March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Port expansion plan gets DEP green light

EASTPORT — Plans for a major expansion of port facilities in Eastport have been cleared by the Department of Environmental Protection. All that remains now is for city officials to find the $22 million needed to complete the project.

City Manager Mary Follis said Friday that the Sept. 14 approval by DEP Commissioner Dean Marriott marked the end of a permitting process that began 14 months ago. During that time, the city also applied for and received a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers, among others.

According to Follis, the city hopes to obtain about $18 million through a combination of state bonding issues, the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Transportation. That would still leave about $4 million to be raised by the city.

The new facility, which will include a larger deep-water port, warehouses and a marine industrial park, will shift commercial shipping operations from the city’s central business district to a 43-acre site at Estes Head. It will remove trucks from downtown, easing congestion in the city’s center, Follis said.

Designed to accommodate 900-foot ships, the new pier will also be capable of handling two large vessels at a time, Follis added.

“We’re well over our capacity,” Follis said of the present port facility. “They said we wouldn’t be able to handle more than 80,000 tons a year when it was built. Last year, we handled well over 200,000 tons.”

Besides logs from Georgia-Pacific, which are shipped to overseas markets, large slabs of black granite, quarried in Vermont, are trucked to Eastport, then shipped to Japan.

“They find it’s cheaper to truck it to Eastport and ship it from here than out of southern ports,” Follis said. Other products shipped from Eastport include paper and lumber. “Truckers love it here,” Follis said. “They can get in and out of here easily.

“We may not be ideally situated for best trade,” Follis said of Eastport’s remote location, “but we are well-situated for the global market.” Follis believes the port is limited only by its present capacity. The new facility should resolve the problem.


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