Around Town 12/8/22: Develop Sears Island or Mack Point? Public Meeting Next Week

Producer/Host: Amy Browne

This week: Sears Island is an uninhabited 940 acre island off the coast of Searsport that has been eyed by developers for various projects over the years.
The latest threat, to at least part of the island, is the potential that a facility for building and launching offshore wind turbines may be built there.

Friends of Sears Island, Islesboro Islands Trust, and the Maine Chapter of the Sierra club have all spoken out against the site location, instead urging that the facility be built on nearby Mack Point, which is already extensively developed. Theoretically, Mack Point and also Eastport are being considered as possible locations along with Sears Island, but many worry that Sears Island is what the state is really focusing on.

Next Monday morning there will be a meeting of the state’s task force that will be making recommendations about the site location, and advocates for protecting the island are urging the public to listen in. You can read the agenda and register for the zoom meeting here

Earlier this week we checked in with Rolf Olsen, Vice President of the Board for Friends of Sears Island for all the details

About the host:
Amy Browne started out at WERU as a volunteer news & public affairs producer in 2000, co-hosting/co-producing RadioActive with Meredith DeFrancesco. She joined the team of Voices producers a few years later, and has been WERU’s News & Public Affairs Manager since January, 2006. In addition to RadioActive, Voices, Maine Currents and Maine: The Way Life Could Be, Amy also produced and hosted the WERU News Report for several years. She has produced segments for national programs including Free Speech Radio News, This Way Out, Making Contact, Workers Independent News, Pacifica PeaceWatch, and Live Wire News, and has contributed to Democracy Now and the WBAI News Report. She is the recipient of the 2014 Excellence in Environmental Journalism Award from the Sierra Club of Maine, and Maine Association of Broadcasters awards for her work in 2017 and 2021.