Last month we called for state leadership on the thorny question of siting a liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility on the Maine coast. At that time we’d been hearing from developers who wanted to bring LNG to Casco Bay and Sears Island; we complained that the existing siting process was allowing towns to compete for taxes and jobs, imposing risks on their neighbors but giving them few of the benefits.
Now the picture has changed again. The Passamaquoddy Tribe announced it had signed an agreement with an LNG firm with a view toward developing a facility on its reservation land at Pleasant Point. As we report elsewhere in this issue, nothing’s certain at this point, but we could be in for another long season (remember the Eastport oil hearings 30 years ago?) of debate over an energy facility Downeast.
This one could be different. For example, the Passamaquoddy Tribe, like other Native American tribes, enjoys a special status under federal law that allows it to build a gaming casino. Under the Maine Indian Land Claims Settlement it enjoys other rights as well, and according to its spokesman it’s also considered to be a municipality. It can create a corporate entity to work with an LNG developer.
Whether and how the status of the Passamaquoddy Tribe will affect its LNG project – specifically, how the project might be treated under state and federal environmental laws – remains to be seen.
Legal murk aside, there’s still the other kind of murk – the fog, winter weather and tidal currents – that will always bedevil anyone who wants to bring a large ship into the Eastport area. The long battle over the oil refinery proposed for Shackford Head all those years ago elicited convincing testimony that piloting tankers into those waters would be an extremely risky business. If they want us to believe bringing in LNG would be any safer than oil, this project’s proponents should bear the same heavy burden of proof as their predecessors.