Last week, we looked at the formidable obstacles to major building projects in Maine – the groundswell of opposition rising whenever any industrial, utility, or transportation project is proposed.
Searsport has had industrial development for over a century, after the Bangor & Aroostook Railroad built a pier for transshipping cargo at Mack Point in 1909. It once had oil storage tanks, but now handles primarily bulk cargo, and is one of three state-owned ports, along with Eastport and Portland.
Gov. Joe Brennan proposed a major expansion at Searsport – the state port with land-level rail access – and the Sears Island Cargo Port seemed well on its way, using the undeveloped 940-acre island opposite Mack Point that the state had acquired.
The port project received federal permits and construction began in the early 1980s. But it was derailed in 1985 through a lawsuit from the Sierra Club, with courts agreeing the project had potential environmental impacts more significant than previous agency reviews had determined.
Construction ceased, the succeeding McKernan administration showed little interest. Today, the only remnant of the project is a 1,200-foot-long causeway that provides pedestrian access to the two-thirds of the island the Baldacci administration later designated for recreation.
Gov. Angus King and his DOT Commissioner, John Melrose, tried to revive the cargo port project in the late 1990s, using a design that avoided most of the dredging and in-water construction that derailed the first plan.
This plan also failed when the Environmental Protection Agency’s regional administrator in Boston, John DeVillars, rejected the crucial permit application.
Though the project was the only one of its kind proposed or likely to be built along the 3,000-mile Maine coastline, DeVillars decided the three acres of aquatic habitat that would have been disturbed was too great a loss.
And although DeVillars claimed he’d been a neutral arbitrator, when he received a major environmental award later, he cited the Sears Island rejection as among his most important accomplishments.
There was some redevelopment of the Mack Point terminal, with expansions for bulk cargo handling, but neither the Baldacci administration nor the LePage administration formulated any plans for port use.
Now, the Mills administration is pushing to locate a wind turbine fabrication plant on Sears Island, or the mainland – it’s studying both sites.
Mack Point, which lies below Route 1 and historic Searsport village, has limited room for expansion and any serious plan there would likely produce opposition from abutters and those who emphasize Searsport’s other identity, as a center of maritime history and the one-time “antique capital of Maine.”
Yet already, before any real preparation has begun, we’re again hearing about how Sears Island is untouchable.
The vice president of Friends of Sears Island, Rolf Olsen, has been vocal that the entire island should have no development – even though potential development is exactly why the state purchased the island. When Maine DOT decided Sears Island would be “preferred” over Mack Point, Olsen even objected to test borings on the island needed to establish which site really would be more feasible.
All the opponents to developing the island say Mack Point is preferable, even though development there would be far more expensive, and constricted. It’s by no means clear it would be welcome to the existing businesses and townspeople.
A standard technique for project opponents to avoid being seen as “anti-development” is to propose an alternative that’s far more expensive and often impractical.
The irony, for the wind turbine facility, is that offshore wind is one of the few technologies in sight that could mitigate the catastrophic warming that might render the Gulf of Maine uninhabitable to the lobsters and other marine life that fuel much of the state’s existing maritime economy.
Let’s face it. We now have nearly 50 land trusts dedicated to conservation, which collectively protect hundreds of thousands of acres and miles of coastline. As its association aptly puts it, “Maine is blessed with one of the strongest land trust communities in the country.”
Land protection is an important value, but not the only one of interest to today’s Mainers, and those of the future.
Wind energy is one of the few promising ventures that would fulfill environmental priorities while providing skilled, well-paid, non-tourism, union jobs along the coast. That some sacrifices must be made if we want those results is, unfortunately, foreign to the thinking of those who focus solely on a “pristine” coast.
Maine has long been a playground for the wealthy and powerful, and bless them, too. But those who struggle to make a living here would also appreciate a few opportunities.
Douglas Rooks, a Maine editor, commentator and reporter since 1984, is the author of three books. His first, “Statesman: George Mitchell and the Art of the Possible,” is now out in paperback. He welcomes comment at drooks@tds.net
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