Robbinston panel to send LNG plans to residents

ROBBINSTON – The town’s five-man planning board listened to the newest liquefied natural gas proposal for an hour Thursday, then agreed the matter should go before selectmen and residents before the panel considers it any further.

“This is all new to everybody,” Dan Merryfield, chairman of the board, said as he closed out a presentation by Quoddy Bay LLC’s project manager, Brian Smith.

Smith was going before the board for the first time and described the company’s plans for a three-tank inland LNG storage facility, proposed for about 30 acres just north of the town line with Perry.

“We want to make this something that this community – and Calais, Perry and Pembroke – can be proud of,” Smith said in conclusion.

“We may be employing an accountant from Calais or a painter from Pembroke. We want to have as much local involvement as possible,” he said.

Smith was describing how the $230 million facility would result in a windfall of jobs, property tax payments and even a bonus $1 million annual “economic development incentive” that would come the town’s way, should local, state and federal permitting be secured over the next year.

The project would support another $200 million project planned by Quoddy Bay, an LNG import facility slated for the Split Rock portion of the Passamaquoddy Tribe’s reservation at Pleasant Point.

The project is the second LNG-related possibility to surface in coastal Robbinston, population 578, in the last two weeks. Downeast LNG, a Washington, D.C., company, has announced its hopes to construct an LNG terminal at Mill Cove, near Robbinston Grade School.

Both projects will likely go before town voters before too long.

“We won’t proceed with this,” Smith said Thursday, “if it doesn’t fit in with what the town wants for itself.”

For the 30 or so residents who showed up at the board meeting to learn more, Smith had on hand copies of the initial site map, a letter introducing the planning board to the project and a copy of the initial one-page application for a land use permit.

He also introduced John Mitchell, the Calais attorney hired by Quoddy Bay to help steer the project through the town’s zoning ordinances.

Mitchell’s previous public involvement with the LNG issue came in March when the town of Perry held a public hearing and Mitchell was selected to serve as the hearing’s neutral moderator. The town paid him $500 for that task.

Mitchell joined forces with Quoddy Bay a few months ago, when Donald Smith, the company president, approached him after the Perry hearing to help them with municipal legalities within Robbinston.

Mitchell told the panel that he has already had some conversations with John Churchill, another Calais attorney, who handles much of the town’s legal matters.

Smith said that Quoddy Bay would easily cover any legal costs incurred by the town in its assessment of the project.

A man in the audience asked if Quoddy Bay were prepared to pay out $1.5 million for legal fees, which, he said, was what the city of Mobile, Ala., had been offered by an LNG company hoping to site its business there.

“One and a half million is way too much,” Smith said. “I can’t imagine that the town [of Robbinston] would be spending $1.5 million on legal fees. We aren’t.”

Responding to another question from a resident, Smith reiterated that between the Split Rock and Robbinston facilities, Quoddy Bay would be creating “between 90 and 100 jobs,” once the two- or three-year construction phases are complete.