By Sara Anne Donnelly
Photos by Ryan David Brown
From our November 2024 issue
Sears Island is a wooded, egg-shaped piece of land in Penobscot Bay, about the size of New York City’s Central Park. Connected to the mainland via causeway, the island could provide commercial access to one of Maine’s few deepwater harbors, but it remains, improbably, uninhabited and undeveloped. For more than half a century, various efforts to capitalize on the plum location — plans for an aluminum smelter, a coal-fired power plant, a liquified-natural-gas terminal, a nuclear power plant, a cargo port — have all fizzled out. The island’s apparent knack for staying wild has left it the East Coast’s largest car-accessible island still undeveloped — an enduring sanctuary for plants and animals and an enduring target of industrial interests. One night this summer, more than a hundred people packed into a school gymnasium in Searsport, the midcoast town in which the island lies, to hear about the latest idea: turning Sears Island into a production hub for gigantic floating wind turbines.
In February, Governor Janet Mills had announced that the state, which owns Sears Island, had chosen it as the best place for a wind-turbine port and manufacturing plant. The facility would cover 100 acres, or about 10 percent of the island. In the school gymnasium, it didn’t take long for the shouting to begin. Matthew Burns, executive director of the Maine Port Authority, a state agency that, along with the Maine Department of Transportation, is spearheading the project, kicked off proceedings by presenting a status update. After that, Burns would answer some 75 questions submitted in advance by the public. In-person questions and comments wouldn’t be taken.
“You don’t want to answer our questions, do you?” someone shouted, interrupting Burns as he detailed the millions of dollars in federal and state funding available for such a project. “You’re just going to ramble on. You want to shove this down our throats!”
“Folks, this is a presentation,” Searsport town manager James Gillway interjected, in an effort to maintain order. “Let’s get through that and get to the questions.”
A pause. Burns continued, outlining some bureaucratic niceties: permit applications should be filed in quarter three of 2024; a draft environmental-impact statement should be published in quarter two of 2025. If everything stayed on schedule, construction would commence in quarter one of 2027 and run two and a half years.
“What most people are keen to listen to is how you defend putting it on Sears Island,” someone else piped up. “How do you defend that? That’s what people want to know.”
Another pause. Gillway again: “Can we go on?”
Burns returned to his planned remarks, explaining that the federal grant application for the project includes dedicated funding for workforce development and tax benefits, resources for police and fire departments, and other benefits for the local community.
“Thank you, Wassumkeag, for all you have brought to us!” one woman called out, invoking the island’s Penobscot name. “I am so sorry we are disrespecting you! Thank you for being a part of the spirit of the land! Thank you for protecting so many birds! Thank you for protecting so many plants! Thank you for protecting so many frogs! Thank you, Wassumkeag! Thank you, Wassumkeag! Thank you, Wassumkeag!”
Gillway later told me that person ran off down the hallway when he got up to escort her out. “The majority of the people I’ve spoken to support offshore wind,” he said. “They just don’t agree on where it should be.”
Some past projects proposed for Sears Island never made it out of the permitting phase because of problems with the site — in the case of the nuclear plant, in the 1970s, a fault line under the island made it too risky a location. Other projects have been challenged in court. In the 1990s, the plan for a cargo port was ensnared for years in federal lawsuits brought by the Maine chapter of the Sierra Club, based on the anticipated harm to protected wetlands and eelgrass. In 2009, after protracted negotiations between state officials, conservationists, community representatives, and business owners, almost two-thirds of the island was put into perpetual conservation easement, with the remaining area left under the supervision of the Maine Department of Transportation for possible future development. Maine’s then-governor John Baldacci viewed the compromise as a way to finally put the decades-long tug-of-war over Sears Island to bed. “If politics truly is the art of the possible, then what happened on Sears Island represents government’s potential to bridge seemingly unbridgeable divides,” this magazine opined at the time. The issue indeed seemed settled.
Then, in 2021, along came the suggestion of a wind-turbine port.
Broadly speaking, there are three kinds of wind turbines that produce clean energy: onshore turbines erected on terra firma, offshore turbines with towers affixed to the seafloor in waters up to 200 feet deep, and deepwater turbines mounted on floating foundations anchored to the seabed with mooring lines. Deepwater turbines can produce the most electricity per turbine, thanks to the open ocean’s stronger, more consistent winds, and according to the U.S. Department of Energy, about two-thirds of the country’s offshore wind potential is located in parts of the ocean too deep for towers. But that technology is new, and the world only has a few floating wind farms, none of which are in the U.S. If waters farther offshore can be tapped, the Department of Energy estimates they’d provide 2.8 terawatts of power per year, more than double the country’s electricity consumption.
The Gulf of Maine has great potential for deepwater wind power, and Sears Island might provide the best base for harnessing it. Maine has only two other ports — Portland and Eastport — where floating turbines as tall as the Washington Monument, on semi-submersible concrete platforms as wide as football fields with drafts as deep as 40 feet, could possibly be built, assembled, maintained, and towed out to sea by tugboats. But Portland Harbor was ruled out as too congested for such an undertaking, while Eastport was stymied by granite shoreline that would complicate building onshore infrastructure. That left just Searsport.
“There’s almost nowhere in New England that you can site a port like this, and what’s clear to us is that if we don’t build a floating offshore wind port, then we won’t have floating offshore wind,” says Jack Shapiro, climate and clean-energy director at the Natural Resources Council of Maine, which, along with Maine Audubon, the Maine Labor Climate Council, Maine Youth for Climate Justice, and Maine Conservation Voters, supports putting a wind-turbine port on Sears Island if the state continues to find that it’s the best available site. Without floating offshore wind turbines, Shapiro thinks it will be impossible for Maine to meet its climate goal of using only renewable sources of electricity by 2050, a target set by the legislature five years ago. “If you care about climate,” he says, “then you need to support a port being constructed.”
The Campaign to Protect Sears Island is the newest conservation group to oppose Sears Island as the site of the turbine port, joining the Alliance for Sears Island, Upstream Watch, the Islesboro Island Trust, and the Maine chapter of the Sierra Club. The group formed last spring to fight a bill that would allow for the removal of a small sand dune to help make way for port construction. Although the bill eventually passed, it was only with an amendment added to sway reluctant legislators who earmarked $1 million to conserve sand dunes elsewhere on the island and around the state. The Campaign to Protect Sears Island and its allies argue that building a turbine port — which would involve clear-cutting woods, paving over large areas, running utilities, and other large-scale construction — would damage wetlands and vernal pools and harm migratory birds and other wildlife. They believe the ecological damage makes the project a violation of the 2009 truce that allowed for development here. “The undeveloped island is sacred and it’s invaluable to people and nature in and of itself, and all groups should be prioritizing development of offshore wind on previously industrialized properties,” says Chris Buchanan, a Searsport carpenter who helped found the Campaign to Protect Sears Island.
Many opponents of the Sears Island port, including Buchanan, think that Mack Point, directly across the bay, presents an obvious and preferable alternative. They argue that Mack Point, owned by Sprague Energy and home to a large oil and natural-gas terminal, already has much of the infrastructure a turbine port needs, including rail service and road access, and has already been industrialized past the point of retaining much ecological value. Plus, Sprague Energy is a willing partner, publicly courting the state to consider the property for the project.
The state maintains that it’s still considering Mack Point as an alternative, but the Maine Department of Transportation is set to submit the first federal permits to build a port on Sears Island this month, which will trigger a slew of required research into environmental and economic impacts on Sears and alternative sites, to prove that Sears is the least environmentally damaging option. If those studies support the idea that Sears Island is the best spot, the state seems unlikely to change course. Officials claim Mack Point doesn’t have the land and layout for simultaneous turbine construction, assembly, and launch, would require spending millions of dollars on dredging and ocean fill, and would force the state to lease land from Sprague, an additional expense of almost $300 million over a 50-year term, based on current market rates. (Buchanan and others have called for the release of an analysis of alternatives, arguing that the state’s projections rely on outdated data. That report is due out this fall.)
When Governor Mills announced Sears Island as the intended site for the turbine port earlier this year, she struck an air of finality. “This was not an easy decision, nor is it one that I made lightly,” she said in a statement. “I take these changes seriously, and I recognize their impact. However, in weighing the costs and benefits of both locations, I cannot escape the conclusion that the parcel on Sears Island fundamentally makes the most sense and provides us with the best opportunity to responsibly advance offshore wind in Maine.”
Still, opponents of the project are carrying on. The week before the contentious meeting at the school gymnasium, the Campaign to Protect Sears Island hosted a party on the island. About 50 people attended. The Papa’s Smokehouse food truck served barbecue. A local alt-country band, the Midnight Riders, provided twangy entertainment. Various conservation groups opposed to developing the island set up tables with handouts and sign-up sheets. On one of those tables, T-shirts for sale were printed with the text, “When is an island preserve not an island preserve? When you can say it’s fighting climate change.” A piece of driftwood, beside a handwritten note reading “Wahsumkik Fungal Diversity Survey,” displayed an array of half a dozen types of mushrooms foraged from the island’s undisturbed habitats.
Some of the attendees were graying veterans of bygone battles between conservationists and would-be developers of Sears Island, while others, like Buchanan, were new to the fight. As dark clouds that had loomed all day broke into a drizzle, Buchanan stood at the microphone. “They’ve wanted to develop the island for decades, and this is something we’re going to be fighting for a long time,” he said, and the crowd hooted and cheered. “We’re going to be in it for the long haul.”
But unlike previous clashes over the fate of the island, the activist community this time is divided. According to Buchanan, some are “willing to put their bodies in the way” of construction vehicles, but other environmentally minded groups believe developing a wind-turbine port is too important an opportunity to pass up.
Views of already industrialized Mack Point (left) and GAC Chemical Corporation (right) which flank either side of the Sears Island causeway.
“This is a chance to really rebuild whole communities, but with the 21st-century clean-energy technology that we so desperately need on climate,” says Francis Eanes, executive director of the Maine Labor Climate Council (the group is agnostic on the actual site, supporting a wind-turbine port on either Sears Island or Mack Point). The Maine Department of Transportation expects the two-year construction of the port will provide 1,300 construction jobs, with 350 permanent jobs once the port is operational.
The state does not need the approval of the town in order to start building on Sears Island, says Gillway, the town manager, and it appears to be moving full speed ahead. In August, the governor’s office announced that Maine is set to host the nation’s first floating test array, in waters 30 miles southwest of Portland recently leased to the state by the federal government. The test array will be operated by Boston-based Diamond Offshore Winds, a subsidiary of Mitsubishi Corporation, using a patented model of floating turbines developed over the course of a decade by the University of Maine. There is no target date yet for the array’s deployment, largely because the facility that would build these trailblazing turbines, in Searsport, doesn’t exist yet.
The morning after the party on Sears Island, I took a walk with Chris Buchanan, his wife, Shannon, and their six-month-old son, Sawyer, who dangled off Buchanan’s chest in a BabyBjörn, gumming the strap and watching me with big brown eyes. We trudged over the stretch of Sears Island’s rocky shoreline where the wind-turbine port would be located. The bay was placid under a clear sky. Herons and bald eagles flew close overhead. At the far end of the beach, a half-finished granite jetty reached into Penobscot Bay, a relic of the cargo port that never came to fruition. Across the water, the loading dock at Mack Point emitted a steady whirring sound, the kind of noise activists worry will be doubly loud if a turbine facility winds up on Sears Island, one of the many ways they imagine a 24-hour industrial facility will degrade the serenity of the place. “Sears Island is like this alternative source of grounding that is unable to be found anywhere else,” Buchanan said. “The entire mindset needs to be away from these places being sacrifice zones.”
The former coordinator of Stop the East–West Corridor, Buchanan helped kill a proposal to build a highway between Calais and Coburn Gore back in 2014, arguing the corridor would destroy the natural beauty of the state and restrict public access to wild areas. A couple of years later, he moved to Searsport, where Shannon’s family has lived for five generations. “We’re going to do a little bit of bushwhacking, I hope you don’t mind,” he said that morning, pointing to an overgrown ravine leading away from the beach and up into the woods. “It’s a magical place, and I feel like if you don’t head in, you don’t get to see how really special it is.”
Sawyer gamely swayed as Buchanan hoisted himself up with help from the trunk of a birch bowing out over the berm and led the way into the forest. Soon, the beach disappeared and the whirring from Mack Point was replaced by warbler songs. The air was moist and cool as we moved among the trees and thick brush. “You get this sense here of nature being bigger than you,” Buchanan said, stopping at the edge of a fern meadow lit up a brilliant green in the morning sun. The pause made Sawyer fuss. Shannon handed Buchanan a bottle. “I’m really confident thatoffshore wind and renewable-energy technologies can happen in an efficient way without bulldozing these places we need to support.”
But what if Mack Point really isn’t a viable alternative? What if it comes down to having a port on Sears Island or having no port at all? Is there anything that would convince him that developing this wild island is worth it?
Buchanan and his wife exchanged a knowing look.
“No,” Buchanan said, pressing farther into the woods. “There’s not.”
In October, after the print version of this story went to press, the state missed out on a $456 million federal grant that would have helped fund a Sears Island wind port. State officials say that this development is a setback but that they continue to pursue other sources of funding.
