Hounding the pipeline

State Sen. Susan Longley says she was “like a small dog nipping at their heels.” A major state official for economic development was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as calling her a “bloodhound.” Whatever the breed, credit the Waldo County lawmaker with proving that in dealing with those who would profit from using the state as conduit for natural gas, Maine needn’t roll over and play dead.

The tentative agreement struck between the Liberty Democrat and Maritimes and Northeast Pipeline stipulates that the company will provide “free” access to Waldo and Washington counties at such time as major businesses are established to provide the needed “anchor load,” the customer base, to make it profitable.

The initial reaction might be “so what?” The company that’s laying 200 miles of pipe across Maine, including these two of its poorest counties, will make this clean, stable and attractive fuel available if — big if — it pays to do so. To continue with the canine motif, this might be called throwing a hungry dog a bone.

It’s a bit more than that. As the largest construction project in Maine history has unfolded, rural residents have wondered why they get a pipeline running through their fields and forests but don’t get any gas. The gas transmission and distribution companies don’t want to be bothered; the state officials one would expect to be most concerned about economic development and fairness have demonstrated an alarming reluctance to be a bother. Longley made a pest of herself and should be darned proud of it.

Her approach is from the economic-development angle: Use the prospect of natural gas as an enticement for a company to open up a new shop in, say, Thorndike or Machias. Combined with other inducements — tax breaks and the like — it might work. Or, as with so many of the state’s economic-development initiatives, it might not. Thus, the availability of this fuel to regions that most need it still is left to the whims of luck, continued national economic growth and a definition of “anchor load” that is realistic.

The other angle is the regulatory, and it’s time state officials tried it out. Maine is one of only two states (Hawaii the other) that does not have extensive natural gas distribution systems. The boondocks of 48 other states have gas not because the gas companies were in a generous mood, but because those states used their clout to compel it. Maine has allowed the companies to cherry-pick, to create a situation in which gas service to every specific locale must be entirely self-supporting.

That’s nonsense. Taken by itself, a distribution spur to Eastport from the main transmission line at Baileyville will never pay for itself. Taken as a smallish component of the entire project of getting gas from Nova Scotia to the Northeast megalopolis, and of compensating Maine for the right to do so, and it shrinks to nothing. That the gas taps that may be provided to Waldo and Washington counties are represented as demonstrating extraordinary generousity while the taps to heavily populated areas are merely the cost of doing business shows the extent to which the gas companies have been able to set the terms of the debate.

Besides, basing the availability of gas service in these historically shortchanged regions on population density and economic power is the ultimate in self-defeating prerequisites. Gas should be used as a tool for development, not just as a reward for already being developed. In a similar way, several gas-fired power plants are being planned — tremendous economic boosts for a few fortunate communities — yet Washington County, despite having miles and miles of pipeline, won’t get one. It doesn’t have the electric transmission system to support it and apparently it hasn’t occured to anyone that the transmission system could be upgraded. The endless cycle that the infrastructure in Maine’s impoverished rural regions cannot be modernized because its infrastructure hasn’t been modernized must end somewhere. The pipeline project would be a good place to start.

The Wall Street Journal picked up the story of Longley’s noteworthy feat Wednesday, emphasizing her fiesty doggedness. The paper also quoted a high state official as saying the state tried to negotiate with the gas developers for some concessions on rural service in the early going, but made no progress and gave up. That’s a rather embarrassing admission of timidity to make to the Journal’s high-powered readership. Getting gas companies to put the gas where its most needed is a big job and it just might take a small snapping dog, a bloodhound or even a pit bull to get it done.