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Unacceptable in 21st-century Maine



In July 2015, it is 800 years and 1 month after the signing of the Magna Carta, and 326 years after the Bill of Rights was added to the U.S. Constitution. Every generation has said it must defend its right to free speech. With the incursion of Citizens United, that defense might be extended to a few others in the Bill of Rights.

Citizens United is legislation that has effectively dragged U.S. citizens back to before 1776 in real rights and security. Citizens United makes the president a King George clone, surrounded by cash-rich corporate cronies. Among contemporary cronies is the ever-influential oil industry.

Timidity imbues the current effort to create an ocean policy. We all have to hope the regulatory agencies will not fear to “suggest” the oil industry consider the “guidelines” in this publically created policy. Regrettably, timidity is a reasonably accurate description of the tenor of the discussions around how a National Ocean Policy will be integrated into any future ocean-use permitting process.

And so we have the dredging project in Searsport Harbor. First and foremost, we have one of the most productive fishing areas along one of the most fishery-dependent coastlines in the nation.

It’s described as a routine dredging to allow modern, larger vessels into the port. However, eastern Maine corporate boosters want a major shipping point. A reasonable person would agree that dredging needs to be done to allow the continued use of an existing facility. But the two foreign oil companies among the boosters see a larger oil port. Boosters want an “industrial corridor” from Searsport to Bangor. What’s in Bangor? The slots, you say? No, a hopeful Cianbro construction company would say—but maybe the Calais to Coburn Gore East-West Oil Corridor.

Dredging poses two problems. The mud dredged and dumped will bury thousands, perhaps millions of acres of fishing grounds that have been fished since before oil was discovered anywhere. The oil/chemical industry chose to dump hazardous chemicals into that mud to increase company profits at the expense of the public resource. Now they want the public’s tax money to dig up that toxic mud and dump it on the small-business workplace of the people who pay those taxes. Burying the state’s iconic seafood product and image in toxic waste? Unacceptable in 21st-century Maine.