Passamaquoddy leaders OK gas plant

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PLEASANT POINT – The Passamaquoddy leadership Thursday night accepted a deal to build a multimillion-dollar liquefied natural gas facility on tribal land in eastern Washington County.

The council voted 4-3 to locate an LNG terminal at Split Rock, which is known for the Polar Dips held nearby each year by the local community college. The site is a short distance from Route 190 and near the Beatrice Rafferty Elementary School and elderly housing.

After the meeting at the tribal offices, Don Smith and his son Brian, the point men for LNG facility developer Quoddy Bay LLC of Oklahoma, were all smiles.

Brian Smith said the nearly $400 million facility will employ hundreds of people during the construction phase. “Most of those from here in Washington County. Then during the operation phase it will employ anywhere between 70 and 98 workers full time with benefits, making $75,000 on average. And it will support hundreds of jobs in Washington County for the next 50 years,” he said.

The timetable calls for the facility to be operational in four years.

“This agreement is a wonderful step forward for Quoddy Bay and the Pleasant Point reservation,” said Don Smith, president of Quoddy Bay LLC. “We are now launching a project that will supply Maine residents with an environmentally friendly fuel for their homes and provide many local families with financial security.”

Opponents left the meeting grim-faced.

Tribe member Deanna Francis vowed there would be a legal challenge. “We will take this to court, we will not accept this LNG on the Passamaquoddy Bay,” she said.

The contract signed between the tribe and the developer now goes to the Bureau of Indian Affairs for approval.

Tribal attorney Craig Francis said there would be a long permitting process. “It may be that the permitting poses a problem, so this is far from over. But it is the first step toward development of a facility,” he said.

The Split Rock plan calls for new technology that has not been used anywhere in the United States, according to the developers.

It will feature a half-mile-long pier where ships will offload their cargo into pipes, rather than tanks as is common at other sites in the country. To move the natural gas from the ships to the pipelines, it will mean ships will have to remain at the dock upward of six days, instead of 24 hours such as in Everett, Mass., where there is an LNG facility.

The natural gas will be offloaded into a regasification unit located near the pier. Once converted, the gas will be piped to the Maritimes & Northeast pipeline near Route 9 that carries gas from Nova Scotia to Boston.

Brian Smith said he and his father were thrilled. “We are … very appreciative of the tribal council and the tribe to be moving forward in a project that not only is going to benefit the tribe here at Pleasant Point, but also all of Washington County and the entire region,” he said.

Opponents said petitions might be circulated to recall tribal Gov. Melvin Francis and the councilors who favored the project.

The governor said the people had the right to ask for a recall, but he reminded everyone that he had campaigned on a platform of economic development. “People out there are looking for economic development. If it’s not LNG, it will be something else,” he said.

Tribal attorney Craig Francis said he could not predict what grounds the opponents might rely on. “I can’t foresee any reason legitimately how they can create a legal battle, but that’s always a potential,” he said.

Francis admitted it had been a tough decision. “People feel passionately one way or the other,” he said. “It’s nice to think that the potential for this project is going to continue to move forward, and we have [a] meaningful form of economic development here.”

But Deanna Francis called the vote a “sellout.”

“They totally refused to listen to the people. …We are the people of the dawn, and they have now taken the sun away from the people of the dawn,” she said.

Holding up a picture of money, Francis said, “This will be their sunrise.”

Tribal member Gracie Davis, who several years ago was honored for her work in preserving the tribe’s language and culture, had tears in her eyes. “They sold us. I told him [Gov. Melvin Francis] I was ashamed of him, and I’m ashamed of those council members that sold us,” she said.

Davis took exception when proponent Linda Lingley laughed. “You can laugh all you want, Linda. You’re going to be sorry because you don’t have those traditional values. That’s why,” she said.

But Lingley charged that Davis sold out the tribe when she supported the 1980 Indian Land Claims Settlement. Lingley then dumped trash on the ground. “Tell the news media about your secret garbage,” she said. It was unclear where Lingley had collected the garbage from, but one opponent speculated it may have been from Split Rock.

Opponent Vera Francis said she was concerned because the tribal council had rushed the meeting and would not allow comment. “We were refused any opportunity to participate in our process,” she said.

“It’s those white people who want to take over the reservation,” a woman yelled to the media.

Councilor Hilda Lewis was the only elected tribal official other than the governor who answered questions from the media. She said the vote was railroaded through the council. “This is their strategy. This is Don Smith and Baby Smith’s strategy,” she said, referring to Smith’s son.

“They think it’s over with, they think they’ve won, but they have not. They did not even allow our people to speak, and to me that is a travesty,” she said.

Lewis vowed she would fight the project. “I will lay in front of the damn bulldozer,” she said.

Although rumors suggest a huge relocation of tribal members, Brian Smith said that was not true. He said only one person who lives in a trailer near the site would have to be relocated. “No significant change in terms of schools or rec center or anything like that,” he said.

In addition to the business advantages of the project, Smith said there were also personal ones.

“There’s a personal interest just from the relationships that we’ve cultivated here in Washington County and the people we’ve come to know here,” he said. “People here are anxious to have a location where their children, if they want, remain here, or can return here sometime in the future.

“So from that standpoint, this is a wonderful opportunity to provide a long-lasting economic foundation on which this entire county can sit, and we are thrilled to be involved in a facility that will improve the environment,” he said. “Natural gas, as everybody knows, is relatively clean-burning when compared with coal and oil. The natural gas that this facility will import will allow us to replace coal and oil in everything from home heating fuels to power production,” he said.

In March, the town of Perry voted against locating the LNG facility near that community.