Eastport residents demand LNG specifics

EASTPORT – People who wanted a discussion about liquefied natural gas – not a science fair – took the initiative at a community meeting Thursday night and demanded that the developer answer questions in a group setting.

About 60 people attended the meeting, which was among several sessions Quoddy Bay LLC has held in eastern Washington County.

The Tulsa, Okla., company, along with the Passamaquoddy Tribe, hopes to build a $400 million LNG terminal in Gleason Cove at Pleasant Point.

The terminal would receive ocean-borne shipments of the gas, which would arrive frozen, then be converted back to a gas and shipped by mainland pipeline.

Backers see the proposal as an economic boon to the area, but opponents worry about safety and other issues.

The meetings began Monday night in Perry. Some who participated said they were disappointed when they discovered tables set up along a wall where LNG backers waited to answer individual questions. They said they wanted to hear what their neighbors had to say.

One of the project developer’s sons, Brian Smith, attended each session.

At first, participants in Perry, Pleasant Point and Indian Township meetings went along with the developer’s format, but participants in Eastport on Thursday night demanded more. After about an hour of walking around, several people moved their chairs to Smith’s table.

“We want to talk to you,” someone said from the back of the room.

Smith said he would answers questions after his technical expert, Jim Lewis, finished with his demonstrations.

“I’d like to see them,” another person said of the demonstrations. “Everybody in this area isn’t rude.”

At earlier sessions, Lewis poured LNG into a beaker of water where it turned into a misshapen ice cube. He then drank it. He put a dollop of it on Cheerios cereal and ate them.

But those who favored a discussion persevered. “We’d just like to know some facts, not one person here, one person there,” one unidentified woman said. “We’d like to hear the questions. We’d like to hear the answers.”

Tribal member Linda Lingley, who has worked each session voluntarily, objected.

“That’s not what we planned,” she said. “If you wanted something other than that, you are going to have to go and do something different because we have a schedule here.”

Lingley’s son Craig Francis is the attorney for the tribe, and her daughter-in-law Emily Francis works for Savvy Inc., the company’s public relations firm.

Smith finally agreed to answer questions before the demonstrations.

Lingley continued to object. “Brian, you have to not stoop to ignorance,” she said.

That statement brought a gasp from the crowd.

A major concern has been the automatic exclusion zone that would surround ships entering the port. In some ports that exclusion zone can be as much as two miles ahead of the ship, one mile astern and 500 yards on either side.

Smith said the project’s backers don’t know what the distance would be in Passamaquoddy Bay, but he promised to have an answer soon.

“Without knowing what the safety zone is going to be, this whole bay of people, their lifestyle and where they live is really on hold by a few members of the Passamaquoddy Tribe because we don’t know yet what effect that is going to have on small boats, on recreation and on fishing,” Coleen O’Connell, who owns land on nearby Campobello Island, New Brunswick, said of the tribe’s vote last year.

In August, Passamaquoddy voters gave tribal leaders authority to go ahead with negotiations 193-132.

Tribal member Gary Moore reminded people that the majority of those who voted on the reservation favored construction.

After the meeting, opponent Vera Francis, who also is a tribal member, responded to Moore’s statement.

“Only 33.3 percent of the voting population said yes,” she said. “We have not had an opportunity to speak and this is the first time we’ve gotten a little bit of information.”