Port Clyde Residents Petition Against Maine Aqua Venus Cable

On October 18, a group of Port Clyde residents presented a petition bearing more than 300 signatures to the St. George Board of Selectmen. The petition requested that the town proceed with amending its shoreland zoning ordinance in order to prohibit construction of the infrastructure needed to transmit electricity generated by the Maine Aqua Ventus wind turbines off Monhegan Island on public or private land in Port Clyde. “This is just a petition,” said Evy Blum, one of the founders of Preserve Our Remarkable Town (PORT), a citizens group formed in July which led the petition drive. “But we have enough signatures to force this to go to referendum [in St. George].”

The Maine Aqua Ventus project began in 2009 when Maine designated seven areas within state waters as sites for wind power demonstration projects. The University of Maine and partners Cianbro Corp. and Emera Power of Nova Scotia created DeepC Wind, a public-private entity, and chose the Monhegan Island site for the nation’s first off shore floating wind turbines. The turbines, designed by the University’s Advanced Composites Lab, would be anchored to the ocean bottom and float in the water column. The project as now envisioned includes two 576-foot-tall, 6-megawatt wind turbines located southwest of the island, expected to be in operation for at least twenty years.

After encountering resistance from the residents of South Bristol, where the electricity cable was first designed to come ashore, Maine Aqua Ventus developers stated that they would instead use an abandoned cable route from Monhegan to Port Clyde. Beginning on November 4, it will begin a hydrographic survey of the cable route, which runs approximately 14 nautical miles from the site of the wind turbines. The survey will be conducted by Alpine Ocean Seismic Survey on board the R/V Shearwater and the M/V William M.

That route, however, doesn’t sit well with local residents and Port Clyde fishermen. “Aqua Ventus approached the Board of Selectmen [in St. George] with an aura of inevitability, that this was just going to happen,” said Scott Sullivan, a co-founder of PORT. “We thought they were starting out way too far down the path. The Board postponed voting on the landing proposal.”

Randy Cushman, a Port Clyde fisherman, thinks the proposed cable route will have a negative effect on scalloping and shrimping, when and if that fishery is reopened. “They can’t bury the cable where the water is too deep, more than 100 feet. So in areas where I’ve gone shrimping, they will eliminate two out of five tow areas. Plus it will interfere with scalloping.”

Ben Martens, executive director of the Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association, pointed to the larger issue facing not just Port Clyde but other fishing communities in Maine. “How do we balance wind power with existing uses?” he asked. “You have to remember that what’s happening today is not the future. We have a low number of traditional fisheries right now but that’s not necessarily what it will be in the future. We need a robust process that engages with local communities.”

In a written statement, Maine Aqua Ventus spokesperson Josh Plourde stated, “We look forward to continued dialogue with residents and fishermen of St. George as to what the facts of the proposed MAV demonstration project are. Information being distributed through the recent petition eff ort does not accurately reflect project plans.” He further said, “The off shore cable for the test project is proposed in an existing charted cable right of way, where existing active cables serve the islands off Port Clyde. Locating in an existing cable way minimizes impact on local fishermen.”

“Each presentation [by Maine Aqua Ventus staff] looks different. It’s a moving target,” commented Blum. “The town has no planning process in place for something like this. Right now it’s easier to get that electrical cable permitted than it is for me to change my porch.