1.7 million into the economy of the region annually."

Why not commit the 601 acres to conservation now, and allow at least that portion of the island to become a performing asset for the people of Maine? Extensive research by the JUPC determined that this will not conflict with future proposals to use the 330 acres for a port."

In the meantime, the island continues to drain resources from the town of Searsport. It receives no tax revenue from the island due to state ownership, but has to provide police patrols, emergency response, trash removal and other services. Further, because there is no management of the current public use except for concrete barriers and a gate across the entrance road, ecological values of the island are being degraded."

The stalemate perpetuated by the transportation committee’s narrow decision should be corrected through action by the full Legislature, in recognition that the people of Maine have a broad set of interests in Sears Island. The balance of uses proposed by all parties through the JUPC’s recommendations encompass this breadth. The transportation committee’s decision does not."

It is time for the entire Legislature to consider the future of Sears Island, the value of the recently thwarted JUPC’s proposed compromise, and vote to take responsibility for stewardship of this important state asset."

END

Written by James Gillway, Dianne Smith and Scott Dickerson

James Gillway is Searsport’s town manager; Dianne Smith is co-chairwoman of the Joint Use Planning Committee; Scott Dickerson is executive director of Coastal Mountains Land Trust. All three served on the committee that crafted the compromise plan

Nov 24, 2008

Sears Island - The empire retreats.

Another happy event has transpired since the Legislature's Joint Transportation Committee adopted the Savage Plan, which withholds approval of Maine Coast Heritage Trust's easement over 2/3 of the island, and establishment of an educational center, until a port and railyard is fully permitted on the remaining third.

FOPSI and the incredible shrinking Sears Island

In her June  2010 article updating the status of Sears Island after a year under the Conservation Easement : Signs of stewardship on Sears Island, the usually thorough Catherine Schmitt steers cautiously, assiduously avoiding the "P" word (Port) that,  like barely hidden ledge, would tear a hole in  the entire song and dance of those featured in her story, the FOPSIs "Friends of Parts of Sears Island"  into an "and the band played on" Titanic scenario.   And that wouldn't do.   
     Instead, while the island's lushly wet western forests and saltmarshes  are at increased  risk of being destroyed, of vanishing beneath waves of concrete, steel and asphalt as an industrial port materializes, the tale of FOPSI  is one of tranquil mending of paths and byways of their "protected portion" of Sears Island, oblivious to the din, the shudder and roar of industry - scant yards from their piece of truncated paradise!

     One thinks of an Island Institute editor grimly trimming away all of Schmitt's sentences describing dissent with the plan, litigation and otherwise, that gives a pair of ENGOs control over 600 acres of the 900+ acre island. At least one HOPES such an editor had at her story. For, what of those opponents of dividing the island?                What of  the three civil actions currently in  Maine Superior Court, contesting the validity of the state's easement deal with Maine Coast Heritage Trust  granting a private company a perpetual easement governing two thirds of Sears  Island?  
What about the 1000s of Mainers and others who've made their opposition to island-splitting deals clear, decade after decade? 
     Schmidt dismisses (there is no other word) these concerned multitudes (who reside on all parts of the Maine political spectrum) thus:

"Others, however, are a bit upset about the changes."

     Who are these upset ones? Dissent  having been relegated to being only a "bit",however,  there's no need, Schmitt evidently thinks, to cudgel the poor readers' brains with any details on those people. 
     Beyond that shredding of the article, one is troubled that Schmitt not probe a bit more deeply. She writes:

     Because the Trust only holds the easement, and does not own the land outright, they don’t take an active management role, said McMullin.
     Evidently regarding that as the final word, Schmitt doesn't trouble to consult the aforementioned easement, which gives Maine Coast Heritage Trust, as "the Holder" myriad decisionmaking powers over land use  up to the power to bar people from the island entirely.  
After describing  the trail maintenance measures undertaken on the eastern portion of Searse Island, by FOPSI, comes this gem:
The Friends have access to the western side of the island, most of which is retained by DOT, said Marietta, “but we’re not anxious to put too much time into that area.”
     And why does anxiety lurk in that area, pray tell?   The reader is left to imagine for herself the terrors lurking in those swampy forests covering western Sears Island. For Schmitt doesn't. Is it those brooks lacing their way down to Searsport Harbor, the ones that would be filled, cemented over - are they the source of the FOPSI-ites' anxiety? We are left hanging.
    That's it. that's the lock, stock and barrel of Schmitt's article's mention of the ongoing dissent over the future of Wassumkeag.  All I can say is...
    A pox on those editors and their cutting room floors! Their cuts and their pastes!  One has always expected this in the Herald Gazette and other general news pubs; it aches to find the same smoke cloudery by the Island Institute's editors.

Is Montreal Maine & Atlantic shedding branch lines in prep of planned NAFTA Super Port on Sears Island?

Like a bayonet thrusting into Maine's soft midcoast underbelly, a proposed NAFTA-ruled super container port has been proposed to move container ship-borne consumer goods via rail and trucks on an Atlantic Trade Corridor. The Atlantica Corridor would begin at Searsport and connect to depots in Canada and the American midwest, no doubt passing through junctions with other North South "trade corridors", as these curious pieces of real estate neither fully public nor private, seem to be called.

Naturally, the former Bangor & Aroostook Railroad, nowadays called Montreal Maine & Atlantic Railroad or MMA and at present clinging by its fingernails to bare survival, hopes to profit by being owners of the first segment of that system.

But even fingernails have limits, MMA has discovered. It can only wait so long before insolvency strikes. Its ever-declining (40% drop since last year) freight contracts bring it perilously close to extinction. So the desperate hacking has begun: amputations of 100s of miles of short lines that have serviced interior Maine for a century. Continuing with its Searsport to Montreal operation and dreaming that if a containerport were only built on Sears Island "they" will come, bearing containerized freight.

This Cargo Cult-ism isn't enough, though, to justify dismembering the Atlantic coast's biggest natural ocean island, let alone dredge out its nursery shoals, so vital to Penobscot Bay's and the Greater Gulf of Maine's fisheries productivity, so that foreign-made trinkets can be a wee bit cheaper on the consumer market.

Hopefully, Maine Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Hjelm will agree when he issues his decision on whether to put on trial the perpetual conservation easement agreement (pdf) between Maine DOT and the Maine Coast Heritage Trust that empowers that proposed dismemberment.

Activists-into-eco-yuppies. The secret role of NGOs in government's 4th attack on Sears Island

The remarkable general & near-absolute refusal of Maine's ENGO nature conservation community to take part in repelling the state's third major Sears Island Port Initiative in 15 years invites analysis. . In Part 1, below, we will consider the state of Sears Island conservation , including a detailed look at one key figure in the so-far-disastrous history of the latest Sears Island struggle.

The present state of this latest attack.
The so-far 4 year long Sears Island Joint Users Planning Committee (JUPC) -a government consensus group decision making organization set up by Maine DOT, shows either superior strategy and initiative on the the pro-port stakeholders on the JUPC committee (state/ municipal government, shipping & rail industry), or an inexplicable nonchalance by the environmental heavies on Sears Island protection: Sierra Club (Maine Chapter), Maine Earth First! under the Friends of (Part of) Sears Island false flag and Islesboro Islands Trust, as far as holding up the ecological end of the Joint Users discussion table has gone.

Defeats so far:
Consider the results since the 2006 start of the Joint Use Planning Committee meetings & events in Searsport, Belfast and Augusta, courtesy of the above ENGOs

* They have given away with scarely a murmur more than ten times the island acreage they so fiercely fought to keep undeveloped by Governor's McKernan and King.

* they have declined to consider the devastating impact of their JUPC decisions on the future functionality of the island's intertidal and subtidal nursery shoals, critical to both Penobscot Bay and Penobscot River restoration.

* They have consensed with the state and federal agencies to waive MDOT carrying out a standardized review of the island's ecology, its recreational resources, and its fisheries and historic & prehistoric assets, normally required under federal guidelines before planning starts on a major transportation-related project.

* They have consensed with the state & industry that there shall be no piercing of the unlawfully-built tidal flow-extinguishing solid stone causeway that MDOT rushed out to Sears Island under the legal pretence they were building a "bridge". Reopening this water route around Sears Island once more will spur the repopulating of the massive clam flats of the area, previously the bay's richest. Yet piercing the Sears Island Causeway is the most important short term need of the Estuary Complex surrounding Sears Island

The grassroots thought: These battle tested veterans of decades of successfully defending the Atlantic
Seaboard's largest, most important state owned unprotected natural island/estuarine complex from the build-it-they-will-come port speculators: surely they will hold their own (and better) in fending off yet one more port-first/enviromental review later plan. This time being the second by Governor John Baldacci.

Surely great meetings would be convened, where the public could help shape the outcome of the fate of this public island, as they so ably had against the McKernan Container port, the King woodchip port, and the Baldacci LNG terminal. All three plans reside in in the Dustbin of History thanks to the inspired and unstinting labors of some remarkable people in the aforementioned organizations.

But that was then. THIS IS NOW: Since they ratified the MDOT-Eco-Yuppy Deal in 2007, and then finalized it earlier this year as a perpetual conservation easement(2.5mb pdf) by MCHT over 2/3 of the public island, the Sierra Club, Earth First!/FOPSI, Islesboro Islands Trust and their allies have continued meeting privately with government and shipping officials, and have even sought and secured funding from them to carry out greensprawl on Sears Island

In fact, since their induction into Maine DOT's Skull & Bones-like closeknit consensus JUPC comunity, all those groups have both declined to answer citizen questions during the Q&A period all have repeatedly, stubbornly refused to come to any community forum to explain and defend their decision to support Island partition. and as Freedom of Access law documents show, bigfoot groups like NRCM were lurking around the edges, seeking their own piece of the pie.

BY SEEKING OUT AND AIRING THE REASONS BEHIND THE PRESENT DAY PASSIVITY OF THE EARTH DEFENDERS RE SEARS ISLAND, WE ACHIEVE ENGO ACCOUNTABILITY FOR THEIR ACTIONS ALLEGEDLY ON BEHALF OF SEARS ISLAND'S NATURAL INHABITANTS AND HER SURROUNDING BIOFREGION .

WHEN GREENS JOIN THE DARK SIDE

It is one thing to be asleep at the wheel, as , alas, hard working Sierra Club Maine chapter leader Joan Saxe, right, frequently was at the JUPC meetings.
But it is another to agressively take on a role actively supporting the port nidustry and its partisans and in suppressing the island's defenders as much as possible

One of the central figures in causing this remarkable disengagement: the president of a little known, recently tax exempted non profit corporation called Friends Of (Part of) Sears Island, or FOPSI.

FOPSI is a special piece of work. Its 501(c)(3) status set up by IIT's law firm, FO(P)SI is represented at the Table of Power by ex-Earth First!er turned NGO president Jim Freeman. Mr. Freeman lead a series of activist campaigns in 1995 and 1996 opposition to dividing up Sears Island Under Freeman the group methodically weeded out its pro-wild island members, then cut a series of side deals with state officials and the landtrusts that powered up Freeman's group. A deal from which in exchange for cooperation, it is now reaping its financial rewards. As part of the deal, NGO watchdog Freeman warned the governor of an upcoming protest of Baldacci's port plan, and then offered to disrupt the grassroots event, which was held across the avenue from the Governor's mansion - an offer the governor's staff sensibly declined. Freeman's most bizarre action to date, however, was leaving a detailed death threat on one Sears Island defender's answering machine.)

Top FOPSI Jim Freeman - in photos with MDOT Commissioner Cole at a JUPC meeting in Searsport- attended nearly every meeting of the Sears Island Joint Use Planning Committee. Yet, as the recordings of the meetings reveal, beyond the occasional quip Freeman rarely spoke up over the course of the dozens of SIJUPC meetings. (

Freeman, president of newly tax empted Friends of Part of Sears Island, allegedly represented the Public Interest. With his strong history of organizing creative, civilly disobedient actions in response to attacks on Sears Island by former governors Jock McKernan(R) and Angus King (Ind-ustry). Freeman's considerable skills in shaping the "tone" of the successful struggle to save Sears Island from those two port wannabes.


never once consulted with the public as island dismemberment and port plans were hatched, nurtured and expanded by MDOT and ever-greedy-for-acres MCHT and its partners in landtrustery. During those proceedings, President Freeman maintained an eerie silence, a passivity as great as that of Joan Saxe, Maine Sierra Club leader also seated at the green side of the Joint Use Planning Comittee table. Both sat by as the wonderfuly skilled facilitator that MDOT's hired for this odd bit of MDOT Consensus Governance carried out his paymaster's wishes for maximum portifacation of Wasumkeag the industrial decisionmakers and land trusters spun their port 'n' park fantasy into ever more solidity during the two year JUPC decisionmaking process.

Now, as a reward, the FOPSIs, eyes still firmly averted from the codfish nurseries and wild salmon refuges off the third of Sears Island (that pesky "other part" that they so blithely condemned to destruction in return for rights to deepen existed fragementation of the "protected part" of our public island), are striking deals with a variety of state agencies to gain their financial backing for further strikes into the "protected" part of the island.

The silence of the led-to-slaughter ENGO lambs apparently, won't extend FOPSI whenever a debate take off from WERU Community radio; FOPSI's getting fat & happy, and will doubtless genially agree to disagree, grinning all the way to the bank. One is minded of Pickwick's servant Sam Weller, advising his master not to fret about a certain rogue: "Hold still, Sir: wot's the use o' runnin' arter a man as has made his lucky, and got to t' other end of the Burough by this time?" Indeed Jim and his fellow FOPSIs are experiencing bliss as they burrow into the warm bosom of the industrial state.

Leaving nothing out, the FOPSI commander has kept a close alliance as well with State senator from hell Dennis Damon, who chairs both the Transportation and Marine Resources committee. Damon has ruled the Transpo Committee with an iron hand; earlier this year forcing bewildered freshman legislators to approve the plan (mp3) to dismember the island - without reading a line of the agreement first!

As for the Marine Resources Committee, Senator Damon has completely blocked any briefing of that committee on the probable nasty consequences to Penobscot Bay's lobster and groundfish fisheries if a port is actually built and the bay's best nursery shoals are dredged away. Silence is golden, in Damon's book, echoing his pal Jim Freeman's response of stubborn silence to public entreaties that he save the island or at least explain what FOPSi and the rest of the JUPCites were and are up to.

And then there's the Sierra Club. Looking and acting guilty as sin, from Maine chapter to the highest floors of Sierra Club Tower, their San Francisco HQ. Mindful of the historic fight that Sierra Club put up in defense of Sears Island in the 20th century, the current crop of leaders has worked feverishly at seeking public relations solutions that will allow them to gracefully spin their rejection of club members' efforts to get their leaders to explain their part in chopping Sears Island apart. Their Sears Island webpage is a giggle

The Sierra Club's excuse for declining attendance at a proposed public forum at the Alamo Theater in Bucksport next month positively reeks of well thought out disingenuousness:

The Club, Cline has sadly informed forum host WERU FM Community radio, will not take part in any debate ab0ut its role in dismembering Sears Island. Why? For fear that its "volunteer" who would take part in the discussion might be subjected to "slander and abuse" by those ruffian whole-islanders.

The passive-aggressive use of "Sierra Club volunteer" in their excuse to WERU instead of "Sierra Club leader" is clever but reprehensible. Cannot one of the Sierra Club Maine Chapter's leaders, such as the one who an environmental law professor, take part in a open public forum held by a respected public radio station at a well guarded small town venue?
Perhaps criticism from the public, whose "interest" the Club, like the FOPSIans, supposedly represents, would be too undignified a situation for a Member of the Club to risk encountering.

Or is the prospect of having to make a stand at the Alamo Theater in Bucksport is too rich with gloomy portents to bear...?

Sears Island waits for you. And waits. And waits.

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."

Sears Island: Baldacci Biting Back.

Maine public radio news reported yesterday (mp3) that MDOT and the Governor are aggressively pressing members of the legislature's transportation committee members to abandon the Savage Plan for Sears Island, that the committee adopted late last month.

Senator Christine Savage's Plan, approved by the Transportation Committee on November 18th: "I move the compromise agreement, including the conservation easement reached by the Sears Island Joint Use Planning Committee, be accepted in principle, but left unsigned by this committee until a port is permitted on Sears Island. The Transportation Committee will submit a bill to the 124th Legislature, directing the Maine Department of Transportation to move forward with all practical speed to see that a port is permitted on Sears Island. Once that permit is in hand, the agreement before this committee will be signed."

Governor's response to the unanimous vote approving the Savage Plan? Bite back!

"Negotiations over a final agreement on the future of Sears Island continue, " MTC's AJ Higgins said. "At issue is a proposed cargo port that would be built on the 930 acre island near Searsport, and at least one critic of the plan says that now would be a good time to re-evaluate the approval process."

Governor Baldacci is obviously worried that he'll become a two time loser on Sears Island - in 2004 and '05 his plan for an LNG terminal was exposed then withdrawn. This time, unless he can force the Legislature's Transportation Committee to recant their unanimous approval the Savage Plan, though, that's just what is going to happen.

In the midst of this, according to Maine Things Considered, Penobscot Bay Watch and other groups have announced intentions to submit a petitionl to the Maine Board of Environmental Protection asking that it assume jurisdiction and order MDOT to obtain a planning permit before obtaining legislative approval.

Reaction to the Baldacci onslaught is mixed so far, with Senator Diamond willing to kowtow to the Guv, and Senator Damon and Representative Hogan unmoved by Baldacci's and MDOT's pleas. The rest? Time will tell. Stay tuned.

Read about Sears Island's 1990's eco-battles over a cargoport

Jilted Port Huggers Lament Oversight 'Poison Pill'

Several of the creators of the foundered JUPC plan for partitioning Sears Island fired back at their critics and at the Maine legislature    today with a co-signed op-ed in the weekend Bangor Daily News

Do the trio admit to having made mistakes? Of course not. Do they fault their decision to exempt their Plan from impact review under the federal highway administration's own environmental law, even though it was appropriate?  Not a bit. 

Do they renounce their bizarre decision to acquiesce with MDOT's demands they sacrifice hundreds more acres of the island's forests and streams than would logically be needed for a port? Nope.

From the 30 acres the state previously found an acceptable acreage for a port, did they  give up without a whimper 270 acres more of the island's forested, stream cut western shore.Ayuh.- and by definition the thousand acres of nursery shoals  in front of those 300 acres that would have to be dredged and filled? Suppose so. They never thought about that.

Do they regret bypassing environmental review of their giant vague plan purely for the sake of shortening the process?  Not a bit. Like mindless robots, they were "charged by the governor" to ignore the environmental consequences  of their plan for the upper bay's brackish estuary, which a port would sit in the amidst of.  

But the rest of us know better . Stand tall, Legislature! 

Strip MDOT from Sears Island's title and deed. Place it under the state's Public Reserved Land status, with attendant payment-in-lieu-of-taxes to Searsport. Not under the privatizing thrall of  overgrown,  privately-held Maine Coast Heritage Trust and its hangers-on. Should a port become a necessity, the need so great it justifies biting a chunk out of the island and fish nursery shoal, why, public reserved land is legally open to such compromises. But a port isn't a necessity. as the three essayists note.  Not for the foreseeable future.  Read their essay (below or  the online version,) and weep.

They just don't get it.  Read the letter to e editor of the Bangor Daily News

Letter by leaders of the  Sears island Joint Use Planning Committee

Sears Island decision a missed opportunity for Maine.                                                                        by James Gillway, Dianne Smith and Scott Dickerson

On Tuesday, Nov. 18, the Joint Committee on Transportation of the Maine Legislature made a deeply flawed decision concerning the future of Sears Island. Unless corrected by future action, their vote on the recommendations presented to the committee by the Sears Island Joint Use Planning Committee continues indefinitely the 40-year stalemate concerning the island’s opportunities for both economic development and conservation.

The transportation committee accepted every recommendation of the JUPC, but added a contingency that poisons the potential of real progress for many years, perhaps indefinitely. The JUPC’s key recommendation is to dedicate 330 acres of the island for potential use as a marine port and 601 acres for outdoor recreation, environmental education and ecological protection.

These recommendations were developed through an intensive, 3-year planning process by more than 50 different representatives of transportation, industry, conservation, outdoor recreation, local business, state agencies and town governments. This complete spectrum of interests achieved a consensus to reach beyond gridlock and produce the first comprehensive resolution of this long-contested issue.

The poison pill that the transportation committee inserted into its decision is the contingency that before the conservation land can be established, a port proposed for the island must receive all permits. This decision was neither fair to the people of Maine nor prudent for the future of the island, as demonstrated by these facts:

The 330 acres for potential port use was delineated by DOT staff and is more than three times the area required for development of a container port.

Finding a private entity to fund and partner with the state to develop a port, design facilities, conduct studies, and proceed through regulatory review will take an unknown number years.

During the past 40 years, six major developments, including one port, have been proposed for Sears Island. Not one has ever received the permits necessary for completion.

Any permitting process for a port on the island must consider alternative sites. Improvement and-or expansion of the existing port at Mack Point might be sufficient to serve the need, further delaying satisfaction of the committee’s contingency for a permit for an island port.

A 2006 economic analysis of the conservation program as proposed for Sears Island determined that the conservation land — including a small visitor, education and maintenance center, multiuse trails and related public access facilities — would attract a projected 23,000 visitors each year who would inject $1.7 million into the economy of the region annually.

Why not commit the 601 acres to conservation now, and allow at least that portion of the island to become a performing asset for the people of Maine? Extensive research by the JUPC determined that this will not conflict with future proposals to use the 330 acres for a port.

In the meantime, the island continues to drain resources from the town of Searsport. It receives no tax revenue from the island due to state ownership, but has to provide police patrols, emergency response, trash removal and other services. Further, because there is no management of the current public use except for concrete barriers and a gate across the entrance road, ecological values of the island are being degraded.

The stalemate perpetuated by the transportation committee’s narrow decision should be corrected through action by the full Legislature, in recognition that the people of Maine have a broad set of interests in Sears Island. The balance of uses proposed by all parties through the JUPC’s recommendations encompass this breadth. The transportation committee’s decision does not.

It is time for the entire Legislature to consider the future of Sears Island, the value of the recently thwarted JUPC’s proposed compromise, and vote to take responsibility for stewardship of this important state asset.

Written by James Gillway, Dianne Smith and Scott Dickerson

James Gillway is Searsport’s town manager; Dianne Smith is co-chairwoman of the Joint Use Planning Committee; Scott Dickerson is executive director of Coastal Mountains Land Trust. All three served on the committee that crafted the compromise plan

Sears Island - The empire retreats.

Another happy event has transpired since the Legislature's Joint Transportation Committee adopted the Savage Plan, which withholds approval of Maine Coast Heritage Trust's easement over 2/3 of the island, and establishment of an educational center, until a port and railyard is fully permitted on the remaining third.

Senator Christine Savage's motion, adopted by the committee: "I move the compromise agreement, including the conservation easement reached by the Sears Island Joint Use Planning Committee, be accepted in principle, but left unsigned by this committee until a port is permitted on Sears Island. The Transportation Committee will submit a bill to the 124th Legislature, directing the Maine Department of Transportation to move forward with all practical speed to see that a port is permitted on Sears Island. Once that permit is in hand, the agreement before this committee will be signed."

In a pleasing example of interagency coordination, Maine DOT has withdrawn its umbrella mitigation bank prospectus from the Army Corps of Engineers' clutches, and Army Corps has obligingly called off its Dec. 1st public meeting on said prospectus at its armory in Searsport.

The plot between government industry and suborned eco-yuppies to partition Sears Island among themselves continues to crumble. But there are other players out there...It's time to look into what the Federal Highway Administration is doing. Does the Savage Plan void the JUPC decision to forego a federal review under 49 § 303. Policy on lands, wildlife and waterfowl refuges, and historic sites? 

That review would have to look at the likely impacts of a port to protected and managed natural, historical and recreational resources. This would have to be BEFORE any action could be taken by the legislature, as its results would inform their decision on whether a commercial port is a good idea.

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 - JUPC bails out, legislators to vote 11/18/08

Having finished their dirty business, the Sears Island Joint Use Planning Committee has cancelled its final public meeting . One which would have given the public an opportunity to quiz the committee on the many inaccuracies and humbug in JUPC's final report As well as the myriad exceptions and vague wordings that fill the final version of the final version of the conservation easement

Of course such a meeting might have been a waste of time. Most JUPC-ites are talkative as stones at these events, and simply decline to answer the public, no matter what the question. "I'd be ashamed, too" one observer sniffed.

Onward! We must convince the Legislature's Transportation Committee to vote this bay-killing plan down. Please call them and email them. Or just send your email to Kathie Bilodeau, the transportation committee's very capable clerk, and ask her to forward it to the committee members.

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!"

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.

'Travesty Island' pageant on Sears Island August 31

"Travesty Island," a free theatrical event to protest plans to develop Sears Island, will be held Sunday, August 31, at 1 p.m. near the gate at the north end of the publicly owned island. 

 The event is intended to draw attention to the Baldacci Administration's second effort to build an unneeded industrial port on what is now the largest remaining totally wild island in public hands on the East Coast, and to chide several conservation groups for supporting the plan. 

 In the pageant, giant "Grim Reaper" figures personifying the forces of industrial sprawl and ecological destruction will face off against a thin line of defenders barring them from the island, led by the Green Knight and Diana, goddess of all things wild. 

Representatives of the island's wild animals and its marine life, its old forests and its fertile eelgrass beds will also be there defending their island home. Who will triumph? Come cheer on the forces of creation and nature against those of destruction. 

Want to be part of this family-friendly pageant? There's still time! Call 548-2950 or 323-2757.

 Or just show up at the island at Sunday at 1pm. Bring a mask, a drum or other instrument, or just you and your friends. 

 In addition to the Governor, the pageant will criticize the Maine chapter of the Sierra Club, Maine Coast Heritage Trust, Coastal Mountains Land Trust, Islesboro Island Land Trust and several other groups for signing onto an agreement that terms a Sears Island industrial port "appropriate" - even though it will mean the outright paving over of some 40 percent of the 941-acre island, and would badly fragment the eelgrass-laden nursery shoal edging the island. 

 In return the Baldacci Administration will hand over control of the island's remaining 600 acres to those groups, and allow them to  conserve the island  but also to build a "information center  and meeting area " (including a parking lot)  involving up to 10,000 square feet of roofed structures and a complex of access roads and parking lots. 

 "The Maine Sierra Club and the land trusts are providing green cover for a port project that ought to be setting off alarms in anyone who values our fast-dwindling natural resources," says Peter Taber of Searsport, one of those taking part in the "Travesty Island" pageant. Directions: Take the Sears Island Road located on Route 1, two miles north of downtown Searsport on Route 1. The road ends on the causeway to the island. Look for the banners.

For more information: Ron at 691-7485 Suzanne at 548-2950 or Peter at 323-2757. MORE ABOUT SEARS ISLAND