To anyone who does not know better-which means most of Maine’s mainland residents, and lawmakers in Augusta-the waters of the state of Maine look like a featureless ocean out to the three mile limit and beyond into federal waters. Of course, the three-mile limit balloons out around Maine’s offshore islands, so the state’s territorial limits actually extend up to 22 miles out from the mainland around such islands as Criehaven, Matinicus and Monhegan. As far as most of the state’s policy makers are concerned, these are all state waters-and the bottom are state lands-held in common for all of us under public trust doctrines administered by Maine’s designated stewards such as the Department of Marine Resources and the Bureau of Public Lands.
But try telling that to any lobsterman anywhere on the coast of Maine. You could start out by saying that legally anyone who wants to set lobster gear anywhere in the waters of the state of Maine has access to these “commons” as long as they have a lobster license. Then you can go on to say-legally and correctly-that the state can lease the bottom of this common land to anyone it ultimately decides is in the state’s interest to do so.
There is, of course, a big disconnect between law and reality.
And driving straight into the center of this vast area of what is legally correct and what is actually true, come the Governor’s Ocean Energy Task Force recommendations.
What most lobstermen, who paid any attention to the public hearings to identify ocean energy demonstration sites, gathered from the testimony of state officials is that any designated demonstration sites would be small, temporary (up to five years) and non-commercial. That’s true; three small sites (roughly one mile by two miles) have been designated, including the University of Maine’s research site off the southern shore of Monhegan, to test gear that will have to be removed within five years. Many fishermen who spoke at the hearings were initially supportive of these areas-which is quite unusual among those who almost always reflexively oppose any sort of development in state waters.
But what no one said and what no one actually knew at the time of the hearings is that the final recommendations to the governor from the Ocean Energy Task Force included a recommendation that the state develop a process for leasing state waters to offshore commercial energy developers. The state Legislature will shortly be considering draft legislation to establish an energy-leasing program at the Bureau of Public Lands. When the Maine Lobstermen’s Association (MLA) got wind of this, they cried foul.
Augusta, we have a problem.
Offshore wind development could provide enormous benefits not only to the state and the nation, but also to the fishermen and the communities in whose environs these facilities will operate. Or it may not-reasonable people might conclude that the costs outweigh any benefits.
Understanding the potential costs and benefits for offshore wind energy development in state waters around the outer islands-and further offshore in federal waters-is surely one of the most important questions that we all face. We are the most fossil fuel dependent state in the country when you take into account the fuel sources for our heating, transportation and electricity needs. Well over 80 percent of all the state’s energy for all these uses comes from Number 2 heating oil, diesel, natural gas and/or gasoline. If these costs go up, we all pay through the nose; marginal businesses will fail and we all get colder and poorer.
Offshore wind energy has real potential to change Maine’s energy mix because the winds that blow over the Gulf of Maine are some of the most commercially attractive sources of new energy-with a couple of big caveats. One caveat is that for Maine to reap the economic benefits of this new energy source, we must develop new approaches to energy usage-including smart meters and a smart grid-to use more of that energy in state rather than distributing it to places like Boston. But before we can even have that kind of big picture public discussion, there is a thornier issue to deal with at the local level.
Locally, how will the communities most directly affected by any potential offshore energy development be compensated for such inconvenient facts as, for example, the loss of bottom for lobstermen who fish in energy rich waters? This is a complicated question, but does not have to be an intractable problem. Obviously, fishermen do not want a small number of lobstermen to get paid to move off their bottom and move on to someone else’s bottom-private benefit at the community’s cost. But developers all over the country-mostly in urban areas-have negotiated “Community Benefit Agreements” (CBAs) with local groups that bear some of the costs for projects with otherwise large public benefits. But who should represent fishermen’s “rights”-Lobster Zone Councils, DMR, MLA? No one knows.
Right now, the MLA has indicated concerns about offshore energy development in state waters-and the state has suggested that if policy makers recognize that lobstermen have traditional rights of usage to the state’s “commons,” what’s to stop hunters and fishermen in Maine’s unorganized territories from arguing the same thing?
We may not need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing; the problem is that the wind is gusting from several different directions at once and holding one’s finger in the wind will not provide a ready answer. But reasonable people can usually find a solution to a reasonable question if they start talking to one another without letting our fears get the worst of us.
George Baker, the Island Institute’s vice president of Community Wind, sat on the Governor’s Ocean Energy Task Force.
Philip Conkling is the president of the Island Institute.