Group protests LNG terminal at N.B. summit

ST. ANDREWS, New Brunswick – Protesters at the Gulf of Maine Summit Wednesday received a boost from a Canadian federal politician who pressed his government to block construction of a liquefied natural gas terminal at nearby Pleasant Point in Maine.

But a hoped for face to face dialogue between Gov. John Baldacci and the protesters fizzled because the governor was a no-show.

Baldacci’s spokesman Lee Umphrey said a scheduling problem had kept the governor in the States. Umphrey said the protesters were more than welcome to sit down with the governor in his office.

Member of Parliament Greg Thompson, in a strongly worded letter to Prime Minister Paul Martin, said an LNG terminal would prove to be a disaster to a world-renowned ecosystem in eastern Canada.

Quoddy Bay LLC, a Tulsa, Okla., energy partnership, and the Passamaquoddy Tribe have been considering a $300 million LNG facility at Pleasant Point.

LNG is transported in large tankers from foreign ports to terminals where it is unloaded, processed and shipped by pipeline to users in Massachusetts.

In August, Pleasant Point voters gave tribal leaders authority to go ahead with negotiations with the company.

The member of parliament said he viewed this effort by a group of promoters to “ignore obvious environmental risks, navigational hazards and public safety by locating this facility in an area already determined to be unacceptable by any standard or measurement.”

He said the plan called for giant tankers to sail into the Grand Manan channel, around Campobello Island, New Brunswick, through a narrow waterway known as Head Harbor Passage with its uncertain depths, hazardous ledges and whirlpools to a spot of land controlled by a small band on a Passamaquoddy Indian Reservation.

“These are Canadian waters, prime minister, and documentation of your government details the unacceptability of this proposal,” he wrote.

In December 1976, the Canadian Department of External Affairs released a report prepared for a similar American venture. Nearly 30 years ago, the Pittston Co. wanted to locate an oil refinery in Eastport, near Pleasant Point, Thompson said.

Studies at that time concluded “the Passamaquoddy area in which [Head Harbor] passage is sited is the least acceptable area for tanker operations because of the value of fisheries and aquatic bird resources and the high level of navigational risk. Other factors including the risk of pollution, tidal currents, no safe anchorages and potential danger from winds all would pose a serious threat to the ecology of the region if an accident should occur,” Thompson wrote.

The federal politician said the risks today would be even greater “from explosion with the resulting thermal radiation and combustible vapor clouds, which could kill or harm everyone within a wide area on the island and the mainland. And these concerns don’t even include the possibility of a terrorist act on tankers which each have the explosives potential of a fully fueled passenger jet.”

Although the company and tribe have not yet submitted a proposal to the U.S. regulatory agencies, Thompson urged the prime minister to address the project immediately. “Our government should be ready in advance and not be caught flat-footed by a risk that could be well advanced very quickly,” he said.

Unaware of Thompson’s letter but armed with brightly colored signs that said “Life Not Greed” and “Take Care of Mother Earth, Protect Passamaquoddy Bay,” the 60 protesters marched around the driveway at the Algonquin Hotel in St. Andrews chanting “No LNG” and “Where’s Baldacci? Hiding.”

When protesters were told that Baldacci was not coming, Dick Hoyt of Lubec said, “He just lost my vote. I expected that he had a little more spine. I hope he has got a legitimate excuse.”

Jan Barnett of Lubec said she was not surprised. “That’s a characteristic,” she said. “Since this whole thing was proposed, he hasn’t showed up in the area anywhere.”

The group decided to hold its own summit outside.

Dave Thompson, Fundy Baykeeper with the Conservation Council of New Brunswick, who had been attending the conference, stepped outside to speak with the protesters. He said he told conference organizers that the summit should have included a dialogue about LNG and Passamaquoddy Bay. Thompson rallied the crowd when he said, “We are going to win, there’s going to be no LNG,” he said.

Passamaquoddy Tribal member Vera Francis, who is a member of “We Take Care of the Homeland,” reminded the protesters it was everyone’s job to leave the bay in a better condition than they had found it. “This bay is … the bread basket of the Bay of Fundy. It is the nursery for some of our traditional species here,” she said.