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LNG At Perry A Bust
Hearing Airs Questions of Impact on Fishing, Safety, Infrastructure, Property Values by Nancy Beal
The vote on the LNG project followed months of exchanges between Quoddy Bay, in a campaign orchestrated by a Portland-based public relations firm, and Save Passamaquoddy Bay, a three-nation coalition forged by residents of the affected area, a handful of Canadians from across the Bay, and tribal members, who have opposed the project since it surfaced, last spring. Perry residents were called upon to vote because of a condition in a 1986 town meeting warrant article. At that time, Perry approved the annexation by the Passamaquoddy of 390 acres of its land on Route 190, which includes the land on which the LNG terminal would be built. The town reserved the right to veto any commercial development there. Developers charged that the wording was confusing, because it required a “no” vote to support the project. Quoddy Bay officials told private gatherings last February that they would abandon the project if Perry voted it down. Contentious Public Hearing The vote, taken March 28, was secret, but the hearing that preceded it — March 16 in the Perry Elementary School — was very vocal. Following a formula that took two meetings for the sides to agree on, Donald Smith, owner of Smith Cogeneration, which is a co-owner of Quoddy Bay LLC, and his son, Brian, used their initial 30 minutes to tout the merits of their project. The Smiths spoke of the economic and environmental benefits of the proposed LNG terminal — a 3/4-mile-long pier into Gleason Cove, under which -260F degree LNG would be piped to two 12-story tanks on shore (camouflaged by Passamaquoddy artwork), thence warmed and piped under pressure to Southern New England, under, perhaps, abandoned railroad tracks. The younger Smith said economic benefits would be realized in “hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars in payroll directly from the facility, and by the ripple effect that will add hundreds more jobs and millions more dollars . . . in the area.” (On March 7, the developers had promised Perry selectmen that they would pay the town $340,000 yearly during the life of the project — approximately half the town’s annual budget. During questioning, Smith said payments for increased infrastructure costs would be paid by his company over and above the annual payment of $340,000.) The Opposition Heard From The opponents of the LNG project had a panel consisting of Rhoda Daugherty, director of nursing at an Eastport nursing home; Harry Shain, president of the Cobscook Bay Fishermen’s Association; Bill Love, a Perry resident and county probation officer; Arthur McKay, a St. Andrews marine biologist; and Brian Theriault, of Perry. Shain noted the decades of cooperation between the legislature and DMR (Department of Marine Resources) that fishermen had engaged in to better their fisheries. In his area, he said it had resulted in productive scallop and urchin beds. He pointed out that fishing licenses in Canada, where it is legal to sell them, went for up to $800,000, testimony to the value of the fisheries in the Bay. He said the area where the pier is planned for is “a huge urchin bed . . . and nursery for urchins.” Theriault called Gleason’s Cove “one of the safe harbors where you can go and anchor if there’s a storm.” Shain said his group had circulated a petition stating the introduction of the LNG terminal would result in a loss of lobster grounds, clam flats, herring weirs, alewife runs and urchin beds, moorings, boat ramps, as well as safety and the freedom to move around the bay. The petition called for a March 28 vote to oppose the LNG terminal. He said “everyone wanted to sign it,” and he had to print more petition forms to accommodate the signatures. Love referred to an attempt by another developer to locate an LNG facility in Harpswell. That community was offered $11.5 million for the first year alone, but turned the project down. Love said scrutiny of the increased infrastructure costs associated with an influx of people and the creation of an LNG terminal had revealed that it would cost Harpswell more in rising infrastructure and social costs and in decreased property valuations caused by the proximity of an industrial complex than the developer was offering. He also cautioned about “other heavy industry which will locate here. The impact on Perry from the LNG terminal is not limited to the plant itself, but also to all that follows in its wake,” he said. Love also worried about the need for increased police protection, and suggested that Perry might have to contract with the sheriff’s department and pay nearly $200,000 per year, as Lubec is doing.
Arthur McKay McKay, an originator of aquaculture in the Bay, said the only way to restore fisheries was to have a clean, undisturbed environment. He also talked of money, but of dollars coming in, not going out, of a bay he called a “cornucopia.” The Canadian government, he said, had calculated that resource-based industry on the eastern side of Passamaquoddy Bay totaled between $500 million and $1 billion per year. “If we put American and Canadian sides together, the economy is worth around $1.3 billion annually,” he said — not including forestry and power generation. “The choice is,” said McKay, of the March 28 vote, “do you wish to have the kind of lifestyle . . . that has sustained us for so long, or do you want to enter an industrial cluster? . . . Are we going to be New Jersey North?” Concerns About Fire Protection, Schools Love also read a statement from Perry fire chief Paul Cross, who suggested that the influx of construction workers might require the PFD to purchase a new pumper ($230,000), switch from a volunteer station to a manned one, and hire two trained firefighters at $30,000 each per year. He noted that Perry’s fire-protection rating was already low, often making it difficult for residents to find insurance. He added that the town’s ambulance/EMS force would have to be beefed up. He said the increased pressure could bump up Perry’s current $30,000 fire department budget to one similar to Eastport’s $130,000. A week after the March 16 hearing, Smith upped his annual offering to Perry, from $340,000 to $1 million, and several Perry residents engaged a lawyer to ask the state’s attorney general if the monetary offers didn’t constitute bribery. An answer was reputed to take weeks, but LNG opponents said, following the March 28 vote, that they intended to press the case anyway. Rhoda Daugherty spoke of the impact of an influx of construction workers’ families on the school. She suggested that two modular units (without water or bathrooms), at a cost of up to $20,000 each, might be needed, or a four-classroom addition to the school, at a cost of up to $1 million. Catherine and John Cook recently moved to Perry from Cleveland, where, they said, they experienced the explosion of a LNG terminal. They work in the health-care field, and were concerned about the impact on the area health centers, where patients already have to wait to be seen. After making a substantial financial investment (home and business), they wondered, “What do we do after 30 years when the LNG terminal is dismantled [and] we may be left with a depleted fishery and a tourism industry that’s stalled out? What would be left for our children to come back to?” (The Smiths had repeatedly touted their project as one which would keep younger generations from leaving Washington County.)
Smith insisted that property valuations would not go down (Phil Webb told him Maine Yankee depressed values 50 percent in Wiscasset). He promised not to “displace recreational boaters.” He said there would be no prohibition on people using Gleason Cove, and his company had no plans to turn the project into an industrial park. “We have a plan for an LNG facility. The end.” He said his company would post a performance bond sufficient to dismantle the project after its life span (30 years or more). He said U.S. Coast Guard vessels would escort tankers through Canadian waters if the Canadian government would not allow its vessels to do so. (No talks or authority from the Canadians was offered.) Cobscook Bay Fishermen Oppose LNG The Cobscook Bay Fishermen’s Association (CBFA) has been asking questions about Quoddy Bay LLC’s LNG project for nearly a year. Last summer they met with tribal leaders seeking information and, evidently unsatisfied, in November they voted to oppose the project unless they got more answers. In February of this year, they met again with tribal members and Donald and Brian Smith and, according to notes of the session, got some nuts and bolts of the project, much of which has been detailed in earlier editions of these pages. Again not liking what they heard, CBFA members carried petitions opposing the project. “Nearly everybody signed,” said CBFA President, Harry Shain. Several fishermen from Harpswell attended the March 10 CBFA meeting and shared the experience of dealing with — and ousting — an LNG plant there, last year. In response to the Smiths’ assurances that Quoddy Bay LLC would compensate U.S. and Canadian fishermen for lost gear, lost fishing time and lost clam flats, the visitors from Harpswell said they had been promised the same things, but, when their lawyers tried to hammer out and write down language to ensure that compensation would be forthcoming, the gas company backed off. The minutes of that February meeting also contained pledges from Don Smith that he would not try to pre-empt home rule by appealing to the Federal Energy Regulation Commission for federal approval if state permits were not forthcoming. (The omnibus federal spending bill, passed last fall, contained the authority for FERC to step in.) Smith was also quoted as promising to withdraw the project if the people of Perry rejected it, as they did, by a margin of 56 percent, on March 28. He added, however, that the negative wording of the referendum question (a “yes” vote was a vote against the project) might taint the legally-binding nature of the result, necessitating yet another vote. |
