Lesley Pinder knows that if her neighbors make a mistake, people could die.

So the Deer Island, New Brunswick, doctor has immersed herself in the LNG imbroglio, including organizing fellow seagoing sailors this summer to form a flotilla to protest the planned construction of liquefied natural gas terminals in neighboring Washington County in Maine. She plans a similar protest next year.

Her neighbors on Campobello Island and in St. Andrews also are concerned.

Pinder has been the island’s only doctor for nearly 30 years.

The island was first inhabited in 1770. It is 10 miles long and 3 miles wide. About 1,000 people live there.

The islanders, like their ancestors, depend on the sea for a living. There are several marinas packed tight with colorful boats, lobster traps and fishing gear stacked nearby. When the fishermen aren’t fishing for lobsters, they are dragging for scallops or fishing for herring.

Those who don’t fish have carved out a living from the tourists who gather on the island each summer. There are restaurants and gift shops featuring local artisans and artists.

You reach the island by ferry out of St. George year-round and by way of Campobello Island and Eastport, Maine, during the summer. Islanders boast that their home is located halfway between the North Pole and the Equator.

Traveling around the island is

simple. You get off the ferry and the road forks left and right. Either way it takes you to the other end of the island.

Deer Island shares the bay with neighboring Washington County.

That bay is up for grabs. LNG terminals have been proposed for the Maine communities of Split Rock at Pleasant Point, Robbinston and Red Beach, near Calais.

Until a year ago, liquefied natural gas was something that existed in someone else’s backyard.

Then stories appeared in daily newspapers about proposed sites in Harpswell, Sears Island and Gouldsboro. Those Maine communities eventually turned their backs on the developers.

But not Washington County.

The first developer to appear on the scene was the Oklahoma-based Quoddy Bay LLC. It struck a deal with the Passamaquoddy Tribe at Pleasant Point. It hopes to build a terminal at Split Rock on the Pleasant Point Reservation near Eastport. It wants to build storage tanks in neighboring Perry or Robbinston. Its site would look across the bay to Deer Island.

The second developer, Washington, D.C.-based Downeast LNG, hopes to build a terminal on land it has optioned in Robbinston. The proposed site looks across at St. Andrews.

The third developer, Washington County-based St. Croix Development, plans to build a terminal and storage tank facility in Red Beach. That site would face Bayside, near St. Stephen.

Plans call for natural gas that has been cooled to its liquid state at minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit to be brought in from foreign countries by huge tankers and unloaded into storage tanks. Ultimately, the product is piped to Boston.

The rapid-fire unveiling of first one, then two and now three developers has islanders, including Pinder, scratching their heads.

When she is not in an examining room, she is in her office. Journals and a chalkboard, a symbol of the building’s schoolhouse past, surround her there.

Pinder is curious why the developers have not been to the island to talk with her and others. She is concerned about safety issues. If something did happen, she said, Canada would have everything to lose. “We get to pay costs for security, and we get nothing,” she said. “We lose everything – our way of life, fishing, tourism, the freedom of movement, our sovereignty. We lose it all. We might as well pack up and move somewhere else.”

But the developers are willing to talk. They just need an invitation.

Dean Girdis, president of Downeast LNG, said recently he hasn’t been invited to either of the islands, but he has been in discussions with town officials in St. Andrews to meet publicly with folks there.

Brian Smith, project manager for Quoddy Bay LLC, said he, too, would welcome a dialogue. He said he has spoken with several fishermen’s groups but has received no other invitation.

Fred Moore of St. Croix Development said he would welcome a constructive dialogue but that he would not participate in an LNG bash session. “I will not get involved in shouting matches, dog and pony shows and lynch mobs,” he said.

Moore was referring to a meeting held earlier this year in St. Andrews that began as an information session and ended as an anti-LNG rally. “If people are civil and respectful, we will expect to be engaged, and we would love the opportunity to explain various aspects of the project,” he said.

The islanders said they were willing to talk. Among their concerns are the impact an LNG terminal would have on tourism, the environment and safety. They also want to know who would pay to beef up their volunteer fire departments and ambulance services.

Deer Island Fire Chief Bill Stuart said his fire station would be on the front line if an LNG terminal were built across the bay. The all-volunteer fire department has two tank trucks and a rescue van.

“I want to know where the money is going to come from for all the [fire] equipment,” he said. “Being a volunteer fire department, we would have to become a full-time system, just the same as the major metropolitan cities.”

Joyce Stuart, chairperson of the West Isles Local Service Advisory Council, the island’s government, said no one has hinted at who would pay if additional emergency equipment were needed. She fears the cost would fall on property owners.

“The federal and provincial government would have to come in and help, because it’s more than our tax base could take,” she said.

Girdis said the communities that would be affected by his project would be compensated. “As was said in relation to the U.S. side of this, the cost associated with safety costs for the project, they should be covered by the project, and that includes other communities. I frankly think we need to look at that on the other side as well,” he said.

Smith agreed. “Any security increases or emergency response increases that are necessary will be paid for by Quoddy Bay,” he said.

“This will be new ground for cooperation between the U.S. Coast Guard, Transport Canada and the Canadian Coast Guard to make sure it is safe on both sides of the border, and we will be looking forward to working together with all of the agencies,” he said.

Moore said he doesn’t have enough information to address the issue. “Somebody first needs to make a decision that they are required to beef up their public safety apparatus. If they determine they need to do that … that is purely their business. They can’t expect me to answer that question for them as to who is going to pay for it. I am not familiar with how they raise revenue or generate revenue.”

Although “who pays” was a major theme, the islanders have other issues.

Stan Lord, who during the summer operates a private ferry company between Campobello Island and Deer Island and Eastport and Deer Island, wonders whether the LNG tankers would interfere with his ferry service.

Deer Island fisherman Reid Brown wonders what impact the huge LNG tankers would have on his business. He fishes for lobster and owns herring weirs. “We fish exactly where the proposed [tankers will be coming in],” he said.

Diane Bustin, who owns a restaurant, is worried about what LNG will do to tourism. “I’d be out of business. People here come to see this,” she said, pointing at the bay’s surge of blue waves. “They don’t come here to see tankers.”

Deer Island residents aren’t the only ones who have a grim face this Christmas.

Campobello Island residents also are unhappy.

The island’s centerpiece is the 2,600-acre Roosevelt-Campobello International Park, once the summer home of President Franklin Roosevelt.

The island has a rich and varied history. The first visitors to the island were explorer Sieur de Mons and cartographer Samuel de Champlain. That was in 1604. The island is connected to Lubec, Maine, by a bridge.

Although they also are concerned about tourism and safety, Campobello residents want to talk about the environment and the impact the ships might have on marine life.

Joe Howlett of the Campobello Whale Rescue Team worries about the whales. Last year, he said, three whales became entangled in fishnets or lobster rope. He fears that an increase in large ship traffic could lead to whales being struck. Howlett said that right, finback and humpback whales visit the area.

“Right whales are about 25 miles from here offshore,” he said. Only about 300 right whales exist. “That’s their breeding and feeding grounds for the summer,” he said, “and most of them come to the Bay of Fundy in the summertime.”

John Malloch owns a successful aquaculture business on the island. He is concerned about his fish-rearing pens. He said he wanted to ask the developers about proposed exclusion zones that could interfere with his boats reaching his pens.