Kelley quoted in Press Herald article on proposed Searsport dredging project
Joseph Kelley, a professor of marine geology in the University of Maine School of Earth and Climate Sciences and Climate Change Institute, was quoted in a Portland Press Herald article on a proposed U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dredging project in Searsport. Although the project aims to improve and upgrade Maine’s second-busiest port, it has raised concern up and down Penobscot Bay, where fishermen, shellfish farmers, owners of tourism-dependent businesses, and environmentalists fear it will trigger an ecological and economic catastrophe, according to the article. At issue is the waste product: nearly a million cubic yards of material to be dredged from the port area, at least some of which is contaminated with mercury and other toxins released by polluters along the Penobscot River, the mouth of which is located adjacent to the port, the article states. According to project documents, the Corps wants to remove the most contaminated material and dump them into pockmarks in the bay’s floor halfway between Islesboro and the Northport shore. Kelley, a former Maine State Geologist who has mapped the bay’s bottom, said the pockmarks are geologically unstable and formed by the venting of methane gas. Scouring by ocean currents would likely resuspend any material stored in them, according to the article. At a June 9 hearing, he testified that the Corps knew this, and in the 1990s had rejected them as a suitable place to dump dredge spoils in the 1990s, the article states.