Thanks But No Tank! Reaching out to the bottlenecked tourists of coastal Route 1

I walked through the Thanks But No Tank! demo in Searsport on Sunday. Great!!    Spanning all ages, they lined BOTH sides of Main Street, as well as a tiny pocket park that the quiet demonstrators overflowed from.

Like Wiscasset, Searsport's lovely downtown Route One bottleneck brings the great stream of Midcoast Maine's scenic summer travellers to a crawl through its small historic zone.

Thanks But No Tank!ers took the opportunity to inform thousands of these tourists  parading slowly through their town of the peril that a proposed supersize Liquified Propane Gas tank  & terminal presents to traveler and Searsport area resident alike. 

The location was chosen was well away from the entry exit of the Penobscot Marine Museum, to avoid exacerbating the general slowdown any further. 

DCP tank farm would replace forest in lower left of photo.
Note US Route 1, at left above Long Cove

The 22 and a half million gallon LPG tank proposed by Denver-based DCP Midstream  would hulk over scenic North Searsport, over Cape Jellison, and would be a regional eyesore, becoming the dominant "scenic" feature of a dozen tourism dependent bay towns.  

The citizen activists were a colorful mosaic of signs and earnest, smiling faces to those slowly going by. The tourists had the leisure to read their sign messages and info broadsheets.

The tourists learned that if a catastrophe ever took place there, the explosion at the giant tank would engulf them, as well as the oil and gas tank farm tucked  out of sight on lower Mack Point, and the GAC Chemical complex on neighboring Kidder Point. 

Not wanting to slow the bottled-necked travelers any further, however, the No Tank!ers were mostly silent, letting the toots and honks of supportive drivers passing by speak itself of the support for their cause.

Many of the tourists visiting Searsport on foot, however, had the chance to discuss the issues at length with the Thanks but No Tank!ers and their allies from neighboring towns. 

Many signed the signup sheet and caused the pile of Thanks But No Tank! buttons to shrink away.  

For more infomation, go to http://tbnt.org