Maine Tribe Offers Home for Natural Gas Depot

Published August 16, 2004 at 12:00 AM EDT

Tribal representative Fred Moore walks along the proposed LNG depot site, a deep-water cove in Passamaquoddy Bay less than two miles from New Brunswick's territorial waters.

Passamaquoddy tribal governor Melvin Francis stands at the site proposed for the LNG facility.

The drive to bring more natural gas into U.S. markets has touched off fights in coastal communities. Now, the impoverished Passamaquoddy tribe of eastern Maine is offering up a quarter of its tiny reservation, on a pristine part of the coast, for a $300 million liquefied natural gas facility.

The Pleasant Point reservation is picturesque but poor: As many as half of the tribe's 1,600 members are unemployed. Tribal leaders believe a depot for liquefied natural gas, or LNG, will improve those numbers. But some Passamaquoddies -- and their neighbors -- worry that this high-tech vision might erode traditional culture and the local environment. Fred Bever reports.

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