Hard Test for Maine

As supertankers get bigger and bigger, they can put into fewer and fewer ports. The U.S.'s entire Eastern seaboard contains only a few harbors deep enough to accommodate the great ships, and all are in Maine--on a coast famous for its beauty, sailing and fishing. To protect this unspoiled area from the danger of laden tankers foundering in treacherous, often fogbound waters, the state last year enacted strong environmental laws with stiff penalties on oil spills (TIME, Feb. 16, 1970). Last week, at hearings before Maine's Environmental Improvement Commission, those laws met their severest test to date.

Protagonist of the hearings was a little-known development company called Maine Clean Fuels, Inc., which is armed with precious federal permission to import foreign crude and residual oil. Clean Fuels wants to build--but not operate --a $150 million oil-desulfurization plant at the head of glorious Penobscot Bay. The proposed site: the little town of Searsport (pop. 1,800), a drab, faded conglomeration of weather-beaten brick buildings, a railroad depot, an oil tank farm and a Purina Dog Chow silo. Though Clean Fuels had previously been turned down by both Riverhead, N.Y., and South Portland, Me., it was in effect invited to Searsport, whose selectmen have already approved the 200,000-barrels-a-day refinery. "I'm not for pollution," says Paul Staples, owner of a Searsport hardware store. "But if we don't get some added industry, Searsport may just kind of peter out."

Free Sewage. In presenting its case, Clean Fuels stresses potential economic benefits: new jobs both in the refinery and in byproduct industries, bigger municipal tax revenues, lower fuel prices. In addition, says Company President David Scoll, a former admiralty lawyer, possible oil spills will be contained during loading and unloading by bubbling air curtains and booms. To avert collisions, tankers will use special guidance systems. The refinery will be equipped with antipollution devices. As a bonus, Clean Fuels has even offered to treat Searsport's sewage--free.

Most area residents remain unimpressed. At last week's hearings in the Searsport high school gym, many charged that the highly automated refinery would not create many new jobs. But the biggest problem of all --one that has already caused 13 townships around Penobscot Bay to oppose the project--is the danger to the local fishing and tourist industries. Scientists testified that oil was "an environmental poison" with long aftereffects. Ossie Beal, president of the Maine Lobstermen's Association, contends that tankers and barges would sweep away most of the 186,000 lobster pots in the bay. "If there was an oil spill," he says, "well, we'd be out of business down here."

Challenge Ahead. The most convincing argument against the proposal was supplied by Clean Fuels itself. The company demonstrated at the hearings that it had not developed detailed plans for its refinery. Questions about such basics as the adequacy of local freshwater supplies and even the size of the plant were not definitely answered. Warned Donaldson Koons, chairman of the Environmental Improvement Commission: "You know we need some hard information before we can make a decision." Although that kind of prerequisite is customarily respected by big oil companies, Scoll argued: "How can anyone expect us to spend $1,000,000 and eight months designing a refinery before we know we can build it?"

The commission must reach a decision next month. Whoever wins, the loser probably will challenge the constitutionality of Maine's laws in the courts. Whatever the outcome of that challenge, the hearings have already proved how complicated environmental cases are getting. The commission, empowered last year specifically to protect Maine's environment, must now consider hard economic questions about new jobs and income as well. While the proposed Searsport refinery would create a serious risk of oil pollution in its own environs, the desulfurized oil that it is meant to produce would, when marketed, lessen air pollution over the big cities of the Eastern seaboard.

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