DOWN EAST magazine • November 2024
One night this summer, more than a hundred people packed into a school gymnasium in Searsport, the midcoast town in which Sears island lies, to hear about turning Sears Island into a production hub for gigantic floating wind turbines. In February, Governor Janet Mills had announced that the state, which owns Sears Island, had chosen it as the best place for a wind-turbine port and manufacturing plant. The facility would cover 100 acres of the island. In the school gymnasium, it didn’t take long for the shouting to begin. The Campaign to Protect Sears Island is the newest conservation group to oppose Sears Island as the site of the turbine port, joining the Alliance for Sears Island, Upstream Watch, the Islesboro Island Trust, and the Maine chapter of the Sierra Club.