Alliance for Sears Island

Join Us!!!
Monday, March 18
11 a.m.
Cross Building
111 Sewall St, Augusta, Maine
Room 216

March 14, The Maine Legislature agreed to consider the Governor’s bill “An Act Regarding Offshore Wind Terminals Located in Coastal Sand Dune Systems” (https://legislature.maine.gov/billtracker/#Paper/HP1456?legislature=131). The bill evades current state law regarding sand dunes in order to authorize the Maine Department of Environmental Protection to grant a permit to an offshore wind terminal located in an ecologically important coastal sand dune system.

If this revision passes the proposed Sears Island offshore wind manufacturing, assembling and launching facility would entirely destroy a 2023-mapped sand dune near the Jetty and threaten another sand dune just north of the proposed facility.

The Committee on Environment and Natural Resources (ENR) scheduled a hearing on this bill for Monday, March 18, at 11 a.m. The ENR Committee typically meets in Room 216 of the Cross Building, 111 Sewall St, Augusta, Maine.

Please join the Alliance for Sears Island and allies in Augusta at this hearing to provide testimony. Evading laws that protect the environment will not resolve the climate crisis.

According to Maine Geological Survey, cooperating with the Maine Coastal Program and NOAA, both of these Sears Island sand dune areas “… can reasonably be expected to become part of a coastal wetland in the next 100 years.” In addition, coastal sand dune systems provide important habitat for both adjacent upland and marine species.

Not only would development of the proposed offshore wind facility on Sears Island eradicate 75 acres of carbon sequestering forest and wetlands and 25 acres of living marine habitat, in the process releasing methane from the acres of wetlands to be excavated, passage of this bill would cause additional environmental harm by destroying a sand dune and threatening another.

There are no coastal sand dunes on Mack Point. Its repurposing from fossil fuels uses to the windport will have almost no negative impact on climate or the environment, and development there will not require removal of carbon sequestering vegetation, soils and wetlands.