Sears Island Container Port Bond Bill killed by Maine Legislature

Click here to listen to the Maine legislature vote on  February 29, 2012,  to kill LD 420 "An Act To Authorize a General Fund Bond Issue To Fund Building a Container Port on Sears Island"  and  three other transportation  bond proposals.  (A 90 second recording)

LD 420 would've put a ballot question before Mainers to have their descendants pay 200 million dollars plus interest to build a gigantic containerport now . This to be leased to non-existent containerport wannabees. The legislature's Appropriations & Financial Affairs Committee just said No. 

Sears Island: the view from Castine

Spent the day going to Castine and coming back, my lovely amanuensis Kristine at my side. A trip to the Maine Maritime Academy, where I and environmentalist Jody Spear would debate/discuss Sears Island with three students and two faculty members - George Schatz, Associate Professor of Economics and Finance, (from the Chicago School of Economics) and Bill DeWitt, associate Dean and professor of logistics, with a vast and varied experience of west coast rail and global shipping logistics-in-practice.

Jody Spear challenged the economics- the lack of demonstrated need, the present economic uncertainties. I used a chart of the upper bay as the backdrop for describing the uniqueness of the shoals and the brackish water mixing zone, and ditto for up-river fisheries. That the dredging and chronic toxicants would permanently degrade this linchpin of the greater bay ecosystem.

A google aerial pic of the island was displayed on a large screen, and I pointed out some of the features: the port zone, the shoals, the rail yard. I should have asked him to zoom out to show the greater estuary; that was clear on my paper map anyway, though.

We went on for about 2 1/2 or three hours. Dean DeWitt had to leave early to resume his duties.

In summary...I think that economist Dr Schatz ended up quite sympathetic to the side of keeping local fisheries and tourism-based economies functional, versus setting up a new Free trade entrepot. Dean DeWitt, not so much; he's a can-do engineer. Bio-damage or not, a containerport there WOULD suck up some overflow from a crowded mega-containerport in Halifax every now and then. Would play a role in the economy of the great global economic engine.

But in the end was no sneer or scorn on any face - an amicable parting of the ways, with promises to send the students some o f the very latest information about the Sears Island lawsuits the highlights of the 1990s fight, a few other things.

Then it was back to the fossil fuel-mobile, and a road cruise back to the western shore; a late lunch at Just Barbs powered us up before a jaunt onto Sears Island. Her sands crisp underfoot on the west coast of the Island. Oh Wasumkeag, in all your Dawn People names - for the Wabanaki and other great confederations and tribes living upon this blessed piece of earth we call Maine called the island by many names.

Sears Island: making the case for hearing the case

In the course of fifteen pages, Huber refutes MDOT's arguments calling for his case in Maine Superior Court to be dismissed without hearing. Read Huber's Response (15 pg pdf file)

First two paragraphs of Huber's response:

Maine DOT's protestations to the contrary, their granting a Sears Island conservation easement to Maine Coast Heritage Trust is a "final agency action." The simplest test of a "final" agency action is whether or not the agency provides the petitioner with any "further recourse, appeal or review ... within the agency" after the action has been taken. 5 MRSA Sec 8002(4). In the case of this easement, which determines the future of the largest undeveloped island in Maine; an island owned by the people of Maine, Maine DOT has not provided the petitioner with any recourse to appeal or seek review of its decision to execute this easement.

Moreover, the finality of MaineDOT's final agency action is demonstrated by its triggering intensive actions and financial expenditures by the agency, including solicitation around the globe for a Sears Island containerport development expert and port applicants. Those expenditures and marketing initiatives would not have taken place were the action of signing the easement not final and dispositive of all issues.

Last two Paragraphs:

"There is no question these recent actions and statements by Maine DOT show that the Jan. 22, 2009 easement "causes to be constructed" a cargo port at Sears Island. For this reason, Huber's requests are "ripe" and the Maine DOT must apply for permits under Maine's Sensible Transportation Policy Act and Maine's Site Location of Development Law. These applications were required to be tendered prior the execution of the easement, and for this reason must be tendered by the Maine DOT now.

"For the reasons set forth above, Petitioner Ronald Huber asks this Honorable Court to deny Defendant Maine DOT's Motion to Dismiss Petitioner Huber's Petition for Review of Final Agency Action, carry out that judicial review and rescind and invalidate Maine DOT's grant of a perpetual conservation easement over 601 acres of Sears Island to Maine Coast Heritage Trust."

Shipping Pollution - can upper Penobscot bay handle all the carbon?

Commercial ships spew half as much particulate pollution as world's cars . Upper Penobscot Bay could become an asthma cluster area if Sears Island is turned into a containerport. The diesel fumes from ships, tugboats, trucks railroad enginees and derricks will create a stinking choking cloud over the upper Bay.

Here's a recent study of the issue of shipping air pollution:

Daniel Lack, a researcher at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)'s Earth System Research Laboratory has just published results of a government study finding that that globally, commercial ships emit almost half as much particulate pollution into the air as the total amount released by cars, according to a new study. Ship pollutants affect both the Earth's climate and the health of people living along coastlines.

"Since more than 70 percent of shipping traffic takes place within 250 miles of the coastline, this is a significant health concern for coastal communities," says lead author Daniel Lack. He and his colleagues reported their findings on 25 February 2009 in the Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres, a publication of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). Read article here

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: Danger ahead! Appeasement never works.

Giving away 2/3 of Sears Island is not going to satisfy the hunger of Sierra Club and the land trusts to control the public island. If the  Legislature gives in to Baldacci and lets itself be reversed: NO PORT.

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 - 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.

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 don't trust Sierra Club

Better no Sears Island plan than this flawed one.

A sentiment shared by pro-porters and anti-porters at today's statehouse meeting. (though not held by the JUPCians)

Inside packed room 126 of the Statehouse today, members of the Joint Committee on Transportation reacted with suspicion to the latest version of the Sears Island Joint Use Committee's plan brought before them. LISTEN TO RECORDINGS FROM THE EVENT HERE

This latest iteration grants ENGO Maine Coast Heritage Trust a perpetual conservation easement over 600 acres of the 940 island, while simultaneously opening the western third of the island to industrial port development.

Opponents of the port plan have been suggesting to committee members that the lengthy draft conservation easement contains wording in its fine print that will give the Sierra Club and Maine Coast Heritage Trust the ability to fend off any future port plan.

The whisper campaign seems to have worked. After listening to Transportation Commissioner Cole presentation, and following a lengthy question & answer session, the committee decided

(1) They would not vote on approving or disapproving the still-incomplete Joint use Plan (there are still issues with the exact wording of the easement) , and

(2) they didn't trust Sierra Club, Friends of Sears Island and Penobscot Bay Alliance not to turn around once the legislature signed off on the JUPC plan and and stab them in the back by suddenly bringing anti port litigation up when a container port wanabe rears its head.

Lush photographs of the island taken a few days earlier proved popular with committee members, though Chairman Damon took umbrage at the term "sacrifice zone" that accompanied the online picture gallery of the natural environment in the proposed port zone that he was referring to.

There'll be another legislature meeting on Sears Island next month. Who knows what will happen?

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!"

Sears Island "deal" opposition swells; JUPC-ites confronted at 6/25/08 public meeting

A glum row of Joint users Wednesday night felt the wrath of island and bay huggers ....The audience, the public who attended the presentation and question and answer session overwhelmingly oppose ANY development on Sears Island. Listen to all audio recordings from meetings.

Following the introductory remarks ,

MDOT and Maine Coast heritage Trust tried the argument that Sears Island faces total development should the state not get what it wants this instant. They tried to raise spectres of residential sprawl covering the entire island. But the people Wednesday night weren't buying it

A series of public speakers followed the dog and pony show. A local resident whose loved ones ashes were scattered on Sears Island spoke with sorrow at the thought of the deceased being under thundering container port. She was followed by members of port opponent group Fair Play for Sears Island A resident of South Thomaston spoke of the contradictions between the state's process and the reality of the island.

As Harlan McLaughlin noted, Sears Island is managed pursuant to passed into law LD 277. The bill requires legislative approval for any new uses to the present natural areas with transmission towers. Not to mention the existing MOU between Searsport and MDOT that gives already gives control of the 600 acres to Searsport....and Searsport has land use ordinances.

No, the real danger, Mclaughlin warned, the real danger of development comes from the port wannabes and the eco-world people.

Others spoke; some passionately, some with disdain for the secrecy and political maneuvering of the MDOT process that had brought the island and bay to this situation.

Maine state senator Dennis Damon attended. Chair of both the legislature's transportation committee and its marine resources committee, Damon has made MDOT's Sears Island port plan a priority in the Transportation Committee. Yet, despite the well understood serious impacts to Penobscot Bay's marine fisheries that would stem from a port being built athwart the bay's most important groundfish and wild salmon nursery area, Damon has not broached the subject of the port plan at all with the marine resources committee.

Asked by Penobscot Bay Watch executive director Ron Huber during the Q&A session that closed the event if he would schedule a Sears Island review at the Marine Resources Committee, the senator first suggested that the legislature's conservation committee might be a better venue. But pressed on the marine fishery impacts being worthy of the marine resources committee's attention, Senator Damon agreed to bring the topic up with that committee. Huber met later with Damon and discussed the kinds of materials that the committee should receive.

Scot Dickerson of Maine Coast Heritage Trust seemed peeved at the growth in opposition to the port plan and delivered a closing statement dismissive of the natural resources of the island and warning of terrible consequesnces fo the island if the port plan was not adopted.

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

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

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

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

Sears Island - the mote in BDN's editorial eye.

It's a pleasure to see new editorial leadership at the Bangor Daily News, especially someone arising from the ranks of BDN's veteran beat reporters - Tom Groening. We'll miss seeing and talking to you at at Penobscot Bay events, Tom.

However, the editorial 'Saving Sears Island' shows that Tom and/or other BDN editors need a crash course in Sears Island issues and Penobscot Bay ecology. We strongly urge them to get that by coming to the June 6th Sears Island Teach-In outside the Congregational Church of Searsport. The church is simultaneously host to a meeting of the Sears Island Joint Use Planning Committee. The two groups will doubtless mingle. The learning potential is tremendous. All are welcome! This means you, reader.

But let's get down to just one of the many brass tacks that makes reading the Bangor Daily News' editorial so painful.

The fundamental reason, the overriding purpose and need claimed for the port zoning plan is that building a port on Sears Island "may one day be deemed critical to Maine’s economic survival", as the editorial writer puts it.

Come now. The day that the change of use of any land, any location in Maine is truly "deemed critical to Maine's economic survival" it can and will be exploited for whatever that survival purpose is.

Whether it be a waterfront estate, a lobster dock or a natural island, if the state of Maine were in such dislocation that only a new container port plugged into her coast in a certain location would keep Mainers from ruin and anarchy, such a location would be speedily and rightly condemned, and those containers of economic salvation would shortly start flowing off on or off the ships.

The state of Maine will of course take care of its people should the need arise. It already has all the legal resources to do so. A fast track to let speculative investors rush in and build a needless port on Maine public land, despoiling the upper Bay region of its clean air and healthy marine environment while degrading an island of unparalleled and irreplaceable environmental quality and biodiversity - meanwhile squeezing every possible tax deferment or abatement from Maine taxpayers it can - does not benefit our region.

Speaking of 'economic survival', the mainstream scientific community of New England and the region's new creative economists will no doubt be willing to explain in great detail to JUPC members how building and operating a container port would itself threaten the 'economic survival' of the strong tourism, resort and fishing economies of the greater Penobscot Bay.

What or who will compensate commercial and recreational fishers? Summer camps and resorts? Those Mainers falling ill from asthma, which seems to follow closely behind container port construction elsewhere in the USA? All harmed by the new pollution, including invasives-rich ballast water and by lost critical nursery areas, that would follow from approving this port zone, and inciting some enterprising free marketeers to make a literal killing by building a container port, fouling the Penobscot Bay environment for a decade, then bailing out once the tax incentives decline. Leaving Maine the poorer for its pains.

The Port Baldacci plan for Sears Island, in closing, appears little more than a tawdry if carefully executed attempt to pave the way for global investors and port speculators to punch a briefly profitable new global trade port into the coast of Maine. Even if it ends up primarily as empty and virtually unused as the Estes Head port in Eastport, brainchild of Brian Nutter. Nutter was rewarded for the Eastport "port to nowhere" by being made head of the Maine Port Authority.

Now Brian, part of the JUPC, has come to our bay, and is busy promoting another needless port. Shall we listen to him? He's already set to move to yet another new port directorship - a major grain port on the Ohio River in Jeffersonville, Indiana. What Sears Island and Penobscot Bay be like when he finally heads south?

In our next entry we'll take a look at BDN editors' comprehension of the ecology at stake, (and award them a D-).

Sears Island as container port.

The nightmare unveiled... Just popping up on the Maine Department of Conservation website is a review of setting up a container port on Sears Island. Read it here (short pdf)

The 'white paper' is called Container Terminal Parameters: A White Paper Prepared for Maine Department of Transportation January 30, 2007 By The Cornell Group.

The two images from the report shown here depict , below: the layout for a two berth container ship port and top: a standard one-berth container ship port at work.

Needless to say, the "white Paper" is entirely mum about the sorts of environmental impacts that might be expected from one of these operations. No mention of fish, lobsters.

Sadly, even the word "environment" doesn't appear.

Sears Island - new advisory council will ignore likely container port impacts

Below is a transcription of the April 10, 2008 draft of a "Concept Paper for a Sears Island Conservation Area Advisory Council" that will considered at Friday's meeting of the Sears Island Joint Use Planning Committee.

The Council would evolve from the Sears Island Joint Use Planning Committee, which in its planning ostensibly reviewed all elements of the proposed joint uses: port, natural areas and educational center.

The new entity, a "Conservation Area Advisory Council" will focus solely on the natural areas and educational center while washing its hands of the element most likely to harm the bay's environment. The element most in need of public oversight - the container port plan. That element will be overseen by....well, nobody but the porties themselves.

But don't worry! The Advisory Council will oversee licensing of the Sears Island 'brand', so one needn't fret about unauthorized Sears Island teeshirts and bumperstickers. The Council would do well, though, to consult with the Penobscot Indian Nation if it seeks to license "Wassumkeag" - the island's name for most of the past 5 thousand years. Its the least they can do, since they've declined to consider protecting the archaeological assets that document the Penobscot's many generations who occupied the island.

Draft Concept Paper for a Sears Island Conservation Area Advisory Council

1. Background
Sears Island, a 941-acre island in upper Penobscot Bay, is owned by the State of Maine and managed under the jurisdiction of the Maine Department of Transportation (MDOT).

As proposed by the Joint Use Planning Committee, an initiative established by the Governor of Maine, and if approved by the Joint Legislative Committee on Transportation, the island will be divided into two different areas: a 341-acre potential Transportation Area and a 600-acre Conservation Area that will be placed under a perpetual conservation easement and managed for outdoor recreation, education, and protection of ecological resources.

Construction and maintenance of trails, parking areas, buildings, and other structures necessary to deliver services for the intended uses are expected improvements in the Conservation Area. Such improvements will be allowed and limited under the terms of the conservation easement and are subject to all applicable local, state and federal land use regulations.

Management of the Conservation Area will likely be conducted under a license agreement between the MDOT and one or more other entities. For instance, an environmental education institution or agency might enter into a license agreement that covered the construction and use of a visitor-education center, while a non-profit organization might enter into a license agreement to manage the trails and lands outside of the building area.

Because the MDOT is neither statutorily charged with managing lands for the uses of the Conservation Area nor has staff and other resources relevant to such management, the Joint Use Planning Committee has proposed that an Advisory Council be established to assist the MDOT in the decision process concerning appropriate management of the Conservation Area. This Concept Paper will outline the role and composition of the Advisory Council.

2. Role of the Advisory Council
The Advisory Council will provide the knowledge and experience of its members to the MDOT with the goal of facilitating effective management of the Conservation Preserve. In its effort to meet that goal, the Advisory Council will review and comment to the MDOT on the following matters concerning the Conservation Area:

• policies and practices concerning management;
• management plans;
• plans concerning buildings and other substantial improvements;
• issues arising from the terms of the conservation easement;
• license agreements; and
• other matters that will arise from time to time that have significant impacts on
management.

The Advisory Council does not have the power to approve or disapprove of final decisions concerning management of the Conservation Area. Its role is to counsel the MDOT in that agency's jurisdiction of the Conservation Area and related management decisions. However, MDOT reserves the right to convey or assign certain decision-making authority to the Advisory Council as MDOT deems appropriate.

3. Composition of the Advisory Council
The Advisory Council will be composed of one representative from each of the following, or comparable, agencies or non-governmental organizations:

• Maine Department of Transportation, which will act as chair;
• Maine Department of Conservation;
• Town of Searsport;
• Town of Stockton Springs;
• Licensee(s) of the Conservation Area;
• Holder of the Conservation Easement;
• Friends of Sears Island;
• Penobscot Bay Alliance; and
• Coastal Mountains Land Trust.

4. Term of the Advisory Council and Schedule of Meetings
The Advisory Council is intended to be a continuing committee in providing its counsel to the MDOT, and is not established with a specific term of years of operation. The Advisory Council will meet as often as necessary to fulfill the role described above, and not less than once per year.
End of draft concept paper