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Home > Sears Island Initiative > Editorial: Don't foreclose idea of Sears Island cargo port

Editorial Don't foreclose idea of Sears Island cargo port

Friday, November 24, 2006 - Portland Press Herald

Sears Island, which sits just off the mainland in northern Penobscot Bay, is 941 acres of potential.

However, the answer to the question "potential what?" remains very much up in the air despite 30 years of proposals, discussions and arguments.

It's time to settle this issue. The island is at the juncture of rail lines and roads leading to northern and Down East Maine. It is close to the mainland and its northwest corner sits on a deep-water anchorage. All those factors should be as much of an influence on its future as is the fact that it has so far escaped any sort of development.

For nearly a year now, a 42-member Sears Island Study Committee commissioned by Gov. Baldacci has been meeting to attempt to resolve competing views of the island's use.

Karin Tilberg, deputy commissioner of the Department of Conservation and one of the committee's coordinators, says the governor and the Legislature's Transportation Committee will be given the committee's recommendations early next year.

What that report will say, however, remains undetermined. It's not clear at all that those members who want the island left more or less in its natural state can find a way to compromise with those who want a portion of it reserved for transportation uses.

Still, Sears Island belongs to the state, and thus lawmakers and the governor will determine the uses to which it is put.

While preservationists make a strong appeal to block any commercial development on the island, those who want a portion of it reserved for potential use as a port have a more compelling case.

Expanding the economy of northern and eastern Maine has been a major state priority for many years. Sears Island remains the one state-owned asset whose partial development can make a significant and timely contribution toward that goal.

Yes, as some committee members point out, it is possible to expand the cargo port at Mack Point, which sits a short distance away on the mainland in Searsport, to accommodate more of the bulk and breakdown cargo it currently handles.

But Mack Point does not lend itself to being converted to handling cargo containers, as Sears Island does.

Those who say port development on part of the island's territory will ruin the rest of it are wrong. Keeping every option open will produce the best of both worlds for a part of Maine that's crying out for an economic boost.