USACE Col. Jay Clements does his best March 26, 2009, to suggest the link is purely coincidental between a proposed container port on totally wild Sears Island off Searsport, Maine, and a failed Corps-administered wetlands mitigation banking scheme that would facilitate permitting for that port. The public didn't buy it.
For more than 30 years in what has become the longest-running environmental battle in New England history, state bureaucrats and politicians fronting for big business have sought to bring heavy industry to the largest uninhabited and undeveloped island remaining in public hands on the U.S. East Coast. Originally enamored with placing a nuclear-powered aluminum smelter on this beautiful Penobscot Bay island, the dull souls in Augusta have since drifted off on a succession of pipedreams for a port, the latest a $200 million-plus container-handling operation sprawling across 40 percent of the island. "Maine needs jobs," the port-boosters argue, but no evidence exists for either the need for or suitability of a port on Sears Island and few jobs would be created in any case.
Despite clear direction from most Maine citizens to leave Sears Island unspoiled, the administration of Gov. John Baldacci is hellbent on sacrificing a national treasure to an irresponsible entrepreneurial venture. The only people with any serious hope of benefiting from this environmental crime are the Chicago-based speculators (Rail World Inc.) in the resurrected-from-bankruptcy Bangor and Aroostook Railroad. Gov. Baldacci proposes that the portion of Sears Island not destroyed by a port should serve as the "foundation" for the federal mitigation bank. In February, he issued an executive order making a "gift" of this precious public wild land from the people of Maine to a private land trust organization by way of a so-called "conservation" easement.
The Maine governor's first concern in pretending to be a conservationist has really been to gain preservation credits to mitigate for destruction of wetlands occasioned by state transportation projects, a container port on Sears Island being the obvious first candidate to get a pass for extensive environmental destruction. But there has also been a payoff to those environmental groups willing to formally agree a port is "appropriate" on Sears Island. That payoff is EcoWorld. The easement language allows for the immediate construction on the "preserved" portion of the island of a complex of buildings, roads and parking lots intended, perversely enough, to promote environmental education. Plans for EcoWorld also include a provision to generate income by renting out surplus office space to government agencies. The policymakers at Maine Coast Heritage Trust, the easement holder, should hang their heads in shame.
In pushing for establishment of a federal wetlands mitigation bank in Maine, a first for New England, Gov. Baldacci has been oblivious to how this industry-sponsored mechanism from the Reagan era has been a dismal failure in other states in meeting its announced goal of allowing no net loss of the nation's critical wetlands. What adoption of a federal mitigation bank in Maine would allow as a general matter would be for the state DOT to minimize the role of the public in overseeing department projects that destroy wetlands. Specifically, what it threatens to do is channel sufficient mitigation credits to gain permitting for a container facility on Sears Island, the very credits whose absence has long frustrated port-boosters.
At the March 26 "informational" meeting the Corps conducted at Searsport Town Hall, Col. Clements initially suggested he was completely unaware when the state renewed its application in February for a federal mitigation bank that it was also pushing forward with cargo port plans. He said it wasn't "on my radar" even though more than a week prior to filing the bank application with the Corps the Maine DOT announced it was spending up to $100,000 to hire a consultant to begin marketing to find a developer for a Sears Island container port. Some in the audience found this disingenuous display of innocence a little hard to take.
For more information on the Sears Island issue, go to FairPlayForSearsIsland.org and penobscotbay.blogspot.com. For more information on the failure of federal mitigation banking as well as how this issue relates to Maine, check out what Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a national whistleblowers protection group, has to say, at peer.org.
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Pretty National Park Rangerby yaningxie4,399 views
The Eastport spur re-activation project is actually in the works as I type this. Canada has also expressed interest in the Eastport spur, & the terminal there, using it for freight train traffic. The Domtar corporation wants to use the Eastport spur for pulp trains, but if the intermodal trains can also get through, then they will use it for that also. Lets hope Eastport re-awakens. The folks up there really need the work. Not many jobs Downeast right now. "If you build it, they will come."
GP9railfan 2 years ago
Move this operation to Eastport, ASAP!!! Forget the Sears Island project. All the Calais (& Eastport) Branch needs is new track put back in place. The freight terminal is already there, (in Eastport). Politicians aren't too bright. They don't realize all the resources that are already in place The Calais Branch is/was a direct shot from Bangor, to Eastport, & would alleviate a lot of heavy trucks from the roads if it was re-established. The US/CDN economy would benefit if it re-opened.
GP9railfan 2 years ago