SEARSPORT, Maine — As a crowd of about 200 people listened — sometimes adding audible boos and derisive laughter — officials from DCP Midstream on Tuesday night talked a lot about the company’s proposed $40 million, 23-million-gallon liquid propane tank.
It was the second of four public hearings about the liquid propane tank and terminal project to be held this week in the Searsport District High School cafeteria by the town planning board.
Different company experts presented in detail information about the project’s visual impact, safety considerations and the reason why Denver-based DCP Midstream wants to locate it in Searsport. They were trying to assuage some of the concerns that have spread widely around the midcoast region over the nearly two years that the project has been in the planning stages.
“Propane is a very clean, nontoxic energy source, and very applicable to a rural area,” Don Baldridge, the company’s senior vice president for marketing and logistics, told the board members. “We saw the need for an additional supply … DCP has a long history of being in New England. We have a long-term commitment to this market. We think the Searsport location is a logical site for the facility.”
If the Searsport planning board accepts the company’s application, the tank and terminal will be built in the Mack Point industrial zone, which already is home to other, smaller tanks.
At the end of the two-hour presentation by Baldridge and other company officials, planning board members and those granted “interested party status” took about an hour and a half to question those same people. The board gave that status distinction Monday night to several individuals and groups that hope to persuade members that the project should be denied.
Dr. Phani K. Raj, an industry expert, served as a safety assessment consultant for DCP Midstream. He dismissed concerns that include the scenario of a boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion, or BLEVE, in the 14-story high propane storage tank.
“A BLEVE of the main storage tank is impossible,” he said. “An instantaneous full tank spill is an incredible, and extremely unlikely and historically has never occurred, spill scenario.”
He said any liquid fuel that spills from the storage tank would be conveyed into a dike, and showed a short video of a liquid propane gas burning in a controlled setting with him standing in street clothes nearby.
“Please don’t be alarmed by people saying that skin would be dripping off,” he said. “An LPG fire is no different than a gasoline fire.”
Jeff Hurteau of DCP Midstream said that in the event of a power failure, the fuel vapors would be routed to an exterior flare. Ordinarily, the tanks would be maintained at 45 degrees below zero.
“It’s our desire to not operate that flare any more than we absolutely have to,” he said.
Additionally, the flare burns much cleaner than those built in refineries, he said. Other safety features include gas sensors and flame detectors throughout the facility, an automatic fire suppression system and the ability to shut off the fuel supply.
“We feel that this system in itself provides a significant layer of safety and reduce the need for fire assistance from outside,” he said.
Company officials also addressed the question of liability. There are at least two names used in connection with the project.
“DCP Searsport has the full backing of DCP Midstream Partners,” Baldridge said. “DCP Searsport has access to DCP Midstream’s $1 billion credit.”
But interested parties, including Steve Hinchman, the attorney for opposition group Thanks But No Tank, wanted more reassurance.
“So yes or no, will you pay 100 percent of the costs of an accident?” he asked company officials.
DCP Midstream attorney Jamie Kilbreth responded that this was the type of question they would like to hear from the planning board.
“This is not Mr. Hinchman’s job, frankly,” he said, as the crowd booed.
“As an interested party, I have the right to ask questions and receive answers,” Hinchman said.
Baldridge said all the company’s affiliates were covered under an insurance policy.
The public hearings will continue Wednesday night beginning at 6 p.m. in the Searsport District High School cafeteria.
“A BLEVE of the main storage tank is impossible,” he said.” ……….
I know I have heard that before.
If you have info on this please share.
This tank should not be built. We need to reduce the burning of fossil fuels, not increase their use, in order for our children and grandchildren to have a world with a livable climate. Let’s invest in renewables for the future.
you live in a livable climate…because in this ‘climate’ environmentally and economically, you can afford to live on an average wage of an average job…..your world for my grandkids and yours is a world where you cannot live on an average wage. Where because of people like you, who strangles business because of some doomsday climate story or some statistically impossible disaster, our grandkids will have to live offf the government because to live off the income of a job will be next to impossible…due to an economy controlled by the government….you are being used my friend to perpetuate a myth at the expense of yours and my grandkids. My kids will not look at my legacy when they get my age and say ‘shame on you’….truth and right and wrong still have meaning…contrary to what you beleve…
How can you continue to ignore the threat to the envionment that the burning of fossil fuels is ? Wake up, please.
Perhaps your side would enjoy more respect when you “wake up” and treat opponents with some respect. Hoots and “hollers” at such public meetings only make “opponents” appear to have been taken over my Anarchists!
At least the Tea Party folks follow the Golden Rule, can’t say as much for your side.
wt..I agree that civiity and collaboration is what we should always strive to maintain..but not when folk have behaved as DCP has..jeers and ridicule, naming are all important and appropriate under these circumstances.
Remember the Boston tea party..an anarchist uncivil act became necessary to make the point that is a cornerstone of our nation..
Truth and right and wrong DO have meaning. That’s why we have to make difficult choices sometimes. As someone who lives in an inhospitable climate, I am happy to make the difficult choice AWAY from fossil fuels. We have to start sometime.
With you 100%..we have to end our reliance on non renewable fuels in the next 15 years..
LPG comes a by product of oil refining ( also gas) has no place in a thriveable sustainable long term energy policy.
I know.
Never going to happen until it runs out.
Hi Dolby ..actually it has run out in a technical sense..globally we are at post peak oil..the U.S. has been at post peak oil since the mid 70’s..
the first oil out of a well is clean and easy to get with low recovery costs..as it continues to be pumped the cost to recover each gallon gets higher..post peak means it is no longer viable to recover and that means riskier and much more expensive drilling techniques as well as global prices at current levels and rising
..rising faster than in the past decade.
The Bakken discovery and a few other possibilities of new fields may keep us oil independent for the near term,even an exporter in the near term, but we still have no choice but to totally reduce our per capita consumption of all petroleum and petroleum based product ( most plastic and many textiles like polartec) and convert our energy sources to cheap reliable and 100% renewable sources.
If we avoid or delay that we will very shortly have as much as 60 % of our nation at or below poverty because those hard working folk already struggling to keep it together who are just barely above that 47% poverty level will feel it first and hardest as oil product prices rise even faster than they have in the past decade and food prices reach a level where it will take more than 50% of income just for basic food(food prices are very sensitive of oil prices..cot of farm equipment operation and costs of distribution and for argibusiness products the cost of fertilizers and pesticides).
You will see the first edge of that this year ,Dolby.Food prices will spike to crisis levels in 2013 and who will that hurt first and hardest?
That’s the deal Dolby.
Mr Waldo..this tired old polemic of tree huggers vs jobs is stalling out our collaborating, all of us, on a new and sustainable economic vision for the 21st century. This issue is not about environmentalists who oppose all development or people sentimentally clinging to an old quaint vision of a never changing Norman Rockwell Maine.
What you are repeating here is a meme created by the corporatocracy, the plutonomy to further their interests.
And by the way Mr. Waldo if you look at job growth and job creation by sector, green jobs are way ahead of petroleum products in creating and fueling economic growth.
While I agree that we need to reduce the burning of fossil fuels, whenever that topic comes up, the NIMBY crybabies come out of the woodwork because a turbine is ugly, a dam might change some of the landscape, or a tidal generator might hurt a lobster. Please tell me, what do you propose we do? Plans are put into place for renewable energy and then its attacked because of its potential initial impact. If you are so passionate about the doomsday foolishness of climate change, and ignore the fact that we have a gigantic source of natural gasses at our disposal in our own nation that are significantly more cleaner burning than standard coal and oil, then what do we do?
First, you need to accept the fact that humans aren’t going anywhere soon. As we continue further into the future and our population grows, our demand for electricity is going to increase. We can handle it in basically two ways, continue burning and expanding the use of fossil fuels as our main source of energy, or use renewable energy. I am sure you favor renewable energy, as do I, but herein lies the problem…people like you whine when we bring up the fact there will be an initial environmental impact for these renewable sources of energy. We may have to do something so horrendous as cut some trees for turbines and solar panels or slightly impact the natural flow of fish going upstream. So, something has to give. Either we continue to burn and pollute the air and water with fossil fuels, or we make a real effort at building dams, wind turbines, and solar fields to provide us with a true wide spread replacement of our energy needs with renewable sources. But you cannot have it both ways. If you want renewable energy, then there will be an initial environmental impact. So what do you want?
I believe I said I support renewable energy. No energy source will fullfill the wants of a increasingly materialistic, consumer driven ecomomy. There will be sacrifices that will have to be made.You talk about “people like you” but I have not complained or “whinned” about renewables, yet you are quick to accused me of it.
You talk of lobster as being an impediment to tidal hydo generation, but the reality is lobster face decimation by the increase in ocean temp. Already seeing irregularities in lobster dues to that. Or fish when the rivers dry up due to increased droughts brought on by the increasingly extreme climate. The Great Lakes are reportedly 2ft below normal, and the projections get worse from here. The science is real, undeniable.
So what is it you want?
Moonbats against everything
It used to be NIMBY… now it’s become NOPE: Not On Planet Earth and BANANA: Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anybody.
Dr. Raj also would not comment on terror threats. DCP continues to dance loose with the facts. They did finally come up with some images of what the actual tank will look like, although their “3D” images were laughable. They were not 3D and were not to proper scale.
They said they never had to do that before!? Wow, people in Searsport must be sophisticated!
They also touted their safety record, which I admit in New England is good.
Unfortunately, in other states, it really has been pretty bad.
The hoot of the evening was after not cooperating with the Good Harbor safety study, they said, we are cooperating, where is Good Harbor, we are here.
Snotty, legalistic BS, because they know the whole situation has major safety concerns.
I question the potential of the tank BLEVE (recall the Twin Towers could sustain an airplane strike), but no one could BS their way around truck accidents, human error either on or off the facility and certainly cannot explain away terror attacks on a tank so big and close to Rt. 1.
This is a rather cursory almost gossipy coverage of a very significant public policy issue. Would have been nice to try and explain a bit to readers that DCP Searsport LLC at present holds no permits at all ( except one air emmissions permit errorneously issued vy DEP) and that the town has ignored its own ordinance which says that no application may be submitted until all permittingis complete. Would have been nice for this journalist who has covered this story from its inception to mention and explain that Steve Hinchman’s issue with DCP Searport LLC is that it is a paper corporation..it has no employees, no financial capacity fits own..it is justa legal structure to shield and limit the liabiity of DCP Midstream.
Would you enter an agreement with a paper corporation? Is that appropriate for a project of this enormous scale.
I am wondering if the journalist actually went to the hearing or actually did any follow up interviews or made any effort at all to understand the significance of the point Steve Hinchman was making.
That issue is also at the very center of pending application for transfer of the DEP permits issued to DCP Midstream. the main company, to this paper entity DCP Searsport LLC. DEP had earlier refused to issue the permits to DCP Searsport LLC because they had no evidenced ownership interest in the land at Mack Point. It appears they still don’t have that and yet Commissioner Aho now seems to have agreed to transfer the permits in violation of its own policy and too a paper corporation.
The integrity and thoroughness of the 4th estate is essential to democracy. Articles like this do not uphold the place of the 4th estate. It lets “we the people” down and it most especially lets down the thousands of Maine citizens who have done due diligence on the public benefit/community impact issues of this tank.
Yes, I am appalled and surprised there hasn’t been more coverage of this story in the Maine media.
Ybrad..a really important story in the Press Herald by Tux Turkel who specializes in energy issues and questioning why this project has any public benefit at all with the glut of LPG on the market. Even the New England Propane Dealers Associations is quoted as being very cool on this project.
I think what happened here is that a couple of interruptions to supply a few years back created panic about supply & price and DCP built on that panic to promote this project. Legislators bent over backwards to accommodate it no doubt believing it was essential and important to Maine’s energy needs.
A you know public benefit must be demonstrated to obtain permits with environmental concessions such as those granted here. Tux’s article in todays press herald is trying to call public attention to changes which now make the public benefit of this project highly questionable and perhaps make any need for this project obsolete.
When the propane dealers association has cooled on it that should tell folk something about whether we need this tank at all.
The real reason that the tank is on the front burner for the petro-chem industry is because it is a piece of the plan to create the infrastructure to actually export LNG. It fits right in with their plan for the E/W corridor and pipline to bring the gas from the frack fields in NY, Pen, and Ontario to be shipped to Europe. They also need the port deepened to export wood pellets and bio/coal to Europe as well. Such development encourages the increased use of fossil fuels at great cost to the environment, and will change forever the character of the Maine coast.
harvey,
Steve Hinchman, attorney for TBNT has referenced that and it is also in Tux Turkels article today in the business section of the PPH. I don’t know whether LPG infrastructure can be converted to LNG infrastructure or not and in maine LNG at least is a regulated procee and is under the PUC ( where all that has been stripped out of Maine law for LPGto facilitate this project).
Here is what I do know and have observed in my monitoring and research of DCP and of the LPG market globally and nationally:
(1) DCP Midstream is partnership between Phillips 66 ( spun off from Connoco as a totally separate company) and Spectra Energy who are either partners or owners of the already existing Maritime and northeast pipeline.a natural gas pipeline.
(2) a few years ago Searsport fought off a plan to build an LNG terminal there and its new location in East port(??) is not working out and looks like it will not come to pass.
(3) Since the really major reorganization in which all midstream operations were spun off to Philips 66 DCP’s pitches and explanations to investors seem to moving toward natural gas and in LPG towards earning fees from the use of its existing LPG infrastructure
(4) Searsport facility is never mentioned anywhere by DCP in its pitch of important new opportunities or in describing its existing or planned LPG strategy
(5) As Tux discusses at some length in his article in todays PPH business section there is an existing global glut of LPG and in the US a huge surplus looking for ever shrinking markets. It just makes no sense that DCP would be hot to build this facility at $40 million on the off chance that LPG imports may be viable in two years..that just makes no sense at all. That doesn’t mean they really have LNG in mind but it may mean that this facility is not what they say it is..
(6) Mexico major norther hemisphere user of LPG is in the process of switching from LPG to natural gas process which will mean even less demand for LPG and even less likelihood that there will ever be a need to import LPG from anywhere..
So..it is possible there is something to what you & Steve Hinchman and others are beginning to suspect about the real ultimate goal at this site.
Good information. I will check out the PPH. And let others know.
and hopefully we will have a way to share what we find..I am looking into this further as well
Skow has over a dozen social service agencies,halfway houses,homeless shelters,’crisis houses’ and who knows what else. The majority of residents in these social service places did not live in Skowhegan 7 years ago,they moved into Skow for the social service places. The Skowhegan hospital in town has been turned into a mental ward outpatient clinic.
I would trade ALL of the social service agencies in Skow for the propane tank terminal.
In that case, how about swapping for Bangor’s THREE Methadone Clinics?
3? Bangor has what,32000 residents? Major cities with a population of 150000 ,say like Brockton,Mass, only have 1 meth clinic. You guys got it bad in Bangor. Guess Skow aint completely gone like Bangor
“Please don’t be alarmed by people saying that skin would be dripping off,” he said. “An LPG fire is no different than a gasoline fire.” – Oh, that makes me feel SO much better!
boos and laughter??? Really…if the TNBT people want to be taken seriously, seems to me they should grow up and be a bit more respectful.
were you there last night? why would you assume that it was the audience and not DCP’s reps who behaved badly?
“An LPG fire is no different than a gasoline fire”: not very reassuring.
“This is not Mr. Hinchman’s job, frankly”: a community is not a collection of jobs, but people living in the same area. This comment shows that the speaker has no commitment to a basic responsibility of living with others, that you at least listen to their concerns.
One might expect that many of the same posters arguing here against fossil fuels and for alternative energy sources might be more positive about wind turbines but, alas, that’s largely not the case. For some wind energy is objectionable simply because a corporate profit motive is involved. Part of the opposition to LPG in Searsport appears based on the same objection, as though any large-scale employment was ever created absent capitalist incentives. A mindset appears to be in play that holds that no economic development is ever acceptable unless it involves small, local enterprise with minimally discernible environmental or social impact. One need not be a right-wing ideologue to believe that no state or nation can survive on that model. As long as we want public infrastructure and social safety nets, or indeed environmental preservation, we will need to accept that compromises between economic development and local environmental priorities are at times in order. That’s not to prejudge the outcome of Searsport’s review process of the Tank but a little more open-mindedness about the town’s potential as a seaport would not be misplaced.
I really can’t agree at all with your view here,
uhmmmm DCP ‘s nearest equivalent terminal in the Chesapeake employs 2..yes 2* full time employees.
And tankers aren’t like cruise ships..folk aren’t hopping off to have lunch in town or by things for their ships at the local chandlery.
In fact at last night’s hearing DCP said publicly that “only one ship had called so far” at their Chesapeake terminal. This is an economic boom? This justifies a dredging of Searsport Harbor at public expense..the off chance that one tanker might want to make a delivery there..sometime..possibly?
What are they paying for taxes, anyone know? Is it hat much? Is it such a huge amount the town said sure whatever you want just tell us and we’ll do it?
EDIT: 11/30 1:36PM I just re read the EPA 5 year Risk Management report where I had obtained this number (2). Looking at it again I also see a reference to 13 so I am not sure how many employees there are . I do kow that earlier this week DCP said at the hearings that that only once tannker has come to the facility and I do know they claimed 12 employees for this one ( based onn much more activity than seems reasonable to expect now or in the future)
I am ugly that more people attend these meeting than attend their local school board meetings. Searsport is sucking RSU #20 dry and maybe 5 community members will show up at a school board meeting to discuss the problem and possible solutions.
Ms. Curtis has apprenticed herself to a master sycophant to power, Tom Groening, who evidently never heard that the expected role of an honorable journalist is “to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”
True to her mentor, Ms.Curtis has written a thoroughly biased story that focuses not on the outrage of a billion-dollar corporation strong-arming its way into a community centered on Searsport but rather on behavior by citizens of that regional community she chooses to suggest was rude and perhaps even unruly.
And what was the sum total of that outrageousness? Why, that at times during Tuesday evening’s proceedings some of the DCP representatives’ truly outrageous lies and manipulations stirred ripples of derisive laughter in the audience. But I don’t recall hearing anyone actually boo — Planning Board Chairman Bruce Probert shows little tolerance for demonstrative behavior of that sort by the public.
I suppose one could make the case that on one specific occasion some individuals audibly groaned in disgust. I admit I was one of those. That was when DCP lead attorney James T. Killbreth arrogantly dodged what most of those in the audience saw as a perfectly straightforward question — WHETHER BY DESIGN OR BY ACCIDENT, WERE THE PROPOSED MEGA-TANK AND TERMINAL TO SUFFER A CATASTROPHIC EVENT, EXACTLY WHO IS SUPPOSED TO PAY FOR IT?
It’s really too bad when the only representatives of the daily press we have in our area are so hung up on the alleged emotionalism of an audience of concerned citizens that they all but ignore the real people issues.
It’s really too bad how they seem unaware that folks of the Penobscot Bay REGION and their visitors might have legitimate concerns about being physically endangered, the existing economy grievously threatened, a chosen way of life at the tipping point for unwarranted industrialization.
It’s really too bad they’re mostly content to convey the predictable presuppositions and oh-so-reasonable arguments of the company, to play simple stenographer to the dishonest company engineer, to the evasive company lawyer, to the insanely optimistic company marketing executive.
well said and thank you for saying it..I guess you didn’t see abigail there last night?
The pronouncements of Dr. Phani K. Raj concerning the safety of his company’s LPG mega-tank are expectable, but they are also wrong. As I have explained before, LPG does NOT behave or burn the same way as gasoline, except that both must vaporize and mix with air before they can burn. That happens slowly with leaked gasoline, but it happens INSTANTLY with leaked refrigerated propane. Furthermore, gasoline burns at a temperature that is below the melting point of steel whereas propane burns at a temperature that is well above the melting point of steel, thus guaranteeing the rupturing of not only the LPG tank but also all the other fuel storage tanks on Mack Point. And to say that a BLEVE from the tank is impossible is just plain irresponsible. One rocket-propelled grenade from a passing terrorist would do the job very nicely, as would a variety of other disturbing influences from earthquakes to hurricanes.