As 2005 rolls hull down in the mind, it is worth a moment’s reflection to recount what we’ve lived this year as well as to ask ourselves what we’ve learned and speculate about where we may be headed.
Beginning with the most recent past, it is well worth a brief exhalation of joy to celebrate the stunning victory of the fishermen’s working waterfront tax break during November’s balloting. Five years ago, a similar referendum lost by fewer than 5,000 votes – less than one half of one percent of the ballots cast. A month ago, the measure to tax working wharves at their value as fishing stations rather than for what they would be worth as condominiums won with almost 73 percent of the vote – a higher percentage of victory than any other measure on the ballot. Along with a pilot $2 million bond to provide matching funding for purchasing easements and title to working wharves, we may look back 25 years from now as the time when we began as a state to turn the tide toward protecting Maine’s traditional fishing heritage. It is, of course, just a beginning, but the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. In a year that began with a tax revolt and threatened to end in a whimper, this vote is a
testament of what a small group of committed people – the Working Waterfront Coalition – can do to change the world.
2005 was also the year when the secession issue came back into focus for islanders, driven by the increasingly wide gulf between an island way of life and the inexorable demands for expensive services required to support the mainland communities of Cumberland and Portland. Chebeague and Peaks Island both mounted secession petitions; Chebeague’s petition gained enough signatures to go on the local ballot, while Peaks’s will be submitted to the city of Portland after the new year. With overwhelming support for independence on Chebeague and a narrow majority opposed on the mainland in Cumberland, ChebeagueÕs independence drive now moves to the Legislature where it promises to be a bitter pitched battle.
2005 also saw a proliferation of new and recycled proposals to build LNG facilities in eastern Maine – at least three and perhaps four LNG terminals have been proposed on the Maine side of the Canadian border to connect big tankers with an existing pipeline that currently transports Sable Island natural gas to the Boston market. Meanwhile the federal government passed a new law giving additional powers to the Federal Energy Regulation Commission (FERC) to trump the state and local opposition in the siting of new LNG facilities, so many in eastern Maine are feeling vulnerable to the power of federal policy and oil and gas entrepreneurs. But the LNG picture in eastern Maine is still very speculative.
At an LNG Symposium the Island Institute co-sponsored in 2004, a number of important issues came into focus that will determine the fate of LNG along the Maine coast. First, the New England region has become increasingly dependent on natural gas as an energy source. Natural gas supplies 40 percent of Maine’s energy needs, leaving the state and the rest of the New England region increasingly vulnerable to the prospect of energy supply shortages. At the same time, energy experts everywhere appear to believe that the region can sustain a maximum of two new LNG terminals to meet energy demands for the foreseeable and mid-term future. A proposal to build an offshore facility in the Gulf of Maine near Stellwagen Bank off Gloucester, well away from population centers where the threat of terrorist attacks have sparked intense local fear and opposition, appears to be making headway. A second LNG facility sponsored by Irving Oil at its industrial site in Saint John, New Brunswick, has received Canadian approval to
proceed. This does not signify the end of the derby race for a site in eastern Maine, but if I were one of the LNG developers there, I would ask myself whether Powerball isn’t a better bet.
Speaking of energy, 2005 was also the year that we, along with the entire country, finally understood how vulnerable our energy supplies have become. A spate of hurricanes – Katrina, Rita and Wilma – disrupted supplies from the Gulf Coast and prices spiked for several months before settling back somewhat. But those who believes that the Saudis and the other Middle Eastern oil producers (or new rigs in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, for that matter) are going to pump us back to the era of cheap oil should have their heads examined. We need to diversify our energy supplies and conserve the increasingly precious fossil fuels we need to sustain our economy. As energy expert Matt Simmons reminded us at the LNG Symposium last year and in his new book, Twilight in the Desert, reviewed in these pages, over 70 percent of the oil we use currently supplies the nation’s highly inefficient transportation system. Goods that arrive from all over the world at a few big cargo ports are loaded on trucks that drive them all over the country, including to the far reaches of Maine and its islands. When you take your next bite out of that Granny Smith apple from New Zealand or a handful of grapes from Chile, enjoy them because they may be the last cheap international food you’ll be able to afford. But there’s a flip side: considering that rail uses a third of the energy of trucking and that coastal shipping a mere tenth, then working waterfronts in places like Portland, Searsport and Eastport may well become much more economically viable in the 21st century.
Speaking of the plethora of hurricanes and Administration protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, 2005 may be the year when a majority of the public began to recognize that maybe the climate is changing. Maybe we are putting too much carbon dioxide into the air; maybe we don’t know what the risks are. Hard to know on this one, but the uneasiness is palpable. Because it is abundantly clear that we don’t have a coherent, thoughtful or well-informed national energy policy, each state and each region is left to figure one out on its own, at least for the next several years. In one of the most northerly, impoverished and elderly states in the country, however, such a recognition is deeply unsettling as winter settles in for its long siege.
And speaking of winter and climate change, the big question looming over the coast’s island and working waterfront communities as we go to press is whether the weather or the lobsters will give out first, between now and the beginning of January. It’s been another unusual lobster season. Nothing new in that, the lobsters are always doing something no one expects. But for the third year in a row, the shed was late – way late this year – and now that the big fall run is finally on, the autumnal gales are giving way to December’s fury. This year’s lobster season won’t be over for many fishermen before January if there is any hauling weather left to speak of. The only question remaining is how many lobsters may have crawled out to deeper, safer waters before the harvest concludes. If you’ve just bet the ranch on a big new boat and string of gear, this question is of more than academic interest.
So all and all a mixed picture. Working waterfront taxes might go down, more islands might control more of their future, but energy costs will go up everywhere and lobster landings may decline, leaving most of us increasingly squeezed. And forget about help from the government. We’re going to have to solve our own problems. Which is why it’s still good to live on an island.
Philip Conkling is president of the Island Institute.