October 30, 1973
Page 35392
PASSAMAQUODDY TIDAL POWER PROJECT
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, earlier this month I had the pleasure of travelling to Eastport, Maine. This downeast community, as many of my colleagues may recall, is the site of the Passamaquoddy Bay Tidal Power project, first proposed in 1919 and authorized by the Congress at President Franklin Roosevelt's urging during the 1930's. Work on the site was actually begun during the Depression, but was halted shortly before the outbreak of World War II.
The "Quoddy" project is a dream which has never died and our current energy shortage has rekindled interest in tidal power as an alternative to fossil fuel and nuclear power generation.
In view of this, I would like to share with my colleagues the views of some of my fellow Maine citizens on the contemporary importance of the project, as well as my own response to a recent petition sent to me by the citizens of Eastport and Washington County, Maine.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this material and related documents be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
U.S. SENATE,
Washington, D.C.,
October 14, 1973.
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE ADVOCATES OF THE PASSAMAQUODDY TIDAL POWER PROJECT
DEAR ADVOCATES OF PASSAMAQUODDY: The prospect of a national energy shortage has breathed new life into Dexter Cooper's dream of harnessing the powerful ebb and flow of "Quoddy's" tides.
And well it should. For generations, government and industry have naively based our nation's energy policies upon the apparent assumption that fossil fuels could be obtained in inexpensive, unlimited quantities for an indefinite period into the future. Those who looked beyond fossil fuels, saw nuclear power as the best alternative without, until recently, comprehending the costs to our environment and health.
But in this decade, our demand for energy has outstripped our country's capacity to meet our needs. The price of fossil fuels and safe nuclear generation is rising at a rapid rate and will continue to do so. More importantly, we are coming to realize that our reliance on non-renewable sources of energy cannot continue indefinitely. While energy conservation measures must be an essential part of our national policy, we will still be faced with the task of developing additional power generation facilities in the years ahead.
All of these factors have caused us to look to alternative sources of energy. Tidal power projects, such as the Passamaquoddy project, would have relatively less impact on the environment than existing alternatives and would depend upon a renewable resource. "Quoddy's" twice daily tides, averaging 18.1 feet, could provide 3 billion kilowatt hours of electrical energy annually. Our nation's energy planners should not, and cannot, continue to overlook the potential of a project of this magnitude.
We ought to recognize that with improved underwater construction techniques and the increasing cost of alternative power sources, the cost of constructing "Quoddy", in relation to the benefits which would be derived, is probably far different now than it was a decade ago.
This prospect surely means that the concept of tidal power generation, or of "Quoddy", should not stay on the shelf. It is clear that in the decades ahead we need to develop the necessary, technology to make such renewable sources of energy economically feasible. Fossil fuel plants and nuclear power may well become increasingly impractical and undesirable in the years ahead.
Tidal power, geothermal power, and solar power may be the keys to energy needs in the future.
Research and development of such alternatives must begin now if we are to meet the energy demands anticipated by the year 2000.
On Thursday, President Nixon announced that he would request an additional $115 million for energy research this year, bringing the total amount allocated for this purpose to over $1 billion in FY 1974. On the same day, October 11, a newly created energy research advisory council met for the first time to discuss the directions which such research should take. This is an important step. But it is equally important that this effort in large part be directed toward the development of the type of power generating source represented by "Quoddy".
Dexter Cooper's dream may yet become a reality. It will take time, additional research, and a commitment of financial resources. I continue to share the belief of so many citizens of. Maine who are familiar with the project that the time to begin is now.
For my part, I will continue to demand periodic reviews of the costs and benefits of the Quoddy project, and will encourage the energy advisory council to give tidal power its fullest consideration in drawing up an energy policy plan for the country.
Sincerely yours,
EDMUND S. MUSKIE,
U.S. Senator.
EASTPORT, MAINE,
September, 1973.
Senator EDMUND MUSKIE,
Senate Office Building,
Washington, D.C.
DEAR SENATOR MUSKIE: In the name of humanity, can something be done about the Passamaquoddy Bay tidal power potential? Are not present circumstances unusually favorable to its consideration?
Since there is no question about the widespread need for electrical energy, why could not the Atlantic seaboard justifiably ask this source be utilized?
Publicity appears daily throughout the country regarding every other known method (proven or otherwise), all of which are known to cause pollution, are accident-prone, fantastically costly, scientifically complicated and fraught with some of the deadliest threats to the existence of mankind.
Passamaquoddy tides come and go with their immeasurable power completely wasted, twice daily, entirely free from any and all of the above hazards, and in addition, leaving the entire Atlantic coast as pure and free as to its natural ecology and attendant industries, as at the moment of its creation. Not even such matters as scenic beauty or the perpetuation of precious historical sites would be endangered by the development of such a project.
Certainly an outstanding leader in the preservation of ecological values as your accomplishments have proven, must be ever mindful of the multiple benefits inherent in electric power so derived.
Certain technical "uncertainties" of earlier research have been solved since then. Other tidal projects are in successful operation elsewhere in the world. The mammoth amount of research already done in this connection could lessen both time and cost for a rapid start if the government would break a precedent and demand that such knowledge be utilized for a fast get-away. It could go down in history as one of the modern wonders of accomplishment to meet a dire need, just by the cutting of a lot of unnecessary red tape.
Some of the methods now proposed for energy production are infinitely more complicated than that of tidal power – and their results far less certain. Geothermal plans are admitted by scientists to be fraught with possibilities of chain-reactions including earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
Hydroelectric production continues to seriously increase river pollution. Fall-out with its deadly strontium-90 factor as yet has not been but must be solved, makes the continued building of atomic reactors, a matter of grave concern to scientists in that field. And so it goes! Tidal power is easily the one safe, catastrophe-free method of producing electricity to date. Why isn't it in the picture? Why is everything else discussed, but nary a whisper about those failsafe mammoth tides in a locality so peculiarly arranged to make the most of them? They have not changed a whit since time began! It seems that the East Coast solution to at least a part of the need for energy is a "natural" that shouldn't be ignored any longer by a technological and beneficent government.
Laymen have always supposed that such a perfect situation was the dream of every construction engineer on the face of the globe.
There seem to be more and greater floods, typhoons, earthquakes and droughts everywhere, than in former years. But our tides go on as immutable as ever. And we have them, here on the Maine coast, to just that degree.
Even some of the problems of electrical transmission are not what they were fifty years ago. It can be handled without such loss of energy. We understand that the whole former argument of "feasibility" of such a project is no longer a death-knell to such an undertaking.
The United States Government need not engage in the electrical energy business. It is proposed that this become a project of the electric power companies with as much government cooperation which may be reasonably required.
Such matters as the action of seawater on metals and cement, have been furnished with the necessary data from years of study since the demise of the earlier project, that have greatly changed the picture. It is now of far less uncertainty and magnitude.
And what a boost to the economy in terms of employment! This Quoddy Tidal Power Project seems to be tailormade to the urgency of the national need. It would employ numerous building trades workers from many states idled by the termination of the various H.U.D. programs and public highway projects. Why can't the best minds in our government explore this matter thoroughly but without the usual waste of time and money spent in slow-moving research committees?
We, the undersigned, beseech you to get behind this thing with the leadership qualities we believe you possess.
Sincerely yours,
THE ADVOCATES OF THE PASSAMAQUODDY TIDAL POWER PROJECT.
DEPARTMENT OF SEA AND SHORE FISHERIES,
Augusta, Maine,
March 26, 1973.
Hon. WILLIAM D. HATHAWAY,
Member of Congress,
Washington, D.C.
DEAR SENATOR HATHAWAY: We are very interested in the recent discussions and proposals for a new study of the Quoddy Tidal Power Project.
For more than a year this Department has been trying to develop a capability of assessing the possibility of a power project enhancing fisheries production in the Eastport area. As a matter of fact, a bill (copy enclosed) has been introduced in the 106th Legislature which would enable us to carry out a preliminary study to, in part, assess the compatibility of tidal power projects and substantially increased fisheries production in Cobscook Bay.
You will be aware that in the 1950's, a joint U.S.-Canadian study concluded that the tidal power dams probably would have no serious effect on the existing fisheries of the area and conditions would be enhanced for some species. We are now interested in the more positive possibility that the dams conceivably could be so constructed to produce power and at the same time substantially increase the fishing and aquaculture prospect of Cobscook Bay by controlling and improving the hydrography of the area. We have therefore, within the last year, urged that the power project be reassessed in conjunction with a study of the fishing and aquacultural potential and that the economic benefits of both projects be considered jointly. We were working with Representative Karl Kelley, now deceased, on this project; his widow, now a Representative from Machias, has sponsored an appended bill.
There are literally thousands of acres in Cobscook Bay alone which, with hydrographic control as could be provided by the power dams, could be put under intensive scientific management for greatly increased fishing yields. Of course at this point it is difficult to assess or predict the value of that potential fishery, but there is little doubt that it would be in the order of millions of dollars annually. An attractive aspect of the Cobscook Bay area, of course, is that it is a well defined geographical area which could be managed for this kind of development. It is an area that needs this kind of development which would not displace existing activities to any serious degree. It is for these reasons that we are enthusiastic about the new proposals for Quoddy.
We heartily support your proposals and we would be very happy to provide whatever assistance we can in encouraging a revised appraisal of the possibilities for the area.
Sincerely yours,
SPENCER APOLLONIO, Commissioner.
ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTH LEGISLATURE
LEGISLATIVE DOCUMENT No. 711
H.P. 529, House of Representatives, February 8, 1973.
Referred to Committee on Marine Resources. Sent up for concurrence and ordered printed.
E. LOUISE LINCOLN, Clerk.
Presented by Mrs. Kelley of Machias.
STATE OF MAINE: IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD NINETEEN HUNDRED SEVENTY- THREE
Resolve, Providing for a Feasibility Study of Marine Resources Development in Washington County.
Feasibility study; authorized. Resolved: That the Department of Sea and Shore Fisheries is authorized and directed to conduct a study to determine the feasibility of increasing fisheries production in all its forms, through methods that are applicable to Washington County, together with the related economic benefits to the State of Maine. This study shall take into consideration all relevant engineering techniques, including hydrographic modifications and control; and be it further
Resolved: That there is appropriated from the Unappropriated Surplus of the General Fund the sum of $15,000 to carry out the purpose of this resolve.
STATEMENT OF FACT
This resolve will provide information about world-wide technological and managerial methods that can lead to the better utilization of the marine resources of Washington County.
[From the Maine Times, July 13, 1973]
A POST-INDUSTRIAL PASSAMAQUODDY
Last week the White House put its official seal of approval on post-industrial planning. Or, stated another way, after two centuries of endorsing growth, the Office of the President has asked the American people to begin limiting growth. The little noted, but fundamental shift in national values was the basic element in a Presidential message of introduction for Gov. John Love of Colorado, now the point man in the growing energy crisis. The thrust of the message was a presidential plea for energy conservation. Airlines must cut schedules, motorists must drive more slowly and less often, and every American must think in terms of energy conservation rather than expenditure.
The idea that as people we must conserve rather than consume is the central theme of a policy of controlled growth; and from the notion of controlled growth it is a small step to the concept of an equilibrium or no-growth state. Yet, just three years ago the then Secretary of Commerce Maurice Stans made a major speech (one of his last, by the way) in which he termed "subversive" the talk of limiting growth that was then coming from Dennis Meadows and other theorists.
In the few years that intervened between the Stans speech and the Love introduction, it has become apparent even to a Rotarian like Richard Nixon that continued growth at current rates is not possible. Energy systems are not available to fuel the compulsive consumption of the economic and industrial systems. As a result, Americans are now embarked on a national movement toward the conservation of energy, and it is a movement which has significant ramifications for Maine.
In addition to cutting energy consumption, both the President and Gov. Love mentioned intensified efforts to find new energy sources as one of their common goals. Both spoke of more research into the use of renewable resources as energy producers, thus plucking a rather esoteric term from the ecologists' lexicon and making it part of the national language. In the northeast, site of one of the major crisis areas in the nation, the tides of Passamaquoddy are still one of the most visible and unutilized renewable resources.
As reporter Lucy Martin explained in two recent issues, the "Quoddy" tidal power project is not without its handicaps. And, as economist Myrick Freeman explains in this issue, the Federal system for arriving at cost-benefit conclusions is not always accurate. Nevertheless, Quoddy is going to be talked about with more and more reality, especially now that it has become politically popular to think in terms of non-polluting, renewable-resource power generation.
While we would not favor any project that exacted greater environmental costs than benefits, and while we have long been on record as post-industrialists who believe in cutting consumption rather than insisting on more of it, we do believe the natural rise and fall of the 20-foot tides at Quoddy can be converted to sensible energy production. But, just as the Freeman article explains the difference in interest rates between the original Quoddy plans and today's realities, we think it is important to point out other aspects of the proposal that could be changed by time.
Much has happened in the world of technology since the basic 1930's Quoddy plan (outlined in our issue of June 15) was engineered. And not enough has happened in researching methods of drawing energy from tidal cycles. If, under the pressure of the present energy crisis, more money and work could be done on developing new systems for tidal-energy conversion, and if a new design for Quoddy could be created on the basis of new systems, the results might not require the ecological upsets the present plan seems to entail.
Dams and turbines, for example, are not the only way for converting tidal energy – yet they are the way that creates the greatest change in the Quoddy environment. Suppose, for example, the dams were disposed of and a series of sensitively engineered mini-turbines could be placed in existing tidal races everywhere in the region. Underwater, in deep water, the wheels would not interfere with navigation by man nor sea creature; yet it seems to us the collective power drawn from scores of such wheels might be more than the output of dam-driven turbines, which work only when peak amounts of water have been stored for release.
This may be the sort of thought that makes engineers wish non-engineers would keep quiet, and we don't mean it to be taken seriously as an alternate suggestion. We do want it to serve as an illustration that the approaches to utilizing tidal power have always been rather pedestrian, based on the technology of 30 or 40 years ago. Quoddy needs to be re-analyzed by free-thinkers and provocative thinkers like Bucky Fuller who would not be locked in by patterns of past engineers.
Perhaps, now that America has officially been ushered into the post-industrial age, the government will use its resources to help make such research and re-evaluation possible. If new, environmentally compatible tidal converters are developed for Quoddy, they can be used on a smaller scale in many other Maine locations. How much better it would be, for example, if the proposed Public Power Authority could claim it was going to use this sort of system instead of the nuclear power plant it now promises.
QUODDY REVISITED: HERE IS HOW IT WORKS
When Quoddy Village at Eastport was sold to the Land Auction Bureau of Boston last summer, an era closed. With the buildings which were to have housed the workers on the Passamaquoddy Tidal Power Project went 50 years of hope that engineer Dexter Cooper's dream of harnessing the 20-foot tides of Fundy Bay might be realized.
In those 50 years, numerous plans and reports were written and shelved.
A plan involving both the United States and Canada collapsed during the 1929 stock exchange crisis.
A 1935 undertaking, involving the U.S. only, failed when federal funds were suspended with only three dams completed.
Eventually, the original idea to use Quoddy to generate electricity was expanded to include the Dickey and Lincoln School sites on the Upper St. John River.
In recent years, the sporadic focus of Congressional interest in a Maine public power project has fallen on Dickey-Lincoln School alone.
The current uproar about a possible oil refinery at Eastport, however, has jostled those who remember Cooper's dream, for it is obvious that the two schemes – Quoddy with its dams and locks, Pittston with its incessant tanker traffic – are not compatible.
While Quoddy never made it off the ground, despite all the years of talk and planning, the idea that it could be precluded has aroused new interest.
The tides are a constantly renewable resource. Nothing is taken away to produce vast amounts of electricity.
If the Quoddy project is seen as environmentally pure in 1973, it may be because no one ever looked that closely at its potential drawbacks. There is no doubt that it would change the ecology of Passamaquoddy Bay.
On the other hand, it may be the best solution New England has to the energy crisis.
Maine Times has therefore returned to the Quoddy project, first to explain how it works, and, second, to analyze it by today's criteria.
The principle behind tidal hydroelectric power is the controlled flow of water from a higher to a lower level through hydraulic turbines. It is billed as superior to river power because it is unaffected by droughts, floods, ice jams and silting.
Engineers have promoted Quoddy as primarily a provider of peaking power (probably between 5 and 6 p.m. for the area served). The twice-daily tides averaging 18.1 feet can be stored until needed. Although the powerhouse could operate continuously, the output would be variable.
Another source of power would be needed since neap tides (only about 14 feet) occur about every two weeks in the lunar cycle. The difference between high and low tides is smallest then and power generation would necessarily be diminished if the project depended on the tides alone.
Since the project's effectiveness depends on the high range of the tides (the world's largest facility, LaRance at San Malo, France, depends on 44-foot tides), the U.S. Department of the Interior suggested in its 1963 report the possibility of using reversible turbines to pump water at neap tide intervals to insure full use of the full installed capacity at all times.
The Dickey-Lincoln river project, however, would provide streamflow and almost three million acres of active storage to supplement the tidal project.
Passamaquoddy-Dickey was the subject of Senate hearings in August of 1964. Based on studies done by the International Joint Commission and the Dept. of the Interior in the early 60's, costs for the project were described as "substantially less than composite costs of thermal generation in New England as estimated by the Federal Power Commission." The project would produce 1.3 million kilowatts or three billion kilowatt hours of electrical energy annually (1.1 million kilowatts for a two-hour peak load daily, 200,000 kw of base-load power, and substantial amounts of off-peak power). Although the power is of a different type, output is greater than the Maine Yankee nuclear plant.
Sen. Lee Metcalf of Montana called it "a very thrilling and important project."
Stewart Udall, Secretary of the Interior. noted, "It is essential to recognize that the tide is a perpetual resource, fully predictable and dependable."
Proponents have also claimed it is economically and engineeringly feasible.
The map facing shows the mechanics behind the metaphor of "harnessing the tides."
The Quoddy project as modified by the Interior Dept. involves two pools, a high pool and a low pool with a powerhouse separating them. One hundred and one square miles of Quoddy Bay (in U.S. and Canadian waters) and all 41 square miles of Cobscook Bay (U.S.) are the major water bodies involved. Separating these bays from the unconstrained ocean are seven miles of rock- filled dams (125 to 300 feet deep).
Quoddy Bay opens to the sea through 90 filling gates at Letite Passage and Deer Island Point. They open when the tide rises in the Bay of Fundy and close when the pool fills.
Cobscook Bay opens to the sea through 70 emptying gates in Friar Roads. When water flows from the high pool through the 300,000 kw powerhouse at Eastport, separating the pools, power is generated. The gates to Cobscook Bay open at low tide when the sea (Bay of Fundy) is below the level of the pool, letting it empty.
During a 26-foot high tide, tidal velocities are as high as 10 feet a second, "presenting engineering and design challenges without precedent," the engineers marveled.
There would be four navigation locks for boat passage, and several fishways.
Computer studies done by the Interior Dept. summarized the three basic steps in running Quoddy as a "peaking" power plant instead of a base load as follows: 1) the upper pool would be filled to the maximum height possible from the tide. 2) The water would be held there until power is desired, at which point it would be released through the turbines of the power plant to the lower pool. 3) The water in the lower pool would be released to the ocean whenever the tide is below the level in this pool.
An intricate computer program was devised to compute the operation of the pools during peaking and offpeak periods and for the different stages when the pools are filling and emptying. The program determines such things as how many turbines should be operating to meet peaking capability.
The 1963 plan also envisioned a possible second power plant west of the one at Carryingplace Cove in Cobscook Bay. To generate the one million kilowatts proposed by the Department of the Interior's plan, a plant about twice the length of the 300,000 kw structure appearing on the map would be needed. The best arrangement would be two 50-unit plants of 500 megawatts each.
The transmission system, with a switchyard located west of the first powerhouse, would connect the tidal powerplant with the Dickey plant, serving Maine, other areas in New England, and New Brunswick, extending as far south as Boston. The plan included two 345 kilovolt transmission circuits for delivering power to Boston. There would be a switching station at Bangor for interconnecting with three 230 Kv transmission circuits from the Dickey power plant. Lines could be extended to Fredericton, New Brunswick. (In 1971, a double circuit 345,000 volt transmission line was completed, connecting southernmost New England with New Brunswick and forming the backbone of the New England transmission system. Central Maine Power completed the missing link, a line from Wiscasset to the Maine-New Hampshire border.)
As for a cost-benefit analysis, it was determined that project benefits would exceed project costs in the ratio of 1.27 to 1. The Department of the Interior noted, "Although we propose that the tidal power project and Upper St. John River development be fully integrated, our economic analysis clearly indicates that either project is financially feasible and could stand on its own feet as a separate project." Analysis was based on a 100-year period using a 27/8 percent interest rate.
The following construction schedule was offered:
Stage 1-Construction of Dickey Dam and Reservoir and initial installation of 150 megawatts of power generating facilities (with a benefit-cost ratio of 2.55 to 1).
Stage II-Construction of Passamaquoddy dam facilities and installation of 500 megawatts of power generating facilities a few years later, plus 300 additional megawatts of power at Dickey (with a benefit-cost ratio of 1.2 to 1).
Stage III-Completion of the 1,000 megawatt installation at Quoddy and 750 megawatt ultimate installation at Dickey (with a benefit-cost ratio of 1.27 to 1)
Benefits were discussed in terms of power, recreation and area redevelopment.
But there's more to Quoddy Bay than dollars and development. The harnessing of those 20-foot tides involves a lot of excavating and the Dickey plan entails the flooding of considerable tracts of land. The project's effect on fisheries, wildlife, and the face of the land itself will be examined separately next week.
LUCY L. MARTIN.
QUODDY'S DAMS WOULD DRASTICALLY ALTER THE ENVIRONMENT
To the Abenaki Indians who knew Moose Island before it became Eastport, Maine, Passamaquoddy Bay was the "place where the fish are" or "place of the pollock. "
Construction of the Passamaquoddy Tidal Power Project or Pittston's oil industry could render that name less appropriate, because both the impoundment of 100 square miles of water and the spillage of oil would precipitate noticeable changes in the bay's environment.
Strictly in terms of air and water quality, the tidal power project is heralded by environmentalists as being the soundest power-producing alternative New England and the Canadian Maritimes have. Harnessed by turbines, tidal action is a clean, perpetual source of electricity.
Nonetheless, construction of the seven miles of dams, locks, and fishways, with the attending excavation of land and shifts in water levels, would have significant oceanographic, biologic and economic implications.
In 1959, the International Passamaquoddy Fisheries Board submitted a report based on data collected from 1937 to 1958. Updating is necessary to account for changes in the local economy, construction costs, and tidal power technology, but the federal government has turned down such requests in recent months.
If that report were updated, it would undoubtedly pay closer attention to the environmental impact of the tidal project.
But even the old studies indicate that environmental changes would be huge. For instance water temperature changes would be much greater than those at the nuclear power plant in Wiscasset, and the complete destruction of the clam industry by flooding would be much more significant than the feared damage to the worm industry from the nuclear plant.
According to the 1959 study, the biggest oceanographic changes would occur in Passamaquoddy Bay and Cobscook Bay, the high and low pool, respectively. (MT, 6/15/73) The average height of Quoddy would be raised six feet. The average "tidal" range would be reduced by four feet in the high pool and eight feet in the low pool.
Current patterns would be significantly different, since during each 12-hour tidal cycle the emptying and filling gates would be closed for about nine hours. Quoddy Bay is notorious for its powerful, often treacherous currents, and these are likely to be more pronounced, especially at the approaches where the dams are located. Even now, unless a boat can do five knots, it can't get through Letite Passage at certain tides. Navigability within the pools themselves, however, would probably improve.
Because of the reduced velocities in the bays, the temperature of the water would be higher.
Whereas the temperature range is now between 34 and 54 degrees Fahrenheit, the dams would raise the temperature to the middle and high 60's in summer. From mid-December to March there would be ice on Quoddy Bay. That would interfere with lobstering but power could still be generated since the tides would move under the ice.
The salinity of both pools would also be lowered: fresh water, impounded in Quoddy Bay from the St. Croix River, would flow into Cobscook when power is generated.
In addition, 17 million cubic yards of clay would be excavated from Carryingplace Cove to build the first powerhouse. (No figures are given for excavation at a possible second site to be built several years later.)
Land now high and dry would be submerged or taken for switchyards and service areas. Highway 190, one track of the Maine Central Railroad, and several utility lines would have to be relocated.
The face of the land itself – coves, inlets, islands and peninsulas which have clenched the unfettered tides for centuries – would vanish from view or be unrecognizably altered. Deer Island Point, a spot of spectacular beauty set aside for public appreciation, would be flooded. (About 83,000 acres would be flooded at Dickey on the St. John River for Quoddy's ancillary project which would provide baseload power. In addition, 240 tracts of land with homes, lumber mills, churches and schools would be acquired.)
The fisheries board considered the effect of all these changes, with the emphasis always on the economic impact. The valuable herring fishery, which landed an annual average of 20 million pounds in both pools from 1937 to 1958, received the most attention.
Although the board of Canadian and United States scientists predicted there would be "no change," it acknowledged, "A sure forecast of the effect of the proposed dams on the fishery requires more comprehensive and more detailed knowledge of the biology of the herring than is available at present." The herring population itself, which supports the area's numerous sardine canneries and pearl essence plants, would probably not be affected since it is produced outside the Quoddy region; but the board could only define that location as "probably off southwest Nova Scotia."
However, a number of weirs would have to be relocated, resulting in an estimated cost of $500,000 to fishermen. The board speculated that weir fishery could become a thing of the past.
"A shift to alternative methods of fishing [seining from vessels] could be expected to maintain the fishery, at least at its present level."
The higher temperatures in Quoddy Bay and the turbines would account for losses. At 68 degrees, 50 percent of the herring under 12 inches could be expected to die within 48 hours, the biologists said.
"It is expected that herring will pass through the turbines to populate the low pool with some mortality among herring that are abraded during the passage through the turbines. Herring will be lost from the low pool through the emptying gates.
"At present herring enter and remain in Passamaquoddy and Cobscook Bays in sufficient numbers to support a weir fishery.
"For a successful fishery it is not only necessary that fish shall enter a region. They also have to survive in good condition in the environment that they have entered."
The Canadian investment in weir fishery was put at $2 million.
Ice and increased activity by woodborers (shipworms) because of warmer water would cause extensive damage to weirs.
The project would virtually wipe out clamming.
"In the high pool, which yields roughly half the total clam production in the Quoddy region, the present beds will be permanently submerged." Establishing new beds at new intertidal levels was estimated to take 10 years "and even then production may be only five percent of its present volume. In the low pool, production should drop to 50 percent of the present small volume."
Now a half-million dollar industry in Charlotte County, N.B., clamming is listed in the report as the second most important fishery for that Canadian province.
Dr. David Scarratt of the Canadian Fisheries Research Board at the St. Andrews, N.B., biological station, pointed out in a recent telephone interview that a large number of clam beds have been closed because of domestic (coliform) pollution. "Considerable areas have already been closed either temporarily or permanently. Because of existing conditions [and not just the tidal project, if it were realized] the availability of clams is less than it could be."
Similarly, because of stream improvements in the St. Croix River, the annual run of Atlantic salmon into the rivers of the Quoddy area might increase. Much depends on the efficiency of fishways, a $3 million expense.
Other changes: the relocation of two big lobster pounds, at a cost of $450,000; a possible improvement in the scallop and lobster fishery; a reduction in marine worms and rockweed. (Marine worms were not considered an important industry at the time of the report, but overharvesting of Maine's mid-coast flats is increasing their importance in eastern Maine.)
By and large, the biological implications of the Quoddy Project seem acceptable to marine biologists. Those same biologists would frown on heavy industry like oil refining because of the known detrimental effects of oil pollution on waterfowl and marine biota.
An industry which both the engineering and fisheries boards did consider was tourism. The increased water temperatures compare favorably, advocates point out, with summer water regimes in Long Island Sound and would promote swimming and boating. Fishermen could be displaced from tending their weirs to managing boat harbors, they said.
Whereas the environmental impact is obviously not taken sufficiently into account, it is apparent that the sociological impact has been ignored. The transition of Moose Island with its trailers and traditional houses, its creviced headlands and wildflowered fields overlooking the sea – the transition from a fishing and manufacturing community to a technological compound buttressed with concrete and laced with high voltage transmission lines staggers the imagination.
While the project itself would provide jobs amounting to some $80 million annually in wages and salaries during the six-year construction period, the system of public highways which could be built atop the new dams and locks might whisk in several million dollars worth of recreational benefits annually to a county (Washington) which "now has the lowest median income of any county in Maine."
But Quoddy doesn't appear to be in the immediate wind. The smallest deterrent is undoubtedly the engineers' recognition of increasing ocean levels around Eastport. Eastporters say the island is gradually sinking on honeycombed rocks sluiced relentlessly by Fundy's tides. The engineers say,
"Eastport tide records indicate that the ocean level is rising relative to the land in the area ... It appears, however, that this rise is taking place at such a slow rate that no consideration need be given it in the design of the tidal power project."
Another possible reason for stagnation of the project is the performance of the LaRance dam on the Brittany Coast. Engineers originally pointed to it as a pacesetting model, but the French tidal power project hasn't proved as economical as hoped.
The reluctance of the U.S. Interior Department to fund another feasibility study of Dickey- Lincoln-Quoddy is yet another clog in the mechanism. Even though there have been innovations in tidal power technology and changes in the value of power, the federal government remains intransigent in its doubt the project is economically feasible.
Perhaps Nova Scotia's purposeful pursuit of a tidal project at the head of the Bay of Fundy will prove a retarding factor in Passamaquoddy's progress. There, where the bay funnels to its narrowest, rise and fall the greatest tides in the world – 40 to 50 feet. Nova Scotia's development minister said recently the U.S. energy crisis will bring the harnessing of Fundy's tides closer.
Whatever happens to Dickey-Lincoln and Dexter Cooper's dream for Passamaquoddy Bay, it's obvious the economics will have to be reinforced with a strong case for the environment and a hard look at what price people are willing to pay for power. What price can be put on the integrity of the earth and its naturally flowing waters, which determine the character and fiber of the people living there? How much is an area's natural and social heritage worth? The next feasibility study will have to weigh such questions.
When the Quebec government went ahead last year with plans to build a $6 billion hydroelectric project on the hunting and trapping grounds of the Cree Indians who live on James Bay in northern Quebec, the Indians responded, "Money? We do not want money. Jobs? How long will these jobs last? Money and jobs are impermanent. They disappear. They do not last. When they are gone, the land will still be there. If the land is not destroyed, we can return to it, live off it as we have always done. That is the only way we know how to live."
LUCEY L. MARTIN.
[From the Nation, February 26, 1973]
A GOOD IDEA IS HARD TO KILL
(By Karl Keyerleber)
When President Nixon spoke in his inaugural address of insuring a cleaner environment and meeting the nation's needs in new ways he wasn't singling out energy requirements, but the two phrases fit the subject so well that he might have been. Energy is a facet of national planning that obviously needs rethinking.
It may well be that looming brownouts and the rationing of electricity are parts of an industry smokescreen to mask a profit grab; nevertheless, the days of fossil fuels are numbered – at a century, two centuries or whatever term. And meanwhile, as long as they are burned, they will to some degree soil the atmosphere.
All primed to solve these problems was nuclear fission – until the suspicion grew that it posed an even greater threat to the environment than did the combustion of coal, oil and gas. Now every proposal for a new atomic installation is met by fierce opposition from groups of concerned citizens.
What is wanted is a supply of power that is inexhaustible and that won't pollute our air, our water or our food. Hydroelectric plants on the rivers have furnished such clean power for years. They have also flooded a lot of land, a side effect that has drawn the fire of conservationists. For a better solution there are natural resources of an untraditional kind that can be developed – the heat of the sun and of the earth's core, and the gravitational power of the moon. This last is the closest at hand, because the techniques for harnessing the moon's sway over the oceans are available and await only the will to use them.
The idea is not new. [See "Reviewing Passamaquoddy" by William S. Ellis, The Nation, July 13, 1964.] Tidewater was put to work at least as long ago as 1066, when an enterprising Miller in Dover, England, was using it to grind grain. A similar mill was built in this country in 1640 when, according to colonial histories, a Capt. William Traske located a "tyde mill" for grinding corn near the mouth of the North River in Salem, Mass.
The idea of harnessing the tide to generate electricity on a large scale is much newer. It was still novel fifty years ago, when two Americans began almost simultaneously to speculate about the possibility. One was a Boston hydroelectric engineer named Dexter P. Cooper; the other was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Both spent summers on Canada's Campobello Island where they could watch the sweep of towering tides, sometimes 50 feet high, that poured through rockbound inlets from the Bay of Fundy into the smaller Passamaquoddy Bay that lies between Maine and New Brunswick. Passamaquoddy, an Algonquin Indian name, has since stood for an idea that burned brightly several times but flickered out each time because financial and political winds blew cold. Its time had not come.
Cooper developed the basic plan for a tidal power plant on "Quoddy" back in 1919. In subsequent years he spent a small fortune making surveys and promoting the proposal in this country and Canada. Any American plan would need Canadian cooperation because most of the water area and some of the dam sites are north of the border. But Cooper was never able to stimulate action until Roosevelt became President. The sea-loving FDR probably knew the swift currents and eddies of the Passamaquoddy area more intimately than anyone else. On summer vacations he piloted the family's two sailboats through the narrow inlets, and on two occasions while he was Assistant Secretary of the Navy he shocked hardy sailors by taking the helm of destroyers and calling for full speed as he drove through tricky, rock-lined channels.
In 1935 President Roosevelt allocated $10 million (later cut to $7 million) to begin development of a power plant with preliminary work at Eastport, Me. Engineering surveys were made, roads built, utilities put in and a model village built to house the construction workers who were to follow. But they never followed, for in 1936 the Senate turned down an appropriation for further work. Critics, including spokesmen for the private power industry, called it "WPA boondoggling," attacked the high cost and questioned the need for so huge an undertaking. The price tag that seemed so prohibitive then is of somewhat macabre interest. It was $150 million.
Estimates are that the project would now cost ten times that much – about $1.5 billion.
Other studies were made over the years, but Passamaquoddy remained in limbo. It wouldn't die but neither did it come to life. When Kennedy became President he found on his desk a report by a joint United States-Canadian mission which had examined the proposal. The substance of this study was that Quoddy was not then economically feasible, "when evaluated by conventional methods of economic analysis as applied to hydroelectric projects," but that it had long-range possibilities "when other less costly energy resources available in the area have been fully realized." Kennedy, mapping his New Frontier, was unwilling to let such a challenging idea sink under the weight of that verbiage. He assigned Interior Secretary Stewart L. Udall to restudy the study. The Interior team concluded that the project was economically feasible, but attached a qualifier – that it be coupled with a dam and hydroelectric development on the upper St. John River in Maine.
Asked recently about that hedge, Udall said that he now believed Passamaquoddy could stand on its own, without the auxiliary river facility. "Tidal power has to be folded into another system, part of an interconnecting network," he explained. "The energy can't be held at the power plant. We didn't have a suitable system then, but it is in being today."
At any rate, the Secretary's report in 1963 urged Kennedy to seek Congressional authorization to build a power station on the bay and to begin negotiations with Canada for sharing the benefits.
The cost was to be borne by this country. The plan then proposed, somewhat altered from Cooper's original proposal but retaining most of its main features, called for seven dams to control the flow of the tides between Fundy and the smaller bays of Passamaquoddy and Cobscook – about 7.5 miles of massive concrete barriers. Gates in the dams would close at high tide, and the water impounded in Passamaquoddy would be released through turbines into adjacent Cobscook Bay and eventually returned to the sea. Turbines operated on the outward flow of the tide would function much like a river installation that uses the head of water from a dam.
President Kennedy was enthusiastic: "I think that this can be one of the most astonishing and beneficial joint enterprises that the people of the United States have ever undertaken." He called the proposed interlocked dams and gates "an engineering marvel" and noted that it would attract tourists and raise the economic status of the northern woods country. That was in August 1963. Three months later Kennedy died in Dallas, and his powerful influence was lost to the Quoddy project, which once more returned to limbo.
Would it have been built if Kennedy had lived? Dual doesn't think the President's death was the decisive factor:
"There were a number of obstacles that made it too steep a hill to climb ten years ago. It was obvious that new technology was coming along and hadn't been tested.
"The Canadians were, to put it mildly, lukewarm at the time. They thought that if they build a tidal power facility it should be farther up the bay.
"Finally, there was all this optimism about nuclear power and it appeared the tidal power would be very expensive.
"In view of all this we didn't think we had the muscle to get the kind of investmentwe needed to launch Passamaquoddy.
"My feeling today is that we need to give much more attention to those forms of energy that are best from an environmental standpoint. Besides tidal they are geothermal – using the heat of the earth – and solar."
It seems incredible now that just ten years ago environmental considerations rated scarcely a thought. Today every proposal for a new power plant using fuel for energy is examined suspiciously by conservationists. At least three developments, in addition to environmental concern, make a new drive on behalf of Passamaquoddy inevitable. One is the rising curve of energy demand, another the fact that since the last Congressional turndown a tidal power plant has been put into operation. And the third is new technology that will greatly increase the power potential of Quoddy.
Industry projections indicate that demand for power will grow three times as fast as the population and that the United States will not be self-sufficient in energy for the rest of this century. Passamaquoddy could provide for new demand in all of New England for many years.
The first tidal power plant was built by France. Its pioneering facility on the Gulf of St. Malo began producing electricity in 1967. The new technology mentioned by Udall includes improved high-voltage transmission facilities and advanced turbine designs, plus an innovation incorporated in the French plant that enables it to generate power on the flood as well as the ebb tide. If a similar technique were used at Quoddy it would greatly increase, if it did not double, output over the originally planned million kilowatts a day.
With the space program pegged at a lower level and the Vietnamese War seemingly ended, the financial muscle that could be put behind Quoddy would be far stouter than when Udall was involved. In view of the facts that a tidal plant wouldn't foul the environment and that, once built, it would produce relatively cheap power, the $1.5 billion cost may some day seem a great bargain.
After all, we invested $20 billion to reach the moon. Having done so, it would be fitting if the United States were now to divert funds from that adventure to harness the moon's power here on earth.