Augusta. Beleaguered Maine scallopers, groundfishermen and shrimp harvesters are telling the Maine legislature that they face financial ruin if a tiny state public lands agency becomes a political powerhouse by leasing Maine’s commercial fishing grounds out from under them.
The fishermen fear that this could take place if the legislature approves LD 1810, An Act To Implement the Recommendations of the Governor’s Ocean Energy Task Force.
The bill would authorize the Department of Conservation’s Bureau of Parks & Lands to lease nearshore state waters to the wind industry, and loosens the state’s and municipal environmental and conservation laws, rules and ordinances to be used the state waters windfarm application decisionmaking process.
LD 1810′s public hearing took place March 11th. At the hearing, Marine Resources Committee co-Chair Leila Percy told the Utility & Energy Committee, which is considering LD 1810, that to protect marine resource users, the 35 page bill – which was only introduced in committee that week – required careful scrutiny before any final action is taken “I want to speak about the bump in the road, “ Percy told the committee. “I haven’t had a chance to read the bill. bsp;And a lot of my constituents haven’t had a chance to read the bill.” Percy said she had spoken with fishermen at the Seminar on Ocean Windfarms & Maine Fishermen at the 2010 Maine Fishermens Forum l
Percy called for the bill to passed as a “resolve”, then brought before fishing and tourism based coastal communities and before the Marine Resources Committee and the Natural Resources Committee, before final action on a bill in 2011.
“I think having everyone’s voice in a much greater conversation would be helpful” she said.
Other portions of the bill have also come under fire. If passed, the Bureau of Parks and Lands could:
* Offer 2 year “lease options, 3 year predevelopment leases”, 5 year “pre-operation leases” and 30 year operating leases. In addition the Bureau plans to offer 50 year leases of the state’s submerged marine lands to wave and tidal energy interests
LD 1810 would also:
* Allow the banning of commercial fishing within the wind leases using any gear that wind industry insurers deem risky to wind farm’s underwater cables and structures.
* Allow wind companies to use eminent domain on shoreline and inland property owners, to allow the industry to cut powerline and tower rights of way through private land as needed to connect the offshore developers to the national grid.
* Forbid coastal towns from assessing property taxes on wind turbines or related equipment and facilities in the municipalities’ waters that are “below the mean low-water line on waters subject to tidal influence.”
* Forbid coastal resorts from challenging nearshore windfarms for threatening to degrade economically critical, measurable scenic values without penalty or need to compensate other users for lost values.
* Forbid Maine citizens from filing appeals of Maine Department of Environmental Protection windmill project decisions to the Maine Board of Environmental Protection. Would-be appellants would need to go straight to state court.
* Forbid the Maine Board of Environmental Protection from assuming jurisdiction over Maine Department of Protection windmill applications.
Critics say the result of the relaxed and weakened standards could stimulate a wild west style submerged lands rush, with speculators staking exploratory claims over Maine fishing grounds, then selling their leases for a tidy profit to one of the big energy concerns that hope to dominate the wind energy business.
“Who wrote this junk bill?” said fishermen Brian Preney of Boothbay, a member of the state’s Sea Urchin Zone Council. “Would anybody with any civic responsibility propose such a poor piece of legislation? I would like to know who wrote it and who they represent, because it certainly is not me or the people of Maine.”
As a result of the fishing industry’s concerns, political leaders are taking action. Speaker of the House Hannah Pingree has pledged that the bill will be extensively modified.
“I think we’ll scale down the bill significantly”, she reassured one concerned constituent. ”We were disappointed the bill came from the Governor so late in the session with so many big issues to be resolved.”
The state’s heating industry is also up in arms about the bill, which proposes phasing that business out and requiring Mainers to use electricity for heating their homes and workplaces.
Final action on LD 1810 takes place 1pm Thursday March 18th, when the Maine legislature’s Utility and Energy Committee holds its work session on the bill.
