SEARSPORT — The Searsport Select Board is meeting with the Maine Dept. of Transportation this evening, Aug. 13, 5 to 7 p.m., at the Searsport Elementary School Gymnasium at 30 Mortland Road in Searsport.

There is but one item on the agenda, which is a presentation by DOT about the offshore wind port proposal for Sears Island.

There will be followed-up questions from the public, but they will be asked by Select Board members. The town office has been receiving questions and organizing them, consolidating any that duplicate each other. 

“There are a lot of questions,” said Town Manager James Gillway.

The town collected questions and then presented the questions in advance to the DOT, he said.

Searsport’s Select Board had decided more than a month ago to invited the DOT to the town to talk about the state’s plans to construct a wind port on Sears Island.

“We wanted an update,” said Gillway.

The last update was in early 2022, he said.

“We haven’t had a formal presentation since then,” said Gillway. “They are far enough along now so we should be asking for some updates. It is an important endeavor for the state and impacts everyone in our basin.”

The meeting will be two hours in length, and if there are many questions left unanswered, the Select Board will schedule another meeting, he said.

“This is not a public hearing,” he said. “It’s an information sharing opportunity for the DOT and they are going to take advantage of that. We are critically lucky that our Select Board asked for this update. They didn’t have to but they did. We weren’t trying to surprise or blindside anyone.”

The DOT has much left to do with its permit application process, he said. Most recently, the DOT was conducting bat and noise studies to include in the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process.

“The NEPA application is deliberate and they are going to want data-driven information,” he said.

A citizens group, the Campaign to Protect Sears Island, is objecting to how the meeting will be conducted.

“It is extremely disappointing that members of the public will not be able to ask questions at the meeting,” said Chris Buchanan, a Searsport resident and volunteer with the Campaign to Protect Sears Island / wahsumkik, in an Aug. 13 news release. “Instead, the primary proponents of developing Sears Island will have seen and vetted all the questions selected by Town Manager James Gillway, first.  Gillway himself advocated for the development of Sears Island on his day off, urging legislators to pass the Sand Dune Bill, LD 2266, last spring.  This is a classic case of the fox guarding the hen house.”

He said in the release: “In addition, the MDOT is preventing submission of reports by citizen scientists of significant vernal pools within the development area, claiming that they didn’t have permission to be on the property.  That is false.  The consensus agreement gives permission.  They are playing dirty trying to bulldoze or ignore environmental protections, and now they are going to go unquestioned by people for this entire Select Board meeting.”

Buchanan said the Sears Island project does not, “have local support.”

Sears Island, “has been a refuge for people for generations, and is kin to the Penobscot Nation, who call it wahsumkik,” he said.