Soup spills into fish documentary

Ah, Souperwoman. How DO you do it? The videographer arrives from Frisco, the producer from Portsmouth, and the local guy connecting them with Knox County fishermen squires them to Lobsterman Art Johnson for a satisfying go-round in his backyeard amid his still-homeported trap gear. Then to the fish pier, where connector-man checks in with the Western Sea, Plan B, Double Eagle and other boats, all alive with spring-cleaning. He motions them on down to the end: Captain Fill of the ' Sea is willing to talk. They amble down, quick words along the way with the Live Lobster folk and the bait people.

We are all there at end of the fishpier, finally and the good Captain has allotted some time from his busy schedule, sitting relaxed on dock, while his crew works around him, grinning in anticipation of being video'd for national news distribution. The producer begins her low key language dance, working out the psycholinguistics for a good interview.

WHEN IN POPS A VILLAGE SOUP REPORTER

...stepping into the documentary space between the interviewer and her camera shooter, and Capt Fill. "Wait!" she announces, and the camera lowers, pulls back "Me first."

Danny Fill raises an eyebrow at the producer. She shrugs. The reporter demands the Captain's name, inquires as to his business (he tips his head toward the Western Sea, the steel herring seiner rising and falling in the Gulf of Maine swell behind him.) Meanwhile the interviewer, videographer trade glances with the local producer. He clears his throat. The Soupie stops (she is snapping photos of Capt Fill now) and then, recollecting that there ARE other people here, steps back, and Meg the producer restarts to her colloquoy with Danny Fill.
tend to modify the observed, a privilege that is reserved to the documentarians and their subject.

Or should be. Souperwoman stays inside the frame, for all the world as if this were a press conference.

Eventually the interview is over, and as the captain returns to working on his boat, we shift to a lobster smacker, back from transporting lobsters from island fishermen to the mainland. He is interested but declines, politely but firmly, to be interviewed. He does agree to talk off camera and Meg quizzes him about healthcare. The Village Soup reporter again inserts herself into the frame with her own questions and photography. The local producer moves up the pier, considering the next interviewees. They head to the North End Shipyard, where the wooden masts of half a dozen windjammers rake the sky.

Captain Brenda Thomas of the schooner Isaac Evans is nowhere to be found, but the Souper proves useful and finds him the boat's phone #. He calls and reaches her husband, who listens to the proposition of being interviewed. Shortly he walks up through the shipyard. An interview with he, (much Soup insertion, of course). Finally Captain Walker shows, agrees to be interviewed, too, and take camera crew aboard her schooner, clambering across another to reach the Isaac Evans. Only a bit of Soup this time, as the quarters aboard are rather tight for captain and documentary crew AND soup reporter.

Things come to an end. The footage is shot, the words are all in the can. A quick stop to get a release signature from Lobsterman Artie Johnson Local Producer, the the documentary crew a share a round at the Black Bull, and all go their seperate ways. Meg got what she came for. Consumers Union will have its health care story. Village Soup will have its story "the making of a documentary".

And when it duly is published, the local producer reads it and sighs. He's not in the "making of" story at all. A casual reader would think the Souper Reporter had done it all on her ownsome.
He jots her a quick email subject lined with a "Thanks for the coverage of the health care video crew" to fan her ego, but with this message in the body: "...And a hearty middle finger for leaving me entirely out of it."

Childish, but one must observe the proprieties.

Sears Island: Village Soup stirring the pot lately.

While the Press Herald continues to dither over reporting developments in the Sears Island epic. Shlomit Auciello of the Rockland Herald Gazette is digging deep into the Gordian Knots entangling the Sears Island port plan. Oho the Army Corps isn't happy with MDOT. The Maine Legislature isn't happy with Maine DOT, let alone the litigating citizens. Go, Shlomit, go! Her earlier piece laid out the litigation issues.

Where's the Press Herald? If you wanta port-hug ladies and gents, go right ahead and spin it that way. Don't just do a big brotherian blackout on the story, for gosh sakes. BDN is on the ball, and so is MPBN Even Maine Biz has done a creditable job informing about Sears Island.

Sears Island lawsuits - PPH holds out against coverage.

The Press Herald appears to be continuing the non coverage of the Sears Island lawsuits. Maybe if the editors at PPH hold their breaths and stamp their feet, the cases will just...go away.
But they are out there. Here's an update:

SEARS ISLAND UPDATE: 3/01/09

LAWSUITS FILED AGAINST MDOT SEARS ISLAND DIVISION PLAN

Third lawsuit joins two filed earlier against Sears Island Port/Conservation Easement plan

Three petitions for judicial review opposing the partition of the US east coast's biggest unprotected publicly owned island have been filed before three Maine Superior Courts.

The seek to invalidate the Maine Department of Transportation's recently approved "Joint Use Plan" that grants two thirds of the 950 acre island under a perpetual conservation easement to Maine Coast Heritage Trust, but two of them also want the Court to invalidate Public Law 277 as unconstitutionally giving decisionmaking power over Sears Island to a Legislative committee.

A Searsport man has filed a petition in Maine Superior Court in Belfast asking for MaineDOT's Sears Island Conservation Easement to be set aside. The move follows February 19th filing of a similar petition (pdf) by Rockland, Maine activist Ron Huber in Knox County Courthouse, and a February 20th filing (pdf) by Augusta resident Douglas Watts in Kennebec County Superior Court that also asks for the Sears Island Conservation Easement to be rescinded.

"The fact of three Sears Island cases already pending before courts in three different counties should be a warning to potential port investors: STAY AWAY, unless you have deep legal pockets."

All three Mainers have filed Petitions for Review of Final Agency Action. The petitions challenge the lack of environmental review that the state subjected the plan to, even though it was required to under the Maine Sensible Transportation Policy Act and the Maine Site Location of Development Act".

Two of the plaintiffs, Mr Huber and Mr. McLaughlin, also take issue with the constitutionality of Public Law Chapter 277 "An Act Regarding the Management and Use of Sears Island", which granted the Maine Legislature's Transportation Committee executive branch-type power to approve, disapprove or modify Maine DOT's Joint Use Plan partitioning Sears Island.

Huber and McLaughlin say PL 277 violates the Maine Constitution's distribution of powers section and asks that the Court declare the January vote by the Transportation Committee approving MDOT's division of Sears Island unconstitutional and thus invalid.

The plantiffs also vary in their "standing" assertions. Doug Watts describes himself in his petition as "an avid user of the Penobscot River and its tributaries near Sears Island since 1982." and wrote to the court that the conservation easement signed by MDOt and Maine Coast Heritage Trust "will irrevocably harm his ability to continue using and enjoying the Penobscot River and these tributaries as he has done since 1982."

Huber notes that he hikes the island "and snorkles the island's shallows in communion with the natural residents he was charged in 1992 by God Almighty with stewarding and restoring; in particular the brackish water nurseries and diadromous fish shelter habitats surrounding Sears Island in Searsport Harbor, Long Cove and Stockton Harbor. The final agency action he seeks to be reviewed will irrevocably harm his ability to enjoy, use, steward and restore this area."

McLaughlin explained to the court that he "has been an avid user and protector of the natural resources and wild residents of Sears Island and her surrounding estuarine water complex since 1947. Mr McLaughlin hiked the island and swam in the island's shallows with his grandparents and now enjoys those same activities with his own grandchildren. Mr McLaughlin feels a strong
responsibility to ensure our generation passes on the treasure that is Sears
Island as a gift to future generations. The final agency action he seeks to be
reviewed will irrevocably harm his ability to enjoy, use, steward and restore this area"

All three plaintiffs are asking the Court to "rescind" the Jan. 22, 2009 conservation easement until the MDOT has fully complied with the requirements of the Maine Sensible Transportation Policy Act

Watts played an important role in development and passage of the Maine Sensible Transportation Policy Act late 80s and early 90's.

Huber played a role in fending off Governor Angus King's woodchip port plan in 1996, and Governor Baldacci's LNG port plan in 2005.

There are as-yet-confirmed reports that a fourth Mainer will file a petition for review of Maine DOT's Sears Island plan later this week .

For more information:

Ron Huber 207-691-7485 e: coastwatch@gmail.com

Harlan McLaughlin 207-548-9962 pearlsb4swine@bluestreakme.com
Doug Watts 207-622-1003 e: info@dougwatts.com

###

Sears Island - Press Herald strains, but just doesn't get it out.

To shine a light, is to cast a shadow, it is said. Maybe it is a reluctance to illuminate those shadows that has kept the Portland Press Herald clinging so determinedly to its course of refusing to recognize public dissent to Governor Baldacci's Sears Island plan.

Even when it is playing out in the courts, the Maine Sunday Telegram is as silent as if it had lost its telegraphic code key that it taps out the news with. The Press Herald's voice is quite stopped up too, when it comes to news of those that would protect Wasumkeag , the beautiful wild island estuary complex.

Some of the editors and reporters there in the PPH/MST have grown old with their Sierran friends. Are Clubbers, themselves.

Questioning the partition of Sears Island? Why, that would be questioning the decision, of local Club leader Joan Saxe. One simply doesn't insult the honor, the decency and judgement of this Cape Elizabeth doyenne over the accusations of some wild riff raff from Rockland or worse.. Not in the pages of the Prtland Press Herald.

For it was Joan who sat through the many meetings of the Sears Island Joint Use Planning Committee as it wended its way through first its Joint use Plan, and then the line by line details of the perpetual conservation easement at meeting places in Searsport and occasionally in Augusta.

But it was a silent sitting, as Saxe peacefully dozed away the dreary hours of negotiations.

Meanwhile her henchperson Becky Bartovics -putatively representing the Penobscot Bay Alliance, but in actuality, given there IS no such Alliance, beyond a mailing list of donors and an executive director who occasionally pens the odd letter to an agency; in actuality, I say, Becky was effectively and hence inappropriately the voice of both her Alliance and the Sierra Club at the MDOT's Joint Use meetings. - while never consulting the thousands of members in the Maine Chapter of the Sierra Club -not once - during the years of negotiations with the MDOT's and industry's skilled negotiators.

Too much work. Too expensive, the Leadership intoned. Why harass Club members over a minor (MINOR?) thing like pi**ing on three decades of hard-fought Sierra Club precedents keeping the wild island whole and safe.

Like freely surrendering to the industrial hordes hundreds of acres of forest, meadow, cliffs, streams, beach, cobble & eelgrass.? Whatsa big deal?

Listen: do you hear that tiny hiss at the edge of hearing? It's the sounds of the late great John Muir, spinning, spinning, spinning in his grave.

Media Mutt marks all the right trees in thickets of Maine journalism

The Media Mutt aka Al Diamon,makes no bones about savaging those in maine journalism worthy of the favor.

The Mutt and Perc Sane aka Mike Brown - the only media watchers paying attention to media humbug in the dirigo state

Maine Things semi-Considers Sears Island

"Sears Island's Future May Finally Be Decided!"

The breathless October 15, 2008 announcement by Maine Things Consider's AJ Higgins of a "truce" between combatants over the fate of wild Sears Island made it sound as though a win-win solution were at hand. It just ain't so, AJ.

But how would he know? When he spotted members of Fair Play for Sears Island heading in his direction out in the hallway at the end of MDOT's 45 minute presentation & Q&A session with the Maine Legislature's Transportation Committee, A.J. literally ran back into the hearing room, where another issue was being examined by the committee, to avoid having to point his recorder's microphone at them.

That's right, Higgins never troubled to ask any of the no port no way people from Fair Play For Sears Island who were so in evidence at the committee room for their point of view

Instead he tut tuts along with Committee chair Dennis Damon that only the compromiser groups are capable of a "reasonable discussion". Why ask the unreasonable opposition, with their sinister black coffin in the meeting room doorway, and their large color photographs of the port sacrifice zone (how Damon winced at that word "sacrifice"!). Why ask them anything at all?

What sort of unreasonable things might Maine Things Considered's reporter have heard?

They might have told him things that would've conflicted with the win-win greasy skid-ness of AJ's spin of inevitable virtuous compromise.

He might have heard how the "Joint Use" plan really only engages in planning for a "Single Use" - the dimensions and operations of the entertainment/education complex that the "environmentalists" want to build in the 'protected' north end of Sears Island - while carrying out zero planning for overseeing and managing the other Joint Use: industrial development of those 300+ acres of irreplaceable natural Maine that cover the supposedly 'port-appropriate' side of Sears Island.

Read Summary of JUPC Report Page 1._ Page 2

No planning there. Rather, the plan is not to plan. Only to react when Johnny ContainerportSeed comes whistling into town.

Had he quizzed opponents of the JUPC plan, AJ Higgins might have heard about the nearly two decade old campaign to re-open the estuarine waterway between the island and the mainland, blocked since the late 80s by a solid fill causeway that isolates the twin ecosystems of waterbodies Stockton Harbor and Searsport Harbor from each other.

A campaign dropped by Sierra Club and by former Earth First! activist Jim Freeman like an overripe haddock. MDOT wants piercing the Sears Island causeway "off the table"? Fine. Into the dustbin of ecological history it goes.

Higgins might have heard how smolting atlantic salmon take refuge in the brackish water shoal off Sears Island as these young freshwater fish adjust to their first encounter with salt water. Ditto for sturgeon. You know, that seagrassy shoal? The one that nourishes Penobscot Bay's juvenile cod and other groundfishes in their first months of life before heading downbay? The shoal that would be dredged out to ease the way in for container ships?

Yeah that one. Indeed Mother Nature is being asked to give up much more than the port wannabes and the easement wannabes combined.

But the moderate green enviros of JUPC are hard pressed to identify any compromises that they forced port developers to make. These former supporters natural island supporters have literally given away the island store. For a fistful of....what?

Jim Freeman the once-bad boy of Maine Earth First!, once indomitable defender of Sacred Wassumkeag against any and all port ventures there; the bane of port wannabe Angus King and Baldacci1, Jimmy seems to have made his peace with the Porties and their supporting cast of politicos like Senator-who-would-be-governor Dennis Damon

It would be a "clean container port" Jim once assured me at an NFN-GOM meeting in Augusta. Besides, he says optimistically, seemingly forgetting that good Green pledge of considering the effect of one's actions on those up to seven generations in the future, "who knows what could happen in twenty years anyway" (mp3)

"No ones really enthralled about having a port there." he told a reporter, ignoring the shipping and rail interests that have surrounded him for two years at every meeting of the Sears Island Joint Use Planning Committee. All of them, the railroaders, the global traders, the shipping industrialists, are enthralled to the gills about having a port there; something Mr. Freeman has made much more likely with his participation in/validation of MDOT's little consensus group.

He consensed anyway with MDOT Commissioner Cole that a port would be "appropriate" on Sears Island.

Freeman consensed that no environmental review under applicable state and federal laws of the agency's plan of making Sears Island available to containerport builders was needed.

Ditto that the mile long causeway to the island from the Mainland must not be pierced, lest the railroad industry be forced to shell out big bucks for a bridge that would allow upper Penobscot Bay's ecosystem to return to its clam-rich, cod-rich, sturgeon and salmon-rich recent past. Off the table THAT notion went. Big industry's stinginess with Angus King similarly killed his woodchip port proposal.

Sierra Club. Where to start?

In 1985, the club prosecuted two federal lawsuits here and here to protect Sears Island through the federal courts. The Club filed more cases in 1989 and 1990 and 1992
In 1995 Sierra Club helped fight off the 27 acre 1995 port proposal - Helped fight off the LNG follies of 2004, This began in 2005, when Sierra Club let itself be talked into sacrificing ten times as much of Sears Island - 330 acres - the whole western third of the island - to the port wannabes.

Let us clarify: the Sierra Club's Maine leadership did. For the tiny top of the Maine Chapter pyramid decided not to poll its membership. Treacherously, they lied to port opponents' repeated importunings: Sure we'll ask our members, Ken Cline said, from his perch as Conservation Chair of the Maine Chapter of the Club. From which perch he helped stop the porthuggers in their tracks a decade ago.

But (wink wink) he didn't. The legal eagle has become an Administration parrot. He and of-a-feather Maine chapter longtimer Joan Saxe opted to go with the Baldacci flow. Studiously ignoring those industrialists waiting anxiously in the wings for that western shore to be handed them.

Then there's the truly big winner - Maine Coast Heritage Trust - which ould get the north and eastern portions of the island - 600+acres of priceless island public land - given to it free. In perpetuity!

But what a quid pro quo these earth defenders agreed to:

Sierra Club, too, meekly agreed with MDOT's very first demand that the island causeway be pierced & bridged, (like other causeways on the Maine coast), unblocking critical nutrient-rich water flows between Stockton Harbor, Searsport Harbor, Penobcot River and Penobscot Bay. The formerly rich shellfish abundance of these waters could be restored.

Maine DOT port wannabes grumped that a bridge that could support heavy rail traffic would cost too much. Bay ecology be damned! The once rich clam beds of Stockton Harbor are to be literally priced out of existence.

AJ? Maybe you were just in a hurry to go cover the Callahan Mine cleanup story. But always try to do that 'fair and blanced' thing, will ya?

Portland Press Herald - failing the Sears Island debate

Portland Press Herald - failing the Sears Island debate
It is with a sense of wonder that one observes the great pains the Portland Press Herald takes to avoid news coverage or even block commentary on the most important coastal issue that Maine has faced in years - the push to industrialize Sears Island at the head of Penobscot Bay.

The natural island - fallow since the dawn of the twentieth century, and recolonized by a remarkable and unique mix of Maine's coastal species; a natural Noah's Ark, if you will - is flanked on the western side by a large eelgrass-dotted shoal.

Here, the brackish waters created by the meeting of fresh river water with salt bay water host the Bay's great fish nursery, as diverse it its makeup as the island above. Here young salmon have their first encounter with salt water, learn to school and head oceanward. Here myriads of the small shrimp Pandalus Montagui prowl the muddy bayfloor, and are greedily seized upon by juveniles of cod, haddock, flounder, themselves heeding the Call of the wild Gulf of Maine.

But this is well known to the Press Herald's Dieter Bradury; he covered the successful fight to block the Angus King port plan for Sears Island, which was withdrawn by King once it was shown the impacts to marnie and upland wildlife would be too severe to mitigate.

Hey Deets! Where are you? Dieter is surely aware of the Joint Use Plan that the Baldacci Administration is pressing forward on. The one that would legislatively zone the western side of the island for a marine container port that would of necessity torpedo this Noah's Ark; the roar and thunder and diesel stench of the container port would drive most wildlife from the island; it would certainly reduce the revenue of the resorts on the nearby coast; the nursery shoal would largely disappear, to the great loss of the Bay's marine ecol9ogy and its fishermen.

But he is silent. As are all Portland Press Herald reporters and the rest of the Blethenian newspapers. Bradbury's last coverage, comically enough, was fawning coverage of a December 07 award & tribute to Sierra Club's Joan Saxe as "Environmental Hero" for, among other things, saving Sears Island from Angus King's machinations. (Joan is presently the Sierra Club point person in selling out the island to the Baldacci port proponents.)


But it's not only Dieter. John Richardson, environment reoprter for PPH is likewise silent.

The Press Herald's editorial staff has apparently decided that public dissent with the Baldacci administration on the future of the island is...too heretical to be allowed to grace their letters section or their op ed page. The perfidy of the Maine Chapter of the Sierra Club in supporting the Baldacci plan is likewise not a topic that the Press Herald considers appropriate. Their total editorial section publications on Sears Island for the last three years?

Sears Island report a sensible compromise May 20, 2007
and
Don't foreclose idea of Sears Island cargo port November 24, 2006

Why? How could this mighty newspaper kowtow so deeply to the gods of commerce that they selfcensor with such vigor on this topic?

Is it even smarmier? Are certain editors themselves Sierra Club members, circling the wagons against the besmirching of the Club's honor?

What?