Can Maine construct something huge anymore? It’s a query that should be requested much more usually than it’s.
As nearly everybody is aware of, the state has “de-industrialized” over the previous half-century. The mills and manufacturing crops that after offered well-paid jobs for blue collar employees with highschool diplomas are lengthy gone, for essentially the most half.
The tourism {industry} is prospering – with its major late-pandemic drawback an lack of ability to recruit sufficient employees to maintain accommodations and eating places open. However most of us don’t wish to stay in a state that’s solely a tourism/retirement vacation spot – Florida’s already does that.
The actual query is, what are the prospects for doing something to alter this course – which fuels large discontent that’s strongest within the 2nd Congressional District, however exists in all places in Maine?
The Mills administration is quietly selling one enterprise that may very well be a begin. It’s making an attempt to website a potential wind turbine meeting and fabrication website at Searsport, certainly one of three state-owned ports, with the others in reverse ends of the state, Portland and Eastport.
The plant would construct parts for the handfuls, presumably a whole lot of generators that may very well be floated offshore within the Gulf of Maine, the one place that justifies Sen. Angus King’s assured prediction of Maine as “the Saudi Arabia of wind.”
The primary spherical of land-based generators constructed throughout the Baldacci administration – earlier than Paul LePage helped shut issues down – had been constructed with equipment imported from Europe, a few of it floated in to Eastport and Searsport. The Mills administration hopes the subsequent spherical will probably be constructed right here, and why not?
Maine will in all probability by no means have a significant vehicle or truck plant, however may very well be a provider for a burgeoning off-shore wind {industry}, not simply within the Gulf, however all alongside the Atlantic Coast. The Biden administration is sort of severe about selling this type of renewable power.
But earlier than something will get going at Searsport, there’s a frightening historical past that must be understood – the stress between those that wish to work with their palms, do the bodily labor each society requires, and people who see Maine in picture-postcard phrases, as a spot to go to and retire, with no “improvement” to mar the image.
Kermit Lipez, now an lively retired choose of the first Circuit Courtroom of Appeals, however then a younger staffer for Ken Curtis – essentially the most progressive governor Maine has ever had – discerned this dilemma in a profile of Curtis written nearly 50 years in the past.
Of the second group, he mentioned, “These summer season individuals, a lot of them rich and vocal, have energy past their numbers . . . Each time they see their stake threatened – often by {industry} – they will encourage passionate opposition.”
It’s laborious to fault anybody who yearns for a “pristine” surroundings, and, as Lipez acknowledged, the anti-industry viewpoint benefited because the Nineteen Seventies “environmental awakening” came about. But the rich and highly effective ignored the impact of their advocacy on changing “previous industries reminiscent of sneakers and textiles,” to which we are able to now add paper-making.
Tens of hundreds of Mainers, individuals who have lived right here all their lives, have been dispossessed.
That’s why initiatives reminiscent of Searsport are so vital to rebalancing the economic system. Nobody desires polluting industries, however even the non-polluting form are fiercely resisted – as within the NECEC line to Canada, numerous aquaculture proposals alongside the coast (not all of them sound) and, inevitably, increasing port amenities.
Searsport at present strikes about a million tons of freight, in contrast with Eastport at 380,000. In Portland, due to a significant port overhaul, container visitors from the Icelandic agency Eimskip has mushroomed, with 36,000 items moved yearly.
However Eastport has no land-level entry; it’s on the aspect of a cliff. Portland way back discontinued rail entry, and there’s no room to additional increase the prevailing footprint.
Searsport is the place vital progress may happen. It has direct rail entry all the best way to Montreal, doubtlessly serving the massive Midwestern market. There’s Sears Island, a state-owned, 940-acre island governors have repeatedly designated for improvement, reverse the prevailing Mack Level facility the place all of the transport now takes place.
But every time an administration has pushed forward, it has been overwhelmed again, typically by native forces, extra usually by federal companies. Whether or not the present effort will fare any higher is way from clear.
Subsequent week, we’ll look in additional element at Searsport and its potential – and on the forces that will probably be arrayed towards it, as quickly because it progresses from the drafting board to an precise proposal earlier than the general public.
Douglas Rooks, a Maine editor, commentator and reporter since 1984, is the creator of three books. His first, “Statesman: George Mitchell and the Artwork of the Doable,” is now out in paperback. He welcomes remark at [email protected]
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