BELFAST, Maine — April 8, 2014 — The conference room at the Hutchinson Center in Belfast was standing-room only on Tuesday afternoon as more than 200 people came to a public information meeting about a controversial Searsport Harbor dredging project.
While the attendees listened to information presented by the Army Corps of Engineers about the reason for the dredging and where the dredged material will be dumped, there were plenty who remained deeply skeptical about the scope of the project and its necessity in the first place.
“I can’t understand why you can’t figure out by dumping all this material on top of lobster beds, you’re going to bury [the lobster industry],” Rocky Alley of Vinalhaven, the president of the Maine Lobstermen’s Union, told government officials at the meeting. “For you to destroy some of this industry by dumping material is the wrong thing to do.”
If the $12 million project is completed as proposed, the Army Corps would dredge 929,000 cubic yards of material from the harbor and dump it elsewhere in Penobscot Bay. The work would both maintain and greatly expand the federal navigation channel and turning basin in the harbor that leads to Mack Point, the state’s second-busiest industrial port.
Army Corps of Engineers officials told meeting attendees that cargo ships have been getting bigger worldwide, and a lot of the harbors in New England are scrambling to accommodate the deeper drafts. At Mack Point in Searsport, many cargo ships must either arrange to come in at high tide or unload portions of its goods elsewhere to lighten the loads.