Environmentalists Put Legislative Damper On Sears Island Partition Plan
by Ron Huber, Penobscot Bay Watch

Senator Christine Savage left and Senator Dennis Damon, chair of the Senate Tranportation Committee, at the Sears Island meeting. Damon considered the change of direction a lost opportunity for both sides. ©Photo by Ron Huber

The Maine Legislature’s Trans- portation Committee met on November 18th WHERE to consider a Baldacci Administration plan to partition Sears Island into an Non Governmental Organi- zation (NGO)-controlled eastern side and an industrial port-friendly western side, but ultimately turned the plan on its head.

Concerned about potential bad faith by conservation signers of the plan, the Transportation Committee voted to accept the final draft of the Maine DOT’s Sears Island Joint Use Plan “in principle,” but adopted a motion by Senator Christine Savage barring Maine DOT from moving ahead with the plan's key element. That being, granting a perpetual conservation easement to Maine Coast Heritage Trust of over 600 acres of the 940 acre state-owned island in upper Penobscot Bay – until after a Sears Island port applicant – one is believed waiting in the wings – succeeds in getting all of its necessary local, state and federal permits.

Environmentalist signers to the deal had come to Augusta believing just the opposite – that the Transportation Committee would give the easement immediate approval, in return for NGOs promising not to fight future port development on the western third of Sears Island. During the King, administration a similar plan was fought off by environmentalists and federal agencies, due to its proximity to Penobscot Bay's most important brackish water fish nursery and salmon smolt staging areas, which would have been dredged and filled.

Therefore committee members were skeptical of the strength of the NGO’s promise this time, which was not helped when an email from a Sierra Club Maine Chapter official to a port critic surfaced. It defends the Sierra Club’s involvement in the Joint use Planning Committee, but then calls for resistance to the Plan:

“We have ensured that 2/3 of it will be protected for ever, but we need all the help we can get to protect the remaining part. So independent of Sierra Club, I encourage you to start a campaign to help protect the island.”

As the Sierra Club had played a key role in defeating King’s plan, wary legislators took a precautionary approach this time. – port first, easement later. Senator Savage’s motion, seconded by Representative Ed Mazurek of Rockland read as follows:

“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 Com- mittee will submit a bill to the 124th Legislature, directing the Maine Department of Transpor- tation 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.”

Committee co-chair Senator Dennis Damon shepherded the motion past objections from the Governor's representative Karin Tilberg, and Maine Coast Heritage Trust’s Scott Dickerson. Tilberg challenged the committee’s authority to decide which came first – the port or the easement – and Dickerson warned that such a change could result in environmental groups abandoning the agreement.

Damon was unmoved, saying his committee was not altering their report, merely defining its implementation, and expressing disappointment that the environmentalist signers would suddenly disavow their own hard-worked-for deal. Following the committee's unanimous vote, dismayed Joint Use Planning Committee members left the capitol building, quizzed by incredulous journalists.

“I feel it set us back 20 years,” said JUPC facilitator Dianne Smith of Searsport, speaking to Bangor Daily News’ George Chappell after the committee’s vote. “This process is going to take so long, and meanwhile there will be no access, and the island will continue to be trashed,”

JUPC member Becky Bartovics of Penobscot Bay Alliance told Chappell that the vote “just wasted five years of the efforts of many who worked on the project.”

JUPC member Jim Freeman, of Friends of Sears Island, was equally blunt. “I think it’s basically over. I think we’ll walk away from the table,” he told Maine Things Considered.

The Bangor Daily News editorialized darkly against the legislative committee’s decision: “Some of those who worked on the compromise believe behind-the-scenes treachery was at work.”