Citizens to Protect Sears Island Celebrates House Vote Denying Dune Bill
For immediate release April 11, 2024
Citizens to Protect Sears Island
protectwahsumkik@proton.me
Maine’s House of Representatives voted Tuesday to deny the Governor’s Bill, LD 2266,
which would have overturned protections of a sand dune on Sears Island so it may be
bulldozed, along with over 1 million cubic yards of soil, to make way for an experimental
Off-Shore Wind Manufacturing, Assembling, and Launching port. Despite lobbying
efforts by the Maine Labor Climate Council, Maine People’s Alliance, Natural Resources
Council of Maine, Maine Audubon, Maine Conservation Voters, and the expressed
wishes of Maine’s highest taxpayer-funded employee through the University of Maine
System, Dr. Habib Dagher (at $594k annually in 2022), residents of Searsport and
surrounding communities are steadfast in their commitment to protect the Island from
this development. At a public meeting in Searsport last June with the Maine
Department of Transportation, local citizens overwhelmingly expressed support for
using Mack Point for the proposed facility, or no development at all.
Although a portion of the Island was retained by the DOT for possible development, it
must meet the criteria outlined in the Sears Island Planning Initiative Consensus
Agreement, signed by then Governor Baldacci, including, “no soil harvesting.” The
agreement also states it would use Mack Point “as the preferred site” for port
development. A promise Governor Janet Mills is breaking.
In her new book "What the Wild Sea can Be - the future of the world's ocean", marine
biologist, author, and professor at Cambridge University Helen Scales has a chapter on
"future forests" - on seagrasses and an undersea "green ecosystem", saying "In the
ocean there are forests - great, verdant, important places- that mirror their counterparts
on land." When she speaks about eelgrass, she uses Maine as a specific example of a
horror story of loss: "Seagrass meadows grow along the coasts of every continent
except Antarctica, and already a third have disappeared globally, some at a horrifying
rate: Casco Bay, an inlet in the Gulf of Maine, lost more than half its eelgrass meadows,
from 5012 to 2,286 acres, in just four years, between 2018 and 2022." Updated
eelgrass surveys are expected to be done around Sears Island this year. Yet the
Governor’s Office claims developing Sears Island, an intact forest, wetland, and marine
ecosystem, and dumping fill into the ocean to create acres of flat tarmac, is less
environmentally damaging than slightly expanding the dredge area at Mack Point.
The State has yet to look at the Appledore Engineering Report from October 2023
which estimated only 61,000 cu yards of dredge material be removed. The Report
further concludes all of Maine’s Off-shore Wind goals of a full ~3.0GW commercial wind
installation can be completed at Mack Point. Matt Burns of the Maine Port Authority has
agreed that Mack Point is suitable.
The Maine House of Representatives has recognized that the people of Maine deserve
a transparent and accountable process, and bypassing environmental protections in the
name of “green energy” is reckless, and sets a dangerous precedent.
The Governor’s Office is delaying the development of Offshore Wind, not Maine’s
Representatives, by pushing a site for development that is in direct opposition to the
principles of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose report states that
retaining intact ecosystems are more useful in curbing harmful changes in our climate
than wind projects.
