Last month, I travelled to the Pleasant Point Reservation near Perry, Me., to speak to people in the Passamaquoddy community and surrounding area about a controversial proposal: An Oklahoma-based company called Quoddy Bay LNG wants to lease land from the Pleasant Point Reservation to build a liquefied natural gas facility.
The reservation is home to about 1,000 Passamaquoddy people. Tribal members live in Pleasant Point and in Indian Township, another reservation located north of Calais. And several tribal members live across the border in and around the area of St. Andrew’s, N.B.
In 2003, Pleasant Point Reservation council representatives approached Quoddy Bay LNG with an offer to lease tribal land to build the LNG facility. At the time, the company was looking for a location to build a liquefied natural gas operation in New England. A year later, the reservation held a referendum on whether or not to host the LNG plant. A majority of tribal members voted in favour of the facility being built in their community.
Quoddy Bay LNG wants to construct a jetty in an area of the reservation called Split Rock, along the shoreline of Passamaquoddy Bay. The jetty would extend out about 500 metres from the shoreline, so larger tanker ships carrying liquefied natural gas could unload. The gas would be sent through pipes to three large storage tankers located three kilometres inland, and then delivered through the Maritimes and Northeast Pipeline to customers in the New England area. If the proposal is approved by the United States Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, natural gas could start flowing from the Pleasant Point facility as early as the winter of 2009.
Passamaquoddy tribal leaders in Pleasant Point are willing to lease the land to Quoddy Bay LNG because the community needs the money to maintain basic infrastructure, such as water and sewage treatment facilities, emergency fire services and education.
According to Ed Basset, who works in the environmental department with the Passamaquoddy tribal council, the tribe has an annual budget of $1 million. The money the tribe received from the United States in 1980, under the land claims settlement act, is nearly gone. The tribe will get anywhere from $2 million to $12 million from the LNG project, depending on how much natural gas flows through the pipes from the shoreline facility.
Pleasant Point tribal council member Dale Mitchell concedes that the lease signed with Quoddy Bay LNG won’t be the ultimate answer to the tribe’s financial situation. But he says money “could be a very good spring board by which to be able to build other infrastructure” for the reservation, such as programs to promote and preserve the Passamaquoddy language and programs. And the lease also includes employment opportunities for tribal members and for other communities surrounding the reservation.
But there is a group, with representatives from both sides of the Canada-U.S. border, that opposes the idea of a liquefied natural gas facility anywhere along Passamaquoddy Bay. The Three Nation Alliance to Save Passamquoddy Bay is made up of several tribal members from Pleasant Point, as well as people from the nearby community of Eastport, the town of St. Andrew’s in New Brunswick and the St. Croix-Scoodic Passamaquoddy Band in the St. Andrew’s area.
The group is concerned about the large ships navigating safely through the many islands located in Passamaquoddy Bay. Its members don’t want to see an accident happen in the bay similar to the ferry sinking in British Columbia in March. They also want to preserve the bay’s natural beauty.
The Passamaquoddy Band of St. Croix-Scoodic shares the same concerns as the group in Eastport. Chief Hugh Akagi is already concerned about the overfishing and pollution coming down the bay. For Akagi, allowing another industry to move into the Passamaquoddy Bay will mean inviting more problems to an already stressed area.
The Three Nation Alliance is hoping that the Canadian government can help it in its fight to stop construction of the LNG facility from going ahead. The tankers must enter Canadian waters in Passamaquoddy Bay in order to reach the proposed facility in Pleasant Point. The group wants the newly elected Conservative government to refuse passage to the LNG tankers.
During the last federal election campaign, Conservatives promised to block the LNG tankers from entering Canadian waters in Passamaquoddy Bay if elected. The opponents of the LNG facility, on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border, hope the new Conservative government keeps its election promise.
Maureen Googoo is a Mi’kmaq journalist based in Halifax.
