Seal Island, outer Penobscot Bay
Cleaning up a Former Bombing Range.

Planning is underway on how to clean up Unexploded Ordnance (UXO) from two Maine offshore islands, Seal Island and Duck Island off southern Maine , used for bombing and naval artillery target practice during World War 2 and the Korean War. The cleanup process is following the Munitions Response Site Prioritization Protocol. Results will serve as guidance for other island bomb range cleanups around New England. Read Bay Blog's Seal Island entries.

AT ISSUE *** EMAIL ARCHIVE *** DOCUMENTS FILE

DETAILS: Read the Seal Island Cleanup Planning Memo. Created by Army Corps of Engineers and their consultant Alion Corp , this lengthy memo (broken down into chapters for easier access) describes in detail the island and the federal cleanup process.

Seal Island Puffin Cam ** * More about Seal Island

CALL TO ACTION: Welcome to a Penobscot Bay issue in great need of public stakeholder participation. In which the federal and state agencies agree that reps of the public or conservation communities are absent from their process--and sorely missed. Decisionmaking is carried out via a standard agency-led stakeholder process, with meetings email and a list serve.

As mentioned above, the agencies initial reports _seem_ to be trying to stay above the tideline and outright take a pass on the search and the removal as much underwater UXO as feasible. Expense and difficulty or cleanup are cited. Not very convincingly.

Maine DEP doesn't seem happy about that omission. And there is where citizen activists can be effective. Demand of Maine's US senators that a public hearing take place in Rockland, where fishermen and others long familiar with the island and its surrounding waters can put their two cents in.