Steve Little, President of the Cliff Island Association, was surprised by a phone call at 7:15 a.m. on Wednesday, May 7. Roger Berle, fellow Cliff Island resident and chairman of the Maine Islands Coalition, called to inform Little that neighboring Hope Island was a potential site for a Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) terminal. The previous night, the Cumberland Town Council had voted in a private session to hold an advisory referendum on the matter on June 8. Residents would be asked if they wanted the council to proceed with negotiations with TransCanada Pipelines Ltd. to rezone Hope Island for a potential LNG terminal. “I was shocked,” Little said. “I couldn’t believe this had been proposed for Hope Island.”
It did not take long for Little or other Casco Bay residents to recover from their shock, however. Word soon spread through the island communities in Casco Bay. Residents were not only talking about the impact of an LNG terminal in the bay, but of the limited time before the referendum. “The June 8th deadline was just as shocking as the idea to place an LNG terminal on Hope Island, just the fact that the first democratic action was barely a month away,” Little said. Beverly Johnson, a resident of Chebeague Island, concurred. “We only had four weeks to get our act together for the elections. We had to work fast.”
Indeed, it did not take long for the communities in Casco Bay to mobilize. Less than 24 hours after Cumberland Town Council’s vote, a massive opposition campaign was forming. Chebeague Island residents, in the epicenter of the opposition, immediately created Save Casco Bay, an organization opposing the siting of an LNG facility anywhere in the bay. They also organized a town meeting, inviting Cumberland’s town manager, neighboring islanders and Harpswell residents. Other islands followed suit. By the weekend, Long, Cliff and Great Diamond islands had all committed as communities to fight against an LNG terminal on Hope Island. Long Island unanimously voted to raise their mill rate to fund the campaign, a contribution of over $30,000.
The next Monday, islanders packed the Cumberland Town Council meeting, leaving standing room only. Many wore “Save Casco Bay.org” t-shirts that had been printed only hours before. Speakers from islands and coastal communities stressed their opposition to the referendum. Most had discussed their presentations beforehand to ensure topics were not repeated. “We organized who would say what on Monday,” Beverly Johnson explained, “because we knew it would be televised, and we needed some way to get our message to the people who were voting. We wanted our concerns to be clear.” In response to the well-organized opposition, the Council voted 6-1 in favor of rescinding the referendum for rezoning Hope Island.
The coordinated, rapid response was exceptional for Casco Bay, considering the small population, and the disparate, isolated geography. Communities come together during hard times, though. Despite battles for territory between lobstermen and other inter-island disagreements, islanders can rally when there is an external threat. In the case of the LNG proposal, many islanders had previous experience opposing TransCanada and Conoco Phillips, the companies behind an LNG facility in Casco Bay. TransCanada and Conoco Phillips proposed an LNG terminal in Harpswell last year. Throughout the winter, lobstermen from Chebeague, Cliff and Long Island fought with Harpswell residents against the project. Harpswell ultimately rejected the facility in a highly controversial election.
In contrast to Harpswell, Casco Bay residents were virtually unanimous in their opposition to an LNG facility on Hope Island. “In the ten years I’ve been associated with Cliff Island, this is the biggest bay-wide issue we’ve had,” said Steve Little.
Casco Bay residents are proud of their successful cooperation to rescind the Cumberland Town Referendum. Such cooperation is nationally acknowledged as one of the driving forces in the siting of LNG facilities. Proponents of facilities term this coordinated opposition “NIMBY” – “Not In My Back Yard.” Nationally, it is widely recognized by energy officials that NIMBY is a major factor in LNG terminal site decisions.
Rob Bryngelson, Senior Vice President at Excelerate Energy, explained to the press that people think, “no place is a good place for an LNG facility.” He indicated local opposition to proposed LNG facilities was the primary obstacle to their construction. “Facilities will continue to be located away from demand due to local concerns,” he said. This pressure ultimately leads to facilities built in the easiest areas to get permits, rather than the best places to locate facilities.
Many organizations are concerned about this aspect of the approval process for LNG terminals. The Conservation Law Foundation, an environmental advocacy organization, stated in an open letter to the Chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), that LNG terminal proposals “are advancing on a community-by-community basis. As such, they are not part of a coherent strategy for evaluating the merits of one or more new terminals for New England generally, or for any particular community specifically.” Many believe the community-by-community approach to be irresponsible, as it ignores the larger impact of an LNG terminal in a given area. An LNG facility affects a variety of regional issues, including safety, environmental protection, social sustainability, economic benefits and detriments.
“Clearly, the impacts of any LNG terminal go way beyond any community where it might be established,” said Richard Barringer, Professor at the Edmund Muskie Center for Research at USM. “The lists of risks, issues with transportation, benefits of jobs – all of these issues affect a region, not a single community.”
Paul Hickey, a resident of Harpswell, concurs. “LNG is a community-wide problem. It affects people all over Casco Bay. You can’t divorce yourselves from the issue for geographical reasons – it is bigger than a single town or community.”
With the increased recognition that an LNG terminal will affect a broad geographical area, several organizations have petitioned the government to take a regional approach to LNG terminal site approval. The Conservation Law Foundation proposed that New England states work together to evaluate and identify the optimal site for an LNG facility. “After careful consideration,” CLF wrote, “we believe that the solution lies in a regional evaluation of the merits of adding one or more new LNG terminals to New England’s energy base and the development of a regional strategic plan for new terminal siting prior to approval of any individual terminal.”
Save Casco Bay recently sent a similar message to Governor Baldacci. In an open letter, the group stressed that the lack of information regarding an LNG facility in Casco Bay has limited the ability for citizens to make an informed decision. “The current approach used by gas companies is divisive and preys on uninformed town officials who are not prepared to deal with a complex set of competing issues involved in the decision to appropriately site an LNG facility,” they wrote.
Instead of the current community-by-community approach to siting LNG facilities, Save Casco Bay recommends creating a regional assessment and approval process. They believe the state should develop a regional assessment to determine the number and size of LNG facilities needed in Maine, and then identify the optimal sites in the state for those facilities. Residents in municipalities within a five-mile radius of the potential sites would then vote for approval of the LNG facility. “The regional site selection would then work to provide a regional solution to the problem of finding the most appropriate sites for one or more LNG terminals in Maine,” Save Casco Bay wrote.
Barringer agrees that Maine should take a regional approach to siting LNG facilities. Maine, he explained recently, is the optimal location in New England for an LNG terminal, as it has the advantage of the most deep-water sites, and the coastline is easily navigated. If the New England states did a regional assessment as proposed by the Conservation Law Foundation, he believes Maine would be on the top of the list.
“It would make good sense to do a regional assessment of the best places to site a facility in Maine, following up with a realistic risk and benefit assessment for those areas,” Barringer said. “The state should provide a baseline of information of potential sites in Maine that we can use to realistically discuss where an LNG terminal should go.” He recommends that Governor John Baldacci appoint a commission to research and investigate these issues of LNG facilities in Maine.
The governor, a strong supporter of LNG, has expressed a commitment to supporting communities that are considering building an LNG facility. He recognizes the challenges of the approval process, however. “While I continue to support the potential of LNG facilities to bring good paying jobs and clean energy to Maine, I have been reminded of the need to use economic development as a tool to bring communities together, rather than to allow it create divisions between neighbors,” he said.
However, Baldacci has not offered support to a regional approach to siting LNG facilities in Maine. Lee Umphrey, Governor Baldacci’s representative, recently told the Portland Press Herald the regional approach “as a concept piece is a good one, but as a practical piece it wouldn’t be as successful… companies who are in the business wouldn’t want it.”
In actuality, many energy companies already employ and endorse regional strategies for LNG facilities. Heidi Feick, a TransCanada representative, states her company employs a regional approach to identifying potential LNG terminal sites. “I think that’s what we have been doing; identifying the optimal sites in an area and investigating the appetite for a site in different communities.” Feick also believes “the greatest challenge is finding a site that is appropriate.”
Nationwide, energy companies concur that finding a site for an LNG terminal is the greatest challenge for the industry. Some energy officials estimate out of the current 30 proposed LNG terminals in the United States, only one-third will actually be built, due to siting problems. In response, some energy companies have developed creative solutions to the challenge of community opposition. “Many proposed LNG terminals would be located offshore, in part to avoid community opposition and siting obstacles which have delayed or prevented the construction of new on-shore LNG terminal facilities,” states a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report on LNG terminals. Other companies have been accused of targeting small, remote towns for LNG terminal facilities. Out of the current 22 proposed on-shore LNG terminals in the United States, almost half are located in small communities. There is a general belief that these small communities lack the organization and political influence to oppose an LNG terminal.
Regardless of the approach energy companies use to try to gain approval for an LNG terminal, they consistently rely on a community-by-community approval process. The strategy has not been very successful to date, as recognized nationwide by recent community rejections of LNG terminals in California, Maine and Alabama.
In contrast, a regional approach is recognized as a means to reduce community opposition. The CRS report to Congress recommends greater regional control in the siting of LNG terminals, as “LNG terminals are unusual among hazardous chemical facilities in that the federal government plays the lead role in safety regulation and site approval… If states or localities were given greater siting approval authority for LNG, they could individually adopt safety standards which might alleviate local community concerns.”
A regional approach to evaluating and approving the site for an LNG facility would clearly help Maine residents make good, informed decisions, Barringer believes. “Maine people like to be informed,” he said. “We are not being informed right now.” Beverly Johnson agrees. “We did not have the facts we needed about the proposed Hope Island terminal. People at home should not have to do all this research on their own. Our government officials should be able to provide us with the information we need to make an informed vote.”
For now, Maine continues to move ahead without a regional plan for siting and approving LNG facilities. Single communities, from Harpswell to Yarmouth, will individually decide the fate of an LNG terminal in their town. It is unlikely all communities will respond with the recent speed, energy, and organization of the islanders in Casco Bay. However, without an informational, regional needs-assessment for LNG facilities in Maine, the state must rely on each community to do their best at understanding the larger issues involved. Considering what happened in Harpswell, a town torn apart over a rejected LNG facility, it is questionable if this is the best path for Maine communities. As one Harpswell resident said at the recent Cumberland Town Council meeting, “What you have to lose is community, and there’s no price on that.”