Recently the Trustees of the Island Institute passed a resolution concerning the potential for Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Regasification Plants to be located in Casco Bay.
The resolution, adopted unanimously, is as follows:
“Given the potentially negative environmental, economic and cultural impacts to the fragile stability of Maine’s island communities as the result of the construction and operation of an LNG Regasification Plant, associated tanker Traffic and pipeline construction:
“Be it resolved that the Board of Trustees of the Island Institute questions the environmental, economic and social cost / benefit of such a facility to Maine’s endangered island communities and therefore opposes the construction of such a facility in any location in Casco Bay.”
The Island Institute’s concern, said President Philip Conkling, “is that LNG in Casco Bay represents a real and present danger to three of the 15 remaining endangered year-round islands in Maine – most people cannot imagine the complications of getting people and supplies on and off Maine’s inhabited islands, but adding even the temporary closure of parts of a bay to ferry traffic for the passage of such an LNG ship throws an enormous wrench into a finely tuned system.”
Conkling also authored an op-ed piece for the Portland Press Herald further elaborating the Institute’s and Casco Bay islanders’ concerns about LNG. With the Conservation Law Foundation, the University of Southern Maine and Bowdoin College, the Institute is sponsoring a conference on LNG to be held at Bowdoin on Thursday, July 29.
David D. Platt