badly needed jobs. “This project is worth from $4 million to $8 million to the tribe, as a business partner,” Mitchell has said. Both of Mitchell’s carrots, money and jobs, are certain to get some attention in Washington County, where things have been bad for a long time.

IThe approximate assumed freighter route to be used by 1,200 foot long LNG tankers carrying LNG to Pleasant Point, Maine. Map © 2004 Old Sow Publishing

The Easternmost Point In The United States
   The residents of Washington County are known for their resilience and independence. In fact, urban legend describes the county as the place where they had to read about the great depression in the newspaper. But, unlike its upscale sister coastal counties to the southwest, Washington has been dropped to its knees by unemployment and the loss of tax revenue over the last 10 years. This area is the essence of what many northeast of Bar Harbor call, “The Other Maine.” Here, most homes sell for well under $100,000 and the median annual income struggles to reach $23,000 a year. Remote and isolated, struggling yet proud, this is the area that Maine’s Senator Susan Collins calls, “The most beautiful place in the state.” But wide-open spaces and picture post card views don’t pay the rent for these people, and every year things seem to get tougher.
   Full-time work with benefits is hard to find here. The commercial fishermen pound out a living, most of the time, in spite of the decline of many of the fisheries and the strangling effects of reoccurring red tides. A problem with an LNG facility or tanker in the Cobscook Bay could potentially affect some 170 licensed lobstermen, 160 “licensed” clammers, 85 scallop draggers, 15 scallop divers, 250 commercial fishing license holders, 85 urchin license holders, and a handful of marine worm, eel/elver, commercial shrimp, seaweed, mussel, mahogany quahog and green crab license holders. Other than fishing, the last of Washington County’s sardine canning plants closed in 2001. Work with the aquaculture pens is up and down. Many of those laid-off have run out of their unemployment benefits. There’s an underground economy and seasonal work, but it’s rumored that drug trafficking and jobs related to the treatment of drug addiction and depression are the most consistent and highest-paid forms of employment in these parts.

Non-binding Vote
   Last August, the Passamaquoddy and Sipayik nations voted 192-132 to give Quoddy Bay LLC the go-ahead to proceed on the LNG project. But, even before the votes were finished being counted, Nulankeyutmonen Nkihtaqmikon (We Take Care of The Homeland) had been created by tribal member and community leader Vera Francis. That group was soon joined by others in opposition to the proposed LNG project; “Save Passamaquoddy Bay–Protect our Homeland” and “Save Passamaquoddy Bay–Canada,” as well as the Schoodic Chapter of the Audubon Society, the Quoddy Regional Land Trust, Penobscot Bay Watch, and the Sierra Club.
   Francis is pushing for a re-vote. She explains that there are two reservations involved, and that only Pleasant Point was allowed to vote in the referendum. “Indian Point Reservation has already mounted a petition drive,” Francis said. “Policies, such as Governor Baldacci’s open-door policy for LNG in Maine, and in Native people’s lives, are meant to allow industry greater access to our land under the guise of sovereignty. It is our view that any proposed LNG import terminal in Passamaquoddy Bay would not only be shortsighted, but poorly sited, and would instead only ensure disproportionately high and adverse human health and environmental effects to all those living around the bay.”
   There’s another hitch that those opposed to the LNG have found. Back in 1986, when the town of Perry approved an article to allow the Passamaquoddy to annex 390 acres (along Route 190, where the LNG terminal is proposed) they did so with one condition: that the town have veto power over any future commercial development. The original Article 40 from that 1986 town meeting, reads, “Any future commercial development . . . must be approved by the voters of the town of Perry, with the exception of any development currently in the building stages.” Many here hope that Perry will take actions to block any further progress by Quoddy Bay LLC.
   Albion Goodwin, District 134’s out-going Representative to the House, serving his community loyally down to the very last minute of his term, described Quoddy Bay LLC’s chances of success as less then slim. “It ain’t gonna happen,” Goodwin said flatly. “St. John’s has already got their Canadian regulatory approval for their project and that’s just 30 miles away. The Canadian LNG terminal will completely remove the necessity of having a terminal here in Perry.”
   But then Goodwin points out Quoddy Bay LLC’s potential ace-in-the-hole: FERC – the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. “It’s pretty frightening,” Goodwin admitted.

FERCed
   In 1977, FERC was created out of what was the Federal Power Commission. Mandated to not only determine whether wholesale electricity prices were unjust and unreasonable, FERC was also given the power to regulate pricing and order refunds to rate-payers for any overcharges.
   “What these nitwits in Washington (D.C.) did was set FERC up as a quasi-entity, responsible to nobody except the President, who appointed them,” Goodwin said. FERC now regulates the natural gas industry, hydroelectric projects, oil pipelines, and oversees the $250 billion electricity industry. Back in the late 1980s, the agency began deregulating the gas markets, and by 1992, when Congress passed the Energy Policy Act, FERC held regulatory oversight responsibility and the authority to order wholesale competition.
   Critics, like Goodwin, claim that as electricity deregulation has spread, FERC’s responsibilities have grown. That might be true, but Congress has repeatedly cut FERC’s budget, taking what many call the teeth out of FERC’s bite. FERC’s biggest critics say that FERC has lost sight of its original mandate, to protect the consumer. In California, for example, critics of FERC claim that under FERC’s watch, California consumers have been overcharged $6 billion every year for the last several years.
   Under the current Bush administration, FERC has been given additional authority, the power to seize private property for public use. Under “eminent domain,” FERC could compel the sale of private land for new electric power lines or they could push through an LNG terminal anywhere up and down the New England coast. That’s what worries Francis, Goodwin and others in the Cobscook Bay area. It’s an issue that Goodwin says fishermen all around the U.S. should be worried about.
   It seems that Governor Baldacci’s office is also thinking about FERC. Through the Freedom of Information Act, a memo has been obtained that was sent from Senior Policy Advisor for Governor Baldacci, Richard Davies, to Baldacci, last May.
   Richard Davies is political “old school.” He knows his way around Augusta and seems to have a knack for seeing the big picture. He served in the Maine House of Representatives for 10 years, from 1972 to 1982. And, during his terms, Davies chaired the Committee on Energy as well as the Committee on Public Utilities. In the memo, Davies discusses the LNG industry’s inability to find an acceptable location in the northeastern part of New England for an LNG terminal and, because of that, “The possible intervention by FERC.”
   Davies encourages Baldacci to take action, “harness the energy companies and manage the issue for the benefit of Maine people and the New England region.”
   In the memo, Davies reflects on the fact that “LNG projects are being rejected all over, and the major energy companies like Conoco, TransCanada and Duke are at a loss about what to do to get a project built.”

Protestors from the Passamaquoddy tribe and Save Passamaquoddy Bay outside the Fairmount Algonquin Hotel in St. Andres, N.B. on October 27th, protesting against the citing of an LNG terminal in Passamaquoddy Bay. Photo Gary Guisinger

Why NIMBY Rules Apply To LNG
   Liquefied natural gas is created when natural gas is super-cooled to negative 260 degrees, reducing it to about one 600th of its original volume. In its super-cooled form it can be transported long distances by ocean-going tankers before being converted back to a vapor and carried via pipelines, to people’s homes and businesses. Twenty years ago, safety issues and declining crude oil prices made the concept of large-scale LNG markets not only dangerous, but also uneconomical. But now, with the wacky state of the oil industry, things have changed, and demand for LNG has been growing, especially in New England, where the fact that it burns cleanly has made LNG an increasingly attractive investment.
   Communities in New England have been fighting LNG over an array of issues, from its effect on neighboring home owner’s insurance rates, to the loss of real estate value and, of course, the safety issue: The tankers are huge, mostly sailing under foreign flags, carrying highly flammable loads of foreign natural gas, and now there’s the ever-present concern about potential terrorism.
   Last September, Lord Levene, of Lloyd’s of London, the firm that insures many of the LNG terminals around the world, told the annual Houston Forum that he has warned the Bush administration about possible attacks on LNG facilities. (A copy of his speech is available at the Lloyd’s web site.) Part of his warning concerned the danger of the tankers that transport LNG. The energy content of a single standard LNG-laden tanker (one hundred twenty-five thousand cubic meters) is equivalent to seven-tenths of a megaton of TNT, which is equal to the blast of about fifty-five Hiroshima bombs.
   Could a terrorist use an LNG tanker the way they used the commercial airlines during the 9/11 attack? In an AP story last April, the feds acknowledged that the illegal immigrants that had been caught slipping into Boston in 2000, on-board LNG tankers, may have had terrorist connections. Suggestions that LNG tankers could and were being used by terrorists to enter the United States, first came to light in “Against All Enemies,’’ the book by Richard A. Clarke, former White House terrorism czar.

Davies Cuts To The Chase
   Davies brings Baldacci’s attention to the obvious: that all of the LNG companies are scrambling to be the first kid on the block, because, “They all believe only one will get built in the Northeast, partly because they don’t believe that financing for a second LNG facility would be available.”
   Davies warns that time is of the essence. “Even though no project has made it through local or state review so far, the one that gets to FERC first will win,” Davies wrote. He suggests to Baldacci that they have an attorney look into FERC’s “pre-emption authority.” “We (states) may find some angle by which to prevent a complete FERC pre-emption.”
   In the meantime, Davies suggests that if they should secure a LNG deal before a possible FERC pre-emption, the State would have the power to make, “A Community Benefits program an integral part of any LNG proposal – an assurance that the host community, the surrounding communities, and the state as a whole will see meaningful benefits for the life of the project.” Davies goes on to write that, “Citizens Energy already operates community benefits programs, such as their provision of heating fuels to low income households ‘at cost’, and would be willing to play a similar rote with LNG through whatever community benefits (property tax relief, low-cost fuel for low-income families, job creation, etc.).”

Future Shock
   Another project for New England fishermen to keep their eyes on is Atlantic Energy’s “Neptune Regional Transmission System,” a four-phase effort designed to bring Atlantic Canadian and Maine power, in the form of a megawatt DC cable, underwater into the Boston and New York metropolitan areas. Atlantic Energy is based in Pittsfield, ME, and is a coalition comprised of Cianbro Corp., Energy Security Analysis, of Wakefield, Mass., and the Curtis, Thaxter, Stevens, Broder & Micolau law firm, of Portland and Augusta.
   In 2001, FERC approved Atlantic Energy Partners’ Neptune organizational structure and accepted Atlantic Energy’s proposal to auction electricity transmission capacity rights once the project’s underwater transmission cable is installed. Slowed only by financing, Neptune’s first phase is a relatively short jump from New Jersey to New York City. The other three phases are set for subsequent years.
   “Our clear focus is to get the first phase up and running in 2005,’’ Paul Rich, Atlantic Energy’s chief operating officer, told the Wall Street Journal. “We have a keener understanding now that financing of the project is moving slower than anyone would hope.”
   As of January 2004, the 37-mile 600 megawatt project completion date for the New Jersey to New York City phase had been pushed back again, to 2007. But, Atlantic Energy Partners have shown tenacity, and, if New York City or Boston see any more rolling blackouts, Atlantic Energy Partners’ ability to raise funds for energy projects could certainly improve.
   A piece of that project that fishermen may find interesting is the proposed use of the Maine Yankee site in Wiscasset. The idea is to link the main cable to shore and to the overland transmission lines that are there from the former nuclear power plant. Fishermen could find the ground fisheries, lobster, as well as the mahogany quahog fishery affected by the existence of several different megawatt electric lines crisscrossing the Gulf of Maine.

Hidden Agendas?
   Is there a chance that FERC could push through the Cobscook Bay LNG or claim property for a similar project somewhere else in the mid or southern Maine coast? At this point, no one is talking. But, last June, just after Baldacci received the Davies memo, Beth Nagusky, Maine’s director of energy independence and security, was in New York speaking at an LNG industry conference and relaying Baldacci’s support for LNG. Nagusky announced at the conference that Maine expected to have federal and local approval for an LNG plant in the “next couple of months.” Quoted in a Reuters News Service story, Nagusky said, “We’re working with state and local offices as well as environmental groups in a ‘bottoms up’ approach to getting approval for the plant.”
   Following the cancellation of the Harpswell project, Nagusky said that Maine began looking at a different way to get approval for what it deems a “necessity to ensure power-generation reliability.” Nagusky refused to reveal the location or the groups that she was working with. All that she would say was that approval was expected soon.