Searsport -
A proposed gas terminal might change the look of the Searsport shoreline. DCP Midstream, which is headquartered in Colorado, says its plan will help the propane market throughout the Northeast. But the project has raised concerns for some residents of Searsport.
"Once we started talking amongst ourselves, we realized that if something like this comes in, it's going to have a huge economic impact but not necessarily in a way that fosters what we see as quality of life," said Astrig Tanguay.
Tanguay owns the Searsport Shores Campground with her husband. She says citizens have a number of issues with the proposal including the size of the tank, noise, smog, and safety.
One major concern is the means of transporting the fuel. The terminal is permitted for hundreds of tanker trucks to travel there everyday. But a spokesperson for DCP Midstream says it's unlikely to reach that amount.
"In actuality, it would be more like 50 trucks and those trucks are already driving through the area, they're just not stopping in Searsport," said Roz Elliott, DCP Midstream spokesperson.
But Tanguay says even that number is more than Searsport and neighboring communities would like on their roads.
"These trucks are going to be on Route 3, Route 1, Route 1A, going up to Ellsworth, going down to Deer Isle and Stonington and if we become a major trucking corridor, then we will change the face of Penobscot Bay," said Tanguay.
DCP Midstream says the changes will be positive ones for both Maine and other states in the Northeast. Among those is job creation.
"The propane facility would bring about 12 to 15 highly skilled jobs that we would prefer to hire and train locally. That's usually our intent. And we would bring in hundreds of construction jobs to the area to built the plant," said Elliott.
Tanguay and others in town are hoping to get more people talking about the proposal.
But while they're doing that, DCP Midstream is working on securing its state and federal permits. The company gave no specific timeline for when they'd like to start building.
Other Conoco-Phillips-Spectra representatives have already acknowledged publicly they expect up to 288 daily one-way trips to and from the proposed Searsport LPG terminal. But this high a number of self-propelled 100,000-pound propane bombs, they insist, probably won't be found rolling down Route 1 every day of the year. When asked when it will be this high a figure, they are forced to sheepishly answer, well, uh, during the icy, snowbound winter months. Some consolation.
Ms. Elliott goes on to fib when she states such a number of trucks is already moving through the area, just not stopping in Searsport. DCP Midstream currently doesn't have a marine terminal in Maine. It has one, however, in a densely populated area in Providence, RI, where, it may reasonably be presumed, its liability insurance is exceptionally high. At present the company's propane flows into our state from Providence in railroad tankcars and in tanker trucks that are most likely to use major highway arteries like I-95, not what amounts to Main Street for the Midcoast.
Searsport may be home to a small twin-pier utility port at Mack Point but its chief attraction for the corporate directors in Houston and Denver is that by comparison with Providence it and the surrounding upper Penobscot Bay area have a much lighter density of population and property. If this monstrously large tank were to go up (if you're not aware this is far from an alarmist supposition and could never happen, look up on YouTube the spectacular fireball explosion that rocked Toronto only three years ago as well as numerous other propane-related disasters) the company wouldn't have to deal with quite as large a catastrophic liability payoff and the consequent insurance premiums. With outfits like Conoco-Phillips-Spectra and its assorted LLC fronts like DCP Midstream, it's always about the money.
Ms. Elliott also bends the truth more than a little when she claims 12 to 15 "highly skilled" permanent jobs would be created. This is nonsense. These are filling station jobs. And, more importantly, the tradeoff in existing good local jobs that would be lost as a result of this project is many times that figure, to say nothing of other seriously negative economic impacts to small businesses and to the value of residential property owners.
Public alarm over the implications of this project is growing fast, as witness Wednesday evening's packed public information session turnout at the Searsport Town Hall (far more people than showed up for the annual town meeting). The surrounding communities, whose economics and way of life would also be seriously compromised by this deeply flawed development proposal, will have a further opportunity to examine the issues when the same concerned citizens who launched Thanks but No Tank conduct another such public information session Thursday evening, Nov. 3, from 6 to 8 pm at the Belfast Free Library.
Add your Comments