-Sears Island or Mack Point? The Campaign to Save Sears Island helps you figure it out

 Clarifying the Costs -Sears Island or Mack Point?

By Nancy E. Galland , Rockland Maine
Campaign to Save Sears Island, Outreach Committee

Claims abound in opinion columns, editorials, and pamphlets that the proposed floating offshore wind terminal will cost less if it’s built on forested Sears Island rather than on Sprague Energy’s industrial port on adjacent Mack Point. Some estimates suggest costs are comparable, yet there is no updated, independent study to document these claims.

(https://www.maine.gov/mdot/ofps/docs/port/MaineDOT%20OSW%20Port%20Infrastructure%20Feasibility%20Study-Concept%20Design%20Report%2011-17-2021.pdf)

On July 11 of 2024, the Public Utilities Committee requested bids on the rate consumers will pay for the electricity generated by the Offshore Floating Turbine research array, testing the efficacy of the Pine Tree Wind design. Public Advocate William Harwood has concerns that the site’s development costs should be ascertained before the PUC sets the price of electricity for this untested technology.

(PDF: Maine Public Utilities Commission Docket No. 2022-100 New England Aqua Ventus June 28, 2024) https://www.pressherald.com/2024/08/01/as-the-state-looks-to-harness-gulf-of-maine-winds-a-big-question-looms-how-much-will-utility-customers-pay/

Creating a research array requires millions of dollars to build a fully developed site. Yet there’s no official Alternatives Analysis for site costs between Mack Point and Sears Island to date.

According to reports, Sprague Energy’s fully developed plan could save millions of dollars and can be ready two years sooner.

https://www.freepress.com/2024/08/13/Sprague-Says-Offshore-Wind-at-Mack-Point-Just-Makes-Sense/

The cost of destroying Sears Island’s 100 acres of forests and wetlands for untested technology that could fail is incalculable.

Maine law requires bids for electricity rates to be clearly structured to qualify as the lowest reasonable amount to coverall the costs to finance the project site development, i.e., facility construction, manufacturing and deploying the turbines, lease fees on land and ocean space, labor, plus the Project Developer’s profit margin. https://www.maine.gov/mpuc/sites/maine.gov.mpuc/files/inlinefiles/SupplOffShoreRFP.pdf

It’s important to understand that these costs apply wherever the facility is established. There’s only one PUC bid, one design, and one site - Sears Island.

Last February Governor Mills eliminated Mack Point as an option, dismissing Alternatives Analysis updates. (https://www.maine.gov/governor/mills/news/governor-mills-announces-sears-island-preferred-site-port-support-floating-offshore-wind-2024

and https://www.maineoffshorewind.org

Reading the cost comparisons in the state-hired Moffat & Nichols study (2021), I found they relied on data generated by other engineering firms dating back as far as 1983.

Without updated bathymetric data, they positioned the Mack Point docks on shallow water which would require significant dredging.

(https://www.maine.gov/mdot/ofps/docs/port/MaineDOT%20OSW%20Port%20Infrastructure%20Feasibility%20Study-Concept%20Design%20Report%2011-17-2021.pdf)

Whereas Sprague’s updated plan locates the docks on deep water, reducing dredge requirements by 85%, costing about $50 million less.

Sprague also offered to bear the expense of $30 million to improve the space on the designated site.
(https://www.mainepublic.org/climate/2024-06-12/sprague-energy-pushes-wind-port-plan-to-rival-sears-island-terminal)
Meanwhile, the costs for industrializing Sears Island have increased substantially, currently up to $760 million.
(https://mailchi.mp/e36f350c6f04/sears-island-week-in-review)

Sprague has requested a re-cost estimate based on the corrected information. The Mills administration has not yet responded, and faulty estimates are still pedaled to the public. (https://www.mainepublic.org/climate/2024-06-12/sprague-energy-pushes-wind-port-plan-to-rival-sears-island-terminal)

On either site, the State will develop the terminal’s infrastructure, from toilets to rail spurs. The State’s cost for site preparation can be supplemented by $456,000.00 in federal grants. Municipal Bonds would make up the difference.

Mack Point has most of the essential infrastructures already, reducing significant time and expense, including saving money on bond interest, and environmental damages.
https://mailchi.mp/e36f350c6f04/sears-island-week-in-review
On either site, the Project Developer will pay the State a lease fee for the exclusive use of the terminal.

According to its federal grant submission, if it’s sited on Mack Point, the State wants a 25 year lease agreement from Sprague and would rent it at a profit to the developer for $250,000 an acre per year - that’s $25 million a year for 25 years.(https://www.mainepublic.org/business-and-economy/2024-05-31/the-plans-for-maines-floating-wind-port-explained; and https://www.maine.gov/mdot/grants/infra/docs/2024/Funding%20Commitment.pdf

Significant to electricity users: the Project Developer’s profit margin from operating the terminal is based on the rate of return, i.e. the rate per kwh. That’s what must be negotiated with the PUC. (https://www.pressherald.com/2024/08/01/as-the-state-looks-to-harness-gulf-of-maine-winds-a-big-question-looms-how-much-will-utility-customers-pay/)

Furthermore, because Mack Point has essential infrastructures in place and would take two years less to develop than Sears Island, that’s two years that the State could collect $50 million in lease fees.

Here comes that Sears Island umbrella again!

The word on the bay is that MDOT has just shipped out to the federal agencies the state's new umbrella mitigation plan for MDOT. The previous one offering 2/3 of dismembered Sears Island as the first "deposit" in its mitigation bank, was sent packing some months ago.  What must MDOT Commissioner Cole be thinking this time? What has he come up with?

It better be something new. For according to one federal agency staffer, "so far, there has been good overall agreement between the Corps, EPA, NOAA, and [US Fish and Wildlife Service]  that little or no credit should be given for direct wetland impacts in exchange for the preservation of 600 acres of Sears Island. "

In response, Senator Dennis Damon and his Transportation Committee members are hopping mad. They are discovering that they may well have been suckered by Governor B and the ecoyuppies. If they thought that giving  the Land Trusters 601 acres of Sears Island was going to allow logging clearing blasting, paving and dredging within the 340 acre industrial zone, then they were mistaken. Sorry. Nope. Not in the eyes of God or the Army Corps of Engineers.

The fedsters did allow that  "indirect impacts (fragmentation, non-point source runoff) from MEDOT projects would make sense for credit."  But not compensating for the Godzilla footprint a containerport like this would have on Sears Island.

MDOT- Sears Island container port would NOT reduce state's truck traffic.

At a recent public forum about Sears Island, MaineDOT Commissioner David Cole let out a big secret as he laid out his agency's vision of a Sears Island port.  It would not be an ordinary container port, he said,

It would be a "Trans-shipment container port."

"The paradigm has significantly shifted" Cole declared, describing the plan for Sears Island to be  

"a  trans-shipment containerport connecting Maine to Europe, Asia and other parts of the world. is now part of the environmental solution"   He envisioned "...stacked containers moving by rail  from ships docking at Sears Island directly to depots in the midwestern US  by way of Montreal."

NONE STOPPING IN MAINE, THOUGH, COMMISSIONER?
 
"The reality is" Cole piously said  "a third of our carbon footprint comes from the transportation sector. If we're going to be serious at reducing it, you've got to work at finding more economical and environmentally friendly and energy efficient  ways of  moving goods.  Shipping by sea and by rail -it would be a railport  -comes to the port of Searsport as the most environmentally friendly way of moving goods."

 Part of the environmental solution, eh? Most environmentally friendly, huh?  Certainly that would be true if the port and rail system Cole dreams about  would replace the trucks that fill our roads and highways, ceaselessly delivering to wholesale and retail outlets the goods we use in out daily lives.

But it won't! The Baldacci Admin dream is a "trans-shipment container railport" remember?   Sears Island will just be a sort of global trade portal zone. One where containers from overseas are transferred to railcars for shipment nonstop to commercial centers in the Midwestern US. Not a single container will stay in Maine.

Meanwhile the highways will still be jammed with trucks, trucks,  trucks...