After more than a year’s work, the outline of a plan for Sears Island is scheduled to be presented today to the community members, environmentalists, marine resource advocates and government officials who have contributed to its making. The future of the island has been in dispute for decades, and mistrust on occasion has grown faster than local eelgrass, but this initial agreement gives all sides a way to test each other’s willingness to find an honest compromise.

The Sears Island Planning Initiative is a broad framework for what will be included on the 941-acre island and, as important, what won’t. Education, recreation, conservation and transportation are in, all else is restricted, and that would mean a 600-acre conservation easement for the first three, and a reserve of 341 acres closest to nearby Mack Point for potential port development. Development of a port could occur, assuming it qualified for various permits, only if Mack Point could be shown inadequate for future marine transportation demand. It’s a tradeoff between competing but long co-existing visions of Maine – a bucolic place of natural beauty and a hardworking coast with a history of developed waterfronts.

Maine traditionally has had room for both, though rarely in such proximity and diametric opposition as the Sears Island pact describes. If the contributors can keep working together, they will eventually produce a remarkable document that could also answer questions about these kinds of conflicts elsewhere.

Approval of the initiative would begin the process of working out details. It calls for a 15-member group to draw up potential port plans, boundaries within the island and transportation and utility corridors needed for port development, among other issues. As difficult as crafting the current framework has been, the more serious test – of intention, willingness to appreciate the position of the opposing side and good faith – will play out with the detailed plan. Without signatures to the framework, participants won’t know what the possibilities are.

The way forward isn’t easy. Both conservationists and port supporters believe that their positions eventually will be realized, that Mack Point will expand as a port and Sears Island will become entirely conserved, or that a substantial container port will be located and expanded on a part of the island set aside for it. Their inclinations should be expected. The question is whether they are willing to risk the idea of what they want in order to discover whether they could actually obtain something like it.

For conservationists, that would be the assurance that land owned by the Department of Transportation becomes protected, with an education center established to promote understanding of the region. For port backers, it is the possibility of creating what they have long wanted and what they have no chance of building under current conditions.

The Sears Island Planning Initiative allows for 12 months to work out the details. It is a timeframe that will be met only if each participant begins with determination to see that all parts of the agreement succeed. That process begins today by signing the document.