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CARRYING A PEACE PIPE during the traditional dancing at Indian Day on August 10 is Dottie Barnes, followed by Passamaquoddy Indian Township Governor William Nicholas and Sipayik Chief Rick Phillips Doyle. (Edward French photo) |
New passport cards
are less expensive |
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Canadian organization affirms opposition to 3 LNG proposals |
by Susan Esposito |
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by Marie Jones Holmes |
The new U.S. passport card may be the solution for Mainers, used to driving back and forth to Canada, who feel that regular passports are too expensive. Although it can't be used for air travel, the card will cost less than U.S. passports and will provide proof of citizenship when traveling between countries on the North American continent by land or sea.
"The passport card for a first-time applicant is $45, compared to $100 for a passport," says Tracy DiGiacomo, a customer service manager for the U.S. Department of State. "If you already have a valid passport and want a passport card because you like the convenience of being able to stick it in your wallet, the cost is only $20."
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“We will use every legal and diplomatic means to defend our position," said Charlotte County Member of Parliament Greg Thompson, the guest speaker at the annual general meeting of Save Passamaquoddy Bay/Canada, an organization dedicated to opposing the three proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities for the Maine side of Passamaquoddy Bay. "It's a no-go zone," stated Thompson.
The August 20 meeting was held in St. Andrews and drew a standing-room-only crowd. Many interested participants were turned away because of fire-safety regulations. |
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Kent Island seeker of Fog Heaven remembered |
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by Brian Dalzell |
Were anyone devoted enough to undertake a lifelong study of the nature of fog, one couldn't stumble upon a much better spot than mist-shrouded Kent Island, one of the small Three Islands group south of Grand Manan in the Bay of Fundy C justly famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view) for its lingering pea-soup fogs.
And it was here in 1937 that a young meteorological student from Cambridge, Mass., Robert "Bob" Cunningham, fell headlong into his fascination with fog, one that was to become a consuming lifelong passion. By his own admission, his investigations into the fogs of Kent Island, stretching over a period of some 70 years, revealed nothing spectacular. However, many would beg to differ.
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For instance, during the 1970s and 1980s, when acid rain was more of a problem than it is today, Dr. Cunningham, who earned his doctorate in 1952, documented fog samples at Kent Island that were as acidic as vinegar. As one could well imagine, a constant bath of acid fog greatly damaged the coastal conifer forests of Maine and Maritime Canada, which Bob nicely documented in a paper he co-authored in 1989.
Simply titled "Impact of Acid Fog and Ozone on Coastal Red Spruce" and published in the journal Water, Air and Soil Pollution, it used data collected from Kent Island and several other sites along the Maine coast to prove that acid fog was dissolving the protective waxy coating found on spruce needles. What many coastal
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| Wood-pellet plan derailed by new project |
| by Edward French |
A proposal to develop a wood-pellet manufacturing facility at the former Louisiana-Pacific (LP) oriented strand board (OSB) mill in Baileyville is no longer being considered, because a proposal by another company to convert the mill to a waste-to-energy plant appears to have derailed the project. The German-based company that put forward the wood-pellet proposal still might be interested in a facility in Washington County.
The wood pellets would have been shipped through the port of Eastport to markets in Europe, and the Eastport Port Authority had been proceeding with the necessary permitting to build the necessary infrastructure, including three silos at the Estes Head terminal. The port authority had been working with the company, Enligna, since last November.
Negotiations for Enligna to purchase the LP mill, though, did not proceed, as LP set stipulations centered around the supply of wood, since the company still is in the wood business in Maine, according to Eastport Port Director Chris Gardner. Port officials spoke with the governor's office to help with negotiations, and although both the governor and state Senator Kevin Raye were helpful, the negotiations did not take place. "It's a major setback," says Gardner, but he notes that the port will continue to work with Enligna to find a site for a wood-pellet manufacturing operation in Washington County that would be close to the port. The company recently opened a sawmill and pellet mill in Nova Scotia, with a capacity of 120,000 tons of pellets and 500,000 tons of wood shavings per year, and is opening another pellet mill in California.
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Second plan filed for tidal project in Lubec Narrows |
| by Marie Jones Holmes |
On March 11, 2008, Tidewalker Associates filed a preliminary permit application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) proposing to study the feasibility of a tidal power project to be located in the Lubec Narrows. The proposed Quoddy Roads Project would consist of 179 sea-current generating units having a total installed capacity of 37.95 megawatts, proposed transmission line, and appurtenant facilities. The Tidewalker project would have an average annual generation of 82.34 gigawatt-hours, which would be sold to a local utility.
The Quoddy Roads site is southeast of the Lubec Channel Lighthouse and located in U.S. waters. Tidewalker Associates applicant Normand Laberge of Trescott says, "We are interested in the hydrokinetic aspects of the project. Hydrokinetic power projects generate electricity exclusively from moving water such as river currents, tidal currents and ocean currents
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