SEARSPORT — A decade ago Maine residents endorsed the building of a cargo port on Sears Island, approving bonds totaling $14.5 million.

The plan was part of a three-pronged strategy designed in the 1970s to launch the state into a growing global marketplace by upgrading port facilities at Searsport, Eastport and Portland.

Then in 1984 the Sierra Club filed the first in a string of lawsuits turning the cargo port into a mirage like those that appear off the coast of this historic seaport town on a hot summer day.

The Sears Island case shows how colliding public interests — economic development vs. the environment — can create a seemingly bottomless pit of conflict.

Port proponents have damned the Sierra Club as a group of elitist outsiders and obstructionists.

In hindsight, it’s clear that the government’s own errors and omissions, beginning with its initial refusal to produce a thorough environmental impact statement, gave the Sierra Club the opportunities it needed to halt the development of the Sears Island cargo port.

The most startling event was last year’s discovery of acres of federally protected wetlands — wetlands that seemingly went unnoticed in 1987 when a $250,000 environmental impact statement was published. The revelation has reopened questions about the project’s future, and galvanized to action other opponents such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The planned closing of Loring Air Force Base hundreds of miles away has become another potential stumbling block. It has reopened another old debate over whether the port should be at nearby Mack Point, site of a federal tank farm that supplies Loring jets.

Today Sears Island is still a place of solitude. Its gravel beaches command sweeping vistas of Penobscot Bay. Its 940 acres of woods and wetlands shelter a variety of plants and animals.

While exhaustive research has yet to uncover any endangered species, or unique scenic wonders, its very existence as a large uninhabited island in Penobscot Bay qualifies it as a “rare and endangered” place, said Kenneth Cline, president of the Maine Group of the Sierra Club.

Price of delay

The battle for the island’s soul has taken a toll on the taxpayer, on residents of Waldo County, on business, and even on the Sierra Club.

In all, $12.1 million has been spent to buy land, build a road, dredge the ocean bottom and otherwise prepare the site, said Robert Elder, director of port development for the Maine Department of Transportation. A causeway connects the island, which used to be accessible only at low tide, to the mainland. Granite riprap marks the beginning of a huge pier.

At the town dump, 2,907 tons of prefabricated steel worth $2.9 million sits in storage.

Lost, says Elder, has been a million tons of shipping traffic, port fees that would have paid off the state’s debt, $1.3 million annually in reduced shipping costs for Maine companies and 137 jobs. That’s according to 1987 projections by Booz-Allen and Hamilton, the Baltimore consultant that advised the state.

Cargo docks on Mack Point, across from Sears Island, once handled nearly all of the dry cargo exported out of Maine ports. Today Searsport’s share of Maine’s dry cargo exports has shrunk to less than half the total, while expanded facilities at Eastport and Portland have increased their share of the state’s growing business.

The existence of the pier operated by the Bangor & Aroostook Railroad at Mack Point is threatened because of its age, said Elder. Its dry cargo business would be shifted to the new pier.

Environmental activists already have lost part of their battle — at least temporarily. The road paved from the mainland to the island’s far side has changed it irrevocably. The island is now a prime target for development no matter what happens — unless the Sierra Club can convince a judge it should be removed.

The Sierra Club has paid $20,000 to its attorney, out of dues from 23,000 New England members, and from donations, said Priscilla Chapman, executive director of the New England Chapter, which services the Maine Group. The attorney, Edward Lawson, has received another $56,000 from the federal government under the Equal Access to Justice Act. He may be able to collect more if he wins more legal victories.

Maine membership in the club has doubled from 1,000 to 2,000 during the Sears Island debate. The state group’s executive committee has voted to support the Sears Island cause, said Chapman.

Sierra Club victories

“The Sierra Club has defended the integrity of the National Environmental Policy Act. We got the 1st Circuit Appeals Court to say NEPA means what it says,” said Lawson.

The Sierra Club convinced federal judges to make the state produce a $250,000 environmental impact statement in 1987, and then to shut down construction permanently in 1989 because the thick tome allegedly assessed the impact inadequately. The club’s relentless legal pressure later helped convince DOT officials they needed to produce a supplemental environmental impact statement at an estimated cost of $300,000.

If the state had done the environmental impact statement before being ordered to by a federal judge the Sierra Club might never have intervened, and the port probably would be operating today, speculates Cline.

The Sierra Club has lost many of its legal arguments in its latest suit including its assertion that Mack Point would make a good alternative site, that the analysis of the economic need for the port was faulty, and that the causeway needed congressional approval. Attorneys still are debating the impact of the industrial development around the port site.

The Sierra Club’s battle has consisted merely of delaying tactics, says Dana Connors, commissioner of the Transportation Department since 1984. “If a party wants to stop a project it is very easy to create delays, and to threaten the project by virtue of lawsuits,” said Connors, defending his agency’s lead role. “I have no doubt in my mind” the Sears Island port will be completed.

As the court battle melts away, other developments are helping keep the debate alive. One of them is the wetlands issue, which has “changed the ballgame,” according to attorney Lawson.

Wetlands “surprise”

The wetlands question arose because of another question raised by the Army Corps of Engineers late in 1987 after the first environmental impact statement had been completed: Did the site have enough land to expand from a two-berth to a six-berth port as planned? Using textbook industry standards, a consultant told DOT it would need to expand the size of the port site from 50 acres to more than 100 acres.

Why weren’t the industry standards consulted before? “That’s a good question,” said Janet Myers, project director for DOT since July.

Lawson claims the finding was an example of the state’s “shooting itself in the foot” in an effort to justify the larger Sears Island site.

Faced with relentless legal pressure from the Sierra Club, the DOT decided it needed to conduct a supplemental environmental impact statement to see if there were freshwater wetlands on the expanded site.

The result of a preliminary investigation last year was a “substantial surprise,” said Myers. Sixty-seven acres of freshwater wetlands were found — almost a third of the expanded site including the original site where no wetlands had been identified in 1987 as subject to federal regulation.

The state will have to get a new permit to fill freshwater wetlands from the Army Corps. Its issuance will depend on the interpretation of a controversial federal policy that there will be “no net loss” of wetlands. About a quarter of Maine is classified as wetlands, one of the highest proportions of any state.

State officials have redesigned the site plan to avoid some of the wetlands. Myers says the state should get the permit because within the context of the midcoastal region the value of the wetlands on Sears Island is “probably not that high.”

Meanwhile, other questions are resurfacing. The old question of whether Mack Point would make a suitable alternative is being asked again by the project’s opponents. Booz-Allen and Hamilton has been called back to update its numbers on the port’s economic prospects.

EPA is back

The Sierra Club is not the only organization that has been agitating against the project. One of the chief skeptics has been the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which has the power to veto a wetlands permit issued by the Army Corps.

“We have even greater concerns today than we did in 1987,” said Elizabeth Higgins of the EPA’s Boston regional office. The new studies have shown that “the island is covered with wetlands,” and “the impacts (of development) have gotten much more significant than they were five years ago.”

The “real focus of the supplemental environmental impact statement is whether or not the project should be built on Sears Island,” said Higgins.

In 1988 Higgins’ office opposed the project, arguing that it would just as well be built at Mack Point with less environmental impact, but it stopped short of blocking it.

Ironically, while wetlands on Sears Island were not an issue in the 1987 environmental impact statement, they were on Mack Point. After the possibility of the Mack Point site was raised, a scientific study determined that 12 percent of the point was wetlands.

“Had we known about the wetlands (on Sears Island) it would have been far less likely that a permit by the Army Corps would have been issued,” Higgins said recently.

“Old data”

Just why the wetlands were not identified in 1987 is a question no one has answered thoroughly. “That’s an excellent question we’re trying to find out ourselves,” said Higgins.

The swampy nature of some of the area, including tall cattails, moss and skunk cabbage, was obvious during a walk in the woods near the site in mid-April.

The Sierra Club sees it as the latest example of DOT putting its desire to start a cargo port on Sears Island before facts and law.

“I think it’s possible someone in MDOT knew there were more wetlands on the island,” said Chapman of the Sierra Club, a charge denied by DOT officials. There were references to “boggy areas” and “poorly drained soils” in an environmental assessment conducted before 1987.

The federal government made the criteria for spotting wetlands much more specific in 1989, but that’s not the only reason for the new appraisal, according to several sources.

Concern about wetlands had been growing since 1985, said David Cowan of Normandeau Associates, the consulting firm that prepared the first environmental impact statement and is working on the supplement. Wetlands have been added to the standard lexicon of important environmental features because of the role they play in fostering plants and wildlife and protecting ground water.

Cowan attributed the “oversight” on Sears Island to the use of “old data” that “wasn’t questioned at any level.”

Myers said too much emphasis was placed on aerial photos and soil maps and not enough on “ground checking.”

Loring connection

A 1987 consultant’s report for the EPA expressed doubts whether a Sears Island port would attract the traffic predicted by the state’s consultant; it said Mack Point pier facilities owned by the B&A Railroad and Sprague Energy were underused, and there was room for expansion on the point for a state pier.

An opposing report produced by Booz-Allen for the state argued that the Sears Island site would be much cheaper to build and operate because of space constraints at crowded Mack Point where there are already two piers and three tank farms. Sears Island would also be safer.

If the wetlands issue wasn’t enough, the closing of Loring Air Force Base ensures the old debate over Mack Point is back on the front burner.

Loring gets much of its jet fuel from a tank farm located on 16 acres owned by the Defense Department and 42 more it leases from the Bangor Investment Co., which also owns Sears Island. The farm also supplies Brunswick Naval Air Station and the Air National Guard at Bangor, said Elder.

There are no plans to close the Searsport terminal “at this point,” said Col. John Anna, commander of the Defense Fuel Region Northeast, but “with the Department of Defense budget shrinking there’s always a chance a terminal will close,” and it would be “misleading to say it would not be a possibility.” The terminal is the farthest north in Anna’s region which stretches from Virginia to Maine, the next closest being at Newport, R.I. It serves a “multitude of uses,” including as a backup for other terminals, he said.