DCP Gasbaggers descend upon Searsport, and get rebuffed.

DCP Public relations flack Roz Elliott tells it like it isn't.

SEARSPORT. Big Carbon came in  a convoy of a dozen cars from some other state today, massing in the compound  they set up on Route 1, with a view of  the Mack Point coastal  forest they propose slaying, before descending upon Union Hall in Searsport Thursday evening.

DCP Midstream's corporadoes were worried. Local businesses, pleased with their sustainable resort and scenery based economies of the area, had gotten the People to Rise in defense of their own livelihoods, and a moratorium - four letter word to industry - is due to be voted on by the citizens March 10th..

That simply could not be allowed to stand, DCP decided.  While the Fix was in, (filthy lucre dangled temptingly in all the right places) the pesky citizens were trying to delay, delay, delay, delay.  Time is money, DCP's bean counters fretted.  The command came down from Denver:  The Searsport moratorium ordinance must be voted down.  And so the ponderous yet lethal public relations machine swung into action, fueled by the bottomless pockets of Conoco Phillips and Spectra.

And THAT  had brought DCP Public Relations Officer Roz Elliot and her team from their scattered studios in  Denver, Houston and New York to this tiny town, clutching copies of  "Propane For Maine"  on their ipads fresh from DCP's "mad men

The event was orchestrated by DCP'as hired leagle attack dog, the appropriately named attorney JT Kilbreth from the Portland law firm Verrill-Dana.  Kilbreth spoke not, but all around him swirled the sound and fury team as the public relations crew worked the room full of Searsporters.

The industrial propagandists were attempting the public relations dance of their lives: trying to convince the people of Searsport that voting for the proposed protective moratorium on March 10th would actually be attacking the town  itself. Could an "Ignorance is bliss" campaign succeed? they wondered.  The answer they later learned: 

NO. The audience was hostile to DCP's crude attempt at divide-and-conquer!  Ginger Root  watched her people tonight and  and saw:

"COURAGE
Bravery
Intelligence
Beauty
Organizational skills
Persistence
Perservation
Creativity
Generosity
and sooooooooooooooooo much more."

LOCATION: UNION HALL. SEARSPORT  The People had brought a scale model of the tank and flaretower nightmare  That hoary chamber, from its galleries above to the stage below, has resounded to the great debates of war, peace, civil rights, politics and science. But tonight it rang with the eerie phrases of  a superpowered propane industry giant.
 
DCP-Midstream, a shared subsidiary of Conoco Oil and Spectra Energy  was ordered by Corporate  to attempt to set up eastern North America's biggest Liquified Petroleum Gas.

Flattening 30 acres of the Mack Point coastal forest would be an acceptable loss, they decided.  A beautiful and ancient buffer that shields the tourist eyes on scenically busy Route one from the discreetly low relief energy tank farms already there supply petroleum as fuel and heat. None of the existing bakers dozen tanks there are anywhere near the scenic skyline.

That "view", which is shared profitably by a dozen towns, would become a new form of  dominant scenic feature, by day and, thanks to its flare towers and aviation lighting,a mini-Mordor by nigh.

Yet "mini Mordor" for how long?  Once the tank is in, the gas will be used to industrialize the upper bay.. GAC will either be  flattened and turned into an other tank farm  And Sears Island would become half-industrialized - since Mack Point will have been paved already.

So that's the slippery gassy slope that DCP's project will create if it is built.  The amount of chronic water pollution from all the associated gas-burning companies it would stimulate will chronically foul Penobscot Bay's very limited upper estuary the cod and sturgeon spawning grounds of upper Pen  Bay's Long Cove, Searsport Harbor and Stockton Harbor  and the greate rtidal river estuary for decades to come. As lobsters and other living marine resources fail, the Island Institute will start holding yearly conferences on "healing our troubled bay" .

So desperate is  DCP to get its mammoth supertank-Five times as high as the existing tanks up that they swear they will forebear  corporate welfare to get it.

In their chief propaganda piece  "Propane For Maine"
DCP's "mad men" wrote: 

  "DCP is willing and wanting to pay their fair share to their host communities. The project will provide additional tax revenue to the town of Searsport."

HA !
HA!
HA!

STAY TUNED....