Alliance for Sears Island

Examples from Two Alliance Governing Team Members

Becky Bartovics wrote to the US Secretary of Transportation, Peter Buttigieg, urging him to deny a Maine Department of Transportation application for $456,000,000 toward building an offshore wind manufacturing facility on Sears Island and Janet Williams submitted testimony in response to the Governor’s Energy Office Offshore Wind Development Program Request for Information noting that “it makes no sense” to develop Sears Island instead of Mack Point. 

Here are their letters:

In Response to the Governor’s Energy Office Offshore Wind Development Program Request for Information, Janet Williams wrote:

Ports and Workforce

Any incentives should be directed towards redeveloping Mack Point, an existing industrial port adjacent to Sears Island that can provide everything necessary for production of the offshore wind turbines.

One criteria of the selection process is to choose the least environmentally damaging site. Sears Island is the most environmentally damaging site. Proponents of developing Sears Island quote the need for dredging at Mack Point, but the Sprague plan has reduced the need for dredging to a minimal amount that basically amounts to maintenance dredging. If the port is built on Sears Island it will destroy many acres of wetlands, streams, and terrestrial and marine habitat.

The Sears Island Planning Initiative Consensus Agreement includes the following: 

• Mack Point shall be given priority for port development. 
• There shall be no soil harvesting.  

The State is breaking its promises by pursuing Sears Island as the preferred alternative location and planning to excavate 2.1 million cubic yards of soil.

Thousands of people visit the island every year, including people from all over the U.S. and other countries, and they support the local economy. The presence of the port will forever change the experience of everyone on the conservation parcel. It will no longer be a place to come for peace, quiet and renewal. There will be the constant noise of industry, heavy truck traffic, hundreds of cars, and a rail line. The island will be ruined. 

Audubon Maine has named Sears Island as a birding hotspot for migratory birds. The birds mostly arrive at night but all the lights and huge cranes will inhibit them from landing to get the much-needed food and rest.

Up to 100 acres of trees will be cut down and no longer able to absorb tons of carbon dioxide every year. We are told that wetlands are more valuable than ever but the port would destroy many acres of wetlands. The marine habitat destroyed to create 25 acres of infill is vital for the fishing industry. 

Man cannot go on destroying nature without consequences. Climate change wouldn’t be such an issue if man stopped destroying the natural world. It makes no sense to destroy 100 acres of the natural world on Sears Island to build a port that already exists on Mack Point.

Becky Layton Bartovics – Letter to The Honorable Peter Buttigieg

The Honorable Peter Buttigieg Secretary of Transportation
United States Department of Transportation 1200 New Jersey Avenue, SEWashington, D.C. 20590

Dear Secretary Buttigieg, June 7, 2024

I am writing to urge you to decline the application from the Maine DOT to build an OSW port on Sears Island. I believe that if they were to site the port on the already developed site only a half a mile away on Mack Point, the process would be much smoother and more environmentally in line with addressing Climate Change.

Introducing myself, I live on an island in Penobscot Bay, that had indigenous habitation for thousands of years before contact. All of these islands did. My family are fishermen. My twin 9 year old grandsons already are relying on the wealth of this incredible bay as they develop their own fishing acumen. My son is a boatbuilder in the winter and fishes for lobster and for bait in the warmer months. Their livelihood depends upon the food chain that undeveloped wetland services provide. In addition, I served on the Sears Island Planning Initiative and Joint Use Planning Committee under the Baldacci Administration that resulted in the Consensus Agreement. I have attended the recent MDOT OSWPAG meetings and kept up with the many goings on the island over the years. I believe in developing renewables in a robust fashion but I also believe along with the IPCC that we must provide robust conservation of natural resources if we are to have a planet that can support life going forward.

1. Mack Point is largely owned by Sprague Energy and already operates as a port for wind development besides its other liquid and bulk handling. Sprague Energy has released its own engineering plan that provides ample information about the possibility of providing such a port. MDOT does own the current pier on Mack Point and holds other property adjacent to the Sprague property in Searsport.¹

1. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sprague-energy-unveils-alternative-lower-impact-plan-for-floa ting-offshore-wind-at-its-mack-point-terminal-in-maine-302166305.html

2. Sears Island (Wahsumkik) is an extremely important ecosystem that provides ecological services to the entire Penobscot Bay both the human population that not only recreates, and finds solace on visiting the island, as well as the denizens of the ocean. Situated at the mouth of the Penobscot River, the largest river system in Maine, at the head of Penobscot Bay, the largest embayment in Maine, Sears Island’s undeveloped status has allowed resurgence of significant vernal pools and continues to have mature forested wetlands, open meadows and accessible shoreline. It is a major stopover for migratory birds exhausted by lengthy flights of thousands of miles to the south.
3. Building on Sears Island would require both a new highway and a new rail connection which already exist on Mack Point. Because of that the costs to develop the island will be greater than developing on Mack Point. Mitigation of the three significant vernal pools and forested wetlands will be highly costly and cause unnecessary irreparable harm.
4. There is likely to be additional environmental legal action because the MDOT filed a plan to build a bridge rather than a road when they built the causeway years ago and their plan was to insert a 2-foot culvert. That culvert is not present, which leaves them out of compliance to begin with and causing significant damage to both Stockton Springs on the east side and Searsport harbor on the westerly side.
5. There is a substantial and growing opposition to this project if built on Sears Island, while welcoming OSW development on Mack Point. Just this week, five different local groups met with members of the Federal agencies to talk with them about the upcoming application process. Among them were representatives from Alliance for Sears Island, Protect Wahsumkik, Pen Bay Watch, Sierra Club Maine, and local Searsport citizens.²
6. MDOT has tried to develop the island multiple times in the past and has consistently been thwarted because of the environmental services this largest of undeveloped island on the coast of Maine has to offer which are irreplaceable.
7. While it is laudable that the Department of Transportation is supporting the development of off shore wind, this project if sited on Sears Island will be unlikely to meet your timeline of 18 months for permitting given the significant local opposition.
8. Maine DOT has refused to release their latest reports that were to actually evaluate developing the alternatives to Sears Island. The bee in their bonnet to build on Sears Island is stirring up a hornet’s nest of opposition which if there had been any transparency would certainly have been less caustic. Perhaps your influence will help them release the information which I sincerely believe will prove our point that it is highly possible to build an OSW marshaling port on Mack Point with a lower cost and less environmental damage. Most of this would come out in an EIS evaluation, but it would be much less costly and much quicker if the State would reverse their siting decision and move towards a much more tenable build on an already developed shuttered tank farm site.

2. https://allianceforsearsisland.org/2024/05/23/mdot-plans-new-sears-island-road-and-rail-access-corridor-though-current-conservation-land/

Please choose not to fund the development on Sears Island. I am happy to provide additional references to the above statements, but I expect you have all you need from others. If you would like me to supply those, please let me know.

I appreciate your attention to this matter in the hopes that we can save taxpayer and ratepayer dollars while moving forward with addressing climate change in a meaningful and environmentally sensitive manner.

Respectfully Submitted,

Becky Layton Bartovics

Attached, please find a letter from a southern Maine Birding Leader as an example of the concern of the value of Sears Island to the many people and the ecosystem.

November 5, 2023

To whom it may concern,

We are writing today to urge you to rule out Sears Island as the site of the development of a new port for supporting hypothetical oceanic wind energy development. Proper siting is an intrinsic part of “green” energy development, yet here’s another example of Maine choosing the worst place possible for a project.

Sears Island is a unique and special place, beloved by many, and critical ecologically. In addition to the value of the hundreds of acres of undeveloped, healthy forest and the cultural significance of the location, there is an ecological impact that goes much further than just the count of the acres lost. In fact, we believe the impact of this project could be of regional, and even global, significance.

The idea that the port development would only affect a third of the island is disingenuous and misleading. Industrial development of any portion of the island would impact the entire island, irreversibly affecting the island’s ecology. Light and noise pollution would diminish the sanctity of the island for people and wildlife, vehicular traffic would result in direct mortality of wildlife, especiallyduring amphibian migration, and the increased infrastructure would greatly impact the countless thousands of migratory birds that pass over and through the island every spring and fall.

While breeding and resident birds will lose habitat in virtually any development plan, Sears Island’s value for migratory birds is even more significant. Each spring and especially fall, countless thousands of migratory birds – some traveling from as far as the Arctic and others heading to the Amazon – pass through the island. Due to a combination of meteorological and geographical factors, massive flights of migratory birds funnel to the island, travel through the woods and along the shorelines, and depart at the causeway’s end for the mainland.

In an amazing phenomenon known as a “morning flight” or more technically, morning redetermined migration, birds that have been flying all night are forced by instinct and desperation to head for the mainland. Some combination of the search for food, less competition, fewer predators, and the instinct to compensate for overnight drift forces exhausted migrants to “keep going” even when they may be in such dire straits as to be metabolizing their own muscles.

Under certain conditions, thousands of these migrants will make their way through Sears Island, concentrate at the island-end of the causeway, pause for one last moment before making the jump – hoping not to find a hunting predator as many of these birds will be in no state for evasive maneuvers.

Here, many birders from around the area also concentrate, and on some days, can see more birds while standing in one place than almost anywhere else in the state. In fact, it’s well known as one of the greatest concentrations of migratory birds in the entire Mid-Coast. Is this the right spot for “green power” development?

Imagine for a moment one of these birds, perhaps a favorite colorful warbler, that found itself offshore following a strong cold front, desperately fighting back against the wind over the cold, dark waters of the Gulf of Maine. It avoids the confusion and death associated with a poorly sited wind turbine project, dodges hunting Merlins, Peregrine Falcons, and even gulls, and makes it up the Penobscot Bay and finds some brief respite as the sun rises.

Then, for reasons we are still unable to understand, instinct takes it further, rising with the light of the first glimmers of sun above the horizon and wings its way further inland. It launches from the last trees of Sears Island, but gusty winds and overhead predators keep it low. It then is slammed into the grill of a truck rushing over the causeway to get to work.

We don’t know how many birds could die this way, but we know many will. Others will collide with infrastructure, and under certain conditions, countless others will be exhausted, emaciated, and perhaps fall to their death due to disorientation from the bright lights of the new port – adding to the desperation of birds trying to exit Sears Island each morning.

Of course, with fewer birds, more traffic, and speeding vehicles, few if any birders will be here to document and enjoy the Morning Flight phenomenon. Fewer people buying breakfast in town, filling up their cars, and supporting conservation efforts on what is left of Sears Island. The destination will forever be changed, and it will no longer be welcoming to birders or birds.

Furthermore, this is just a terrible idea on paper, too, not just in avian hypotheticals. While it may be a little cheaper to destroy Sears Island, what happens when rising sea levels impact the causeway? There go the cost savings! Tens to hundreds of millions of dollars will likely be needed to repair it, as opposed.