Alliance for Sears Island

Posted October 18, 2023

Sprague Energy, owner/operator of the industrial port on Mack Point in Searsport, recently released a complete redesign of their proposed Off Shore Wind (OSW) port. The new plan offers substantial operating, environmental, and financial advantages when compared to the first Mack Point plans designed by the Maine Department of Transportation’s (MDOT) engineering firm, Moffat & Nichol.

As part of its program to find a site for building and launching massive floating platforms and wind turbines, MDOT convened the Offshore Wind Port Advisory Group (OSWPAG). It included 19 representatives of State agencies, businesses, and not-for profit organizations. During six OSWPAG meetings held in 2022-23, the participants reviewed and discussed evaluations of three potential OSW port sites: Mack Point and Sears Island, both located in the town of Searsport, and Eastport in Washington County. The latter was determined to be infeasible, and Mack Point and Sears Island became the leading candidate sites. During the process MDOT presented potential port designs by Moffat & Nichol for both locations.

Though no final agreement of the participants was sought by MDOT or reached, three key findings were determined:

• both Mack Point and Sears Island are possible sites for the port;
• construction costs to build the port at either Mack Point or Sears Island will be essentially the same; and
• a port lease fee as an operating cost will be charged to the wind energy developers at both locations.

Mack Point and Sears Island present very different choices:

• build at Mack Point to repurpose a portion of a 100+ year-old fossil fuel industrial port and serve renewable energy generation; or
• destroy at least 75 acres of Sears Island, a completely natural ecosystem that among its many values sequesters a great deal of carbon. {NOTE: it would be nice to have a clickable here to bounce the reader to a full analysis of the natural attributes of Sears Island}

The Alliance for Sears Island was formed to help reach the right decision–enable wind energy production by redeveloping Mack Point.

Sprague Energy’s new plan continues to offer many of the benefits of Moffat & Nichol’s previous Mack Point plans:

• a former industrial area, largely dedicated to receiving and storing fossil fuel products, will be repurposed as a segregated facility to serve renewable offshore wind energy development;
• the entire area necessary for such a facility, 100 acres, will be available;
• railroad lines are already established on Mack Point;
• all current handling and storage uses at the existing port will be served; and
• extremely little natural land will be converted to industrial use.

Advantages of Sprague’s new plan include:

• the amount of marine dredging has been reduced >85%;
• even this amount of dredging can utilize methods and scheduling to reduce or eliminate negative impacts;
• the length of docking for vessels and turbine assemblies has been almost doubled;
• exposure of vessels and turbine assemblies to the “fetch” of southwesterly winds is reduced;
• soil excavation and grading is reduced; and
• alteration of open freshwater wetland area is reduced by >80%.

While cost estimates have not yet been done for the new plan, the reductions in dredging alone are likely to produce significant cost savings. This is particularly notable because construction costs for Moffat & Nichol’s previous plans for Mack Point and Sears Island were determined to be essentially equal.

Developing the OSW port at Mack Point also respects the fully public process of the 2006-7 Sears Island Planning Initiative (SIPI) established by then Governor John Baldacci as a complete stakeholder process. After dozens of meetings, 36 of the participants (including MDOT) voted in favor of the SIPI Consensus Agreement; 4 voted against it. Subsequently, the Agreement became an Executive Order and key decisions based on it were adopted by the Legislature. One of the Agreement’s most important commitments:

“Mack Point shall be given preference as an alternative to port development on Sears Island.”