a stronger hold on its young (sorely tempted by the more prosperous cities to the south) and to quicken the life pulse of those who choose to remain. Most industries today note its remoteness from centers of population and the attendant difficulties of transportation and decide to set up shop elsewhere. The sea, the forest, and the "summer people" (all three dependent on a healthy environment) continue to be the bedrock of the county's economy.

But Washington County possesses another natural resource, one that until now was largely ignored by its residents as well as by the world outside. Consistently deep water, 100 feet and more, surrounds the islands at the mouth of Machias Bay. That is the sort of depth required by the supertankers which are coming now from shipyards in Japan and elsewhere. And that is what has drawn the oil industry to decide on this stretch of unspoiled coastline as the site for a major oil terminal, a modern refinery, and all of the environmentjarring appendages that go with them.

The idea shocks in proportion to one's commitment to the coast as it is seen today. Yet other well-intentioned men and women welcome oil as a heaven-sent solution to Washington County's economic problems. They cannot be classified with the old-line foes of conservation who wrapped themselves in the flag while raping the land, or who overrode the objections of conservationists to such rape with airy comment that "You can't stop Progress."

Many of oil's proponents on the Maine coast today also want a clean environment. But whether or not such an environment is compatible with oil, they feel that they cannot in good conscience reject an industry which holds out such golden hopes for Washington County's poor. Conservationists, then, in their eyes become equated with "wealthy summer people" who would rather allow the poor to rot in misery than lose the view from their picture windows. "Although not losing sight of the necessity of protecting the coastal environment," writes a local newspaper editor, "we suspect many residents are losing patience with some conservationists. It appears quite strange indeed for the Sierra Club to discount oil as the panacea for Washington County on the one hand while proposing to arrest coastal development and, in effect, subsidize poverty on the other."

It is an appeal to conscience, valid on the surface, which conservationists will encounter more often as the struggle for a clean environment goes on. (It is commonly heard in the pesticide controversy: "To ban DDT is to doom millions of our less fortunate brothers in undeveloped countries to starvation and disease.") Unless the conservation movement comes to grips with this genuine dilemma it will see (to its own as well as to the poor's ultimate loss) innumerable other areas drift into blight as surely as they used to under cruder appeals. Machiasport serves as a dramatic example.

During the summer of 1968 the people of Maine learned that Occidental Petroleum Corporation, enthusiastically supported by many of the state's leading officials and legislators, was planning to build a large oil terminal and refinery in Washington County. The site selected was Machiasport, a town of 980 souls lying on a wooded peninsula below Machias, the county seat.

The project promised enormous economic benefits for the area, and even for the rest of New England. Foreign crude oil was to be shipped in the new 300,000-ton tankers to Machiasport, where the water's depth would give them room to maneuver. At the same time the state asked the federal government to establish a foreign trade subzone at Machiasport, into which crude oil could be brought for refining without having to enter the customs territory of the United States. After the oil was refined, some would be shipped out again in smaller tankers, while the rest would be made available as fuel oil to New England residents. Accordingly, Occidental applied for a federal oil import quota to allow it to distribute the oil to this market.

The benefits seemed obvious. Great savings would result from shipping the oil in bulk by giant tankers. There would be no high duty or other government charges and restrictions on oil brought into the country under the quota allowance. The savings, it was said, would be passed on to New England consumers— about $22 million a year. Jobs and other benefits would accrue to Washington County residents. Governor Curtis led the official cheering section, which found echoes in the other New England states.

With just such fanfare, technological man has introduced each new manifestation of material progress during the twenieth century. Whether he was about to spread DDT through the world ecosystem, or deliver that mobile pollution machine-a new automobile-to a prospective buyer, this incurable opti

mist has aimed only for an immediate economic impact. Broader questions, even if they occurred to him, were dismissed as irrelevant.

There were questions to be asked about oil at Machiasport, though none were suggested by its proponents. No public official questioned even the construction of a huge refinery on one of Maine's unspoiled peninsulas, much less the attendant dangers of shipping oil into the fragile coastal environment Down East. The area was to be written off as part of the cost of creating some new jobs.

It was not that there was insufficient time to question all aspects of the proposal. According to the Maine Sunday Telegram, a former oil industry executive named Jack Evans had worked for some years with Maine's leading officials to bring a refinery to Machiasport.

"You couldn't do this in Casco Bay because you might spoil beaches," Evans said. "In Machiasport there are no beaches, no crosscurrents, no hazards." Luckily there were a handful of people living in the area who decided to ask questions. One was Reverend Charles Dorchester, a young minister who had studied birdlife along the coast in his spare time and wondered what effect an oil industry might have on this aspect of the natural world. Another was Gardiner Means, the well-known economist, who had served in Franklin D. Roosevelt's "brain trust" and who owns an island in Machias Bay.

Reverend Dorchester organized a meeting at Machias High School late in the summer of 1968. At his request both the governor and the oil company sent representatives to answer the local people's questions. More than 600 people gathered, an extraordinary crowd for that part of the world. Interest ran high, but even at that early date there were indications of official confusion that raised doubts in the minds of the audience.

What sort of an impact would the sudden population explosion accompanying a major construction project have on the area? No one really seemed to know. Several local residents, masters of oceangoing ships, raised the question of fogs. storms, and tides at Machiasport. (The Bay of Fundy's tides are probably the most notorious in the world; the mean tidal range in Machias Bay is 12.5 feet. and its spring tides reach 14.2 feet.) Apparently no hydrologic studies had yet been made.

"Machiasport is a port in name only," one experienced seaman said. “Where you're planning to tie up these big tankers it's really only an open roadstead." No one asked harder questions than did Gardiner Means. Why does the refinery have to be built right on the unique coastline, when there is plenty of available space for it only a few miles inland? Have pollution controls been written into the agreement between the state and the oil company?

The answer to the first question, as expressed by the governor's representative, was that it would be impractical to pipe the oil inland from the terminal. ("Under the circumstances," countered economist Means, his calculations in hand, "the company's profits will be enormous. It can easily afford to build and maintain such a pipeline. All its other costs will be lower if it locates inland.") The answer to the second question, uncovered at a later date, was no. In their haste to grab the brass ring presented by the oil industry, state officials had not gotten around to guarding against the effects of the inevitable oil spills and discharges.

Maine, of course, is not alone in this syndrome. Its occasional confusion of aim, however, is often glaringly apparent because its leaders include such ob viously well-intentioned men as Governor Curtis and Senator Edmund S. Muskie. Both are staunch supporters of the proposal to bring oil to Machiasport, and both have argued in what may seem to be the best tradition of the most venerable wing of the conservation movement itself: that conservation is the wise use of our natural resources for the economic benefit of the most people.

This view became particularly attractive to state officials as they came to grips with local economic conditions during the 1950's. Senator Muskie has described its beginnings:

"When I was elected governor in 1954 the major substantive issue was economic development. Maine had been plagued by slow growth, fits of isolated prosperity, and regional declines for almost 100 years. The coastal counties. east of Sagadahoc County, were suffering the worst deprivation. Economic de velopment has been a major goal of every state administration since my first term as governor."

Governor Curtis speaks in a similar vein about his earlier experience with the Area Redevelopment Administration:

"We had to get industry in then to get jobs for Maine people. We were quite successful. I think Maine now has an under-employment problem, not unemployment. What we have to do is shift our emphasis more to getting the right kind of industry for Maine. Then, when we raise the standard of Maine living as high as the standard enjoyed by most Americans, we can concentrate on the preservation of our fine environment."

As some states have already learned, those words might supply a fitting epitaph for their own once-fine environments. Even Senator Muskie sees the struggle as a "product of competing interests in land and water. Workmen out of jobs or locked in low-paying jobs want industrial growth for new opportunity. Summer residents and visitors and suburban residents want to limit industrial growth as a protection against interference in their own life-styles." But what many scientists and conservationists are saying, as loudly and as urgently as they can, is that pollution control is no longer a matter of "lifestyles." It is a matter of survival.

It was this misunderstanding that prompted the rush by public figures to leap aboard the Machiasport bandwagon without reservation during the summer of 1968. Senator Muskie, to be sure, mentioned pollution control in his endorsement of the proposal, but he referred mainly to the nature of the imported oil itself, and not to the process of transporting or refining it. As he later phrased it:

"I support any legitimate move to produce and supply low-sulfur, non-polluting residual fuel oil, oil not presently being produced in this country. That is one reason that I support the refinery at Machiasport which will produce such an oil because it will be refining low-sulfur crude oil from the Middle East."

But the first real steps toward protecting the coast in Washington County came about as a result of the persistent questioning by Reverend Dorchester's group. Governor Curtis named the prestigious Gardiner Means as chairman of a newly-created pollution control subcommittee dealing with the Machiasport project. Under Dr. Means's guidance, the subcommittee persuaded the governor to support the concept of building a refinery inland. It was further agreed that pollution controls would be written into agreements between the state and any cil companies which might choose to locate in the Machiasport area.

The biggest obstacle to rapid oil development on the Maine coast came not from conservationists, however, but from the industry itself. Jealous of what they considered to be the prospect of special concessions to Occidental, the giants of the industry put pressure on Washington to hold firm against any attempt to relax the oil import quota in the East.

Clutching the American flag firmly in one hand, these outspoken defenders of free enterprise pleaded for the federal government to continue holding the protective blanket of the import quota over their threatened heads; any relaxation, they complained, would undermine the nation's security by making it dependent on foreign oil. Their spokesmen challenged Occidental's claims that a refinery at Machiasport would reduce New England's fuel oil prices. Fuel prices there were high, they admitted, but they claimed that this was due mainly to high markups by retailers in that region, rather than to exorbitant wholesale prices. A Mobil Oil Corporation spokesman went even further:

"While Occidental's avowed pricing policy is purportedly aimed at reducing costs to the consumer, we believe this claim is spurious. Price reduction, if offered initially, would be only at the refinery level. There is no evidence or assurance that they would be passed on to the consumers. If they were, however, the viability of competing marketers, as well as refiners, would be adversely affected."

There may have been a generous ration of sour grapes in all of this, but conservationists gained time to make a closer analysis of the claims that had been advanced by the project's proponents. At this point two other companies, Atlantic Richfield and Atlantic World Port, entered the Machiasport picture. Atlantic Richfield was attracted to Machiasport because it seemed the most likely place on the East Coast to take oil brought by tanker through the "Northwest Passage" from its fabled fields in Alaska. Atlantic World Port's pretentions as an oil colossus are limited to the options it holds on land in Machiasport which is suitable for a terminal and a refinery.

Meanwhile, some formidable obstacles to the use of Machias Bay by giant tankers were becoming apparent. The engineering firm hired by Atlantic World Port to study the project concluded that one and perhaps two breakwaters will

be needed to insure a safe haven for the tankers. The cost of a single breakwater: $86 million.

"Some form of financial assistance either from the state or federal government-would probably be necessary," the report says, "since construction of the breakwaters by the operator of the facility would cause him to incur such a financial burden that the economic viability of the project might be jeopardized."

Some of the area's hazards have been outlined by A. S. Mills, an experienced seaman, in a letter to the Portland Press Herald:

"As a licensed pilot for any tonnage for that area I can assure you that the problems are not simple. I frequently take vessels into the Navy dock at the Cutler Navy Radio Station, right across Machias Bay from the proposed dock site for the terminal at Machiasport, and it is not unusual to wait as much as two days for the undertow and surge to subside before being able to dock. The newly proposed dock site is in a much more exposed position and it is a sure bet that there would be extreme difficulty in holding a vessel of any size at a dock in this location. However, maybe the planners know something I don't know I certainly hope so."

It is risky to pontificate on such matters, as the engineers who compiled the report for Atlantic World Port recently discovered. In December 1969 they announced that "we know of no 'major' accidents that affected the eastern seaboard." Less than two months later the tanker Arrow broke in half on the rocks at Chedabucto Bay, Nova Scotia, and poured 1.6 million gallons of oil into the sea and along the shoreline.

These accidents are infrequent, the oil people used to say. But now the sight of oily wastes oozing onto pristine beaches is as common on our television screens as that of chanting demonstrators and embattled GIS. The accidents continue to occur, in the most unlikely places, in clear weather and on calm seas, with depressing regularity.

American tankers, according to an American Bureau of Shipping report, were involved in 570 collisions and groundings in the last ten years; 83 percent of these accidents took place inshore or while the ships were entering port. According to present plans, at least ten regular tankers and two supertankers would arrive at Machiasport each week to supply the proposed refinery or refineries.

"It is hysterical to think that a facility on a couple of hundred acres of coast will destroy the whole coastline," one state official has said.

But when the major disaster occurs at Machiasport, which appears statistically inevitable in view of the unwieldy nature of the 300,000-ton tankers and the complexities of the currents and the weather, the consequences are likely to surpass the nightmares of even the most nervous Nellies. The currents in the Gulf of Maine run counterclockwise, and the movement at the outside edge of this watery circle is shoreward. Surveys taken by the U.S. Bureau of Commercial Fisheries have demonstrated the tendency of these currents to slip into the myriad coves and indentations which shred the Maine coastline. Gardiner Means has said that a major spill might damage the coast all the way to Cape Cod.

What is the state of the technology to contain or clean up the oil once it gets loose? The answer is brief: It is on the Stone Age level. For several years now the oil industry has looked to a variety of chemical dispersants to deal with a spill. These chemicals, which are designed to break up globs of oil, have been a bitter disappointment. Off Nova Scotia, for instance, where the icy water is of the same temperature as that at Machiasport, the dispersants could not keep the oil from congealing into unsightly globs.

But the disillusionment with these chemicals goes beyond their failure to do the job under certain harsh conditions. Scientists are learning that they are more harmful to marine life than even oil. This was proved after the Torrey Canyon disaster, when chemical dispersants (mostly detergents) were used to combat the oil. Biological studies, widely publicized, disclosed that much of the damage to marine life was caused by the aromatic hydrocarbons in the detergents.

Just how primitive is the art of cleaning up spills can be seen at Santa Barbara, Tampa, Louisiana, and other oil-drenched localities where "black gold" has recently been revealed as something akin to Job's boils: as a last resort, modern man turned to strewing his beaches with straws to sop up the mess!

Against this threat to the shore, what are the economic benefits to the Machiasport region? The uncertainties of the oil import quota system (President Nixon still must make a decision on whether to revise it or not), the soaring insurance rates on giant tankers, and the built-in costs of pollution control now demanded by the state, all have considerably eroded the savings originally promised to the local consumer by the industry.

A modern refinery provides few jobs, and the most important ones will be filled by experienced hands from the great oil producing centers of the country. Admittedly, there will still be jobs open for local residents. But poverty exists in Washington County chiefly among those who, because of age, infirmity, disposition, or lack of skills and aptitude, will not be able to take advantage of the job opportunities in a modern refinery. Clearly, alternative solutions must be found to provide for these people.

Meanwhile, many men in the county are gainfully and contentedly employed in harvesting the sea's resources. For each job a modern refinery is likely to provide along the coast, the inevitable oil spills are just as likely to wipe out several others. Oil and fisheries have not proved to be compatible.

"Anyone knows oil will float," a lobsterman near Machiasport said not long ago, "and lobsters live on the bottom." But this sort of old wives' tale is rapidly disappearing among Maine's lobstermen as they become more aware of the threat posed to their livelihood by the prospect of oil on their coast. Lobsters, like other species of shellfish, spend the early part of their lives floating on the surface with plankton. An oil spill is lethal to the young of all these species. Furthermore, oil adheres to dirt, sand, and detritus, and often sinks with them to the bottom, where toxic substances in the oil, hydrocarbons among them, can be ingested by bottom-dwelling species such as lobsters.

And what sort of chain of events does that set off?

...

"We have studied the fate of organic compounds in the marine food chain," writes Max Blumer of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, "and have found that hydrocarbons, once they are incorporated into a particular marine organism, are stable, regardless of their structure, and that they may pass through many members of the marine food chain without alteration . . . In the marine food chain hydrocarbons may not only be retained but they can actually be concentrated. This is a situation akin to that of the chlorinated pesticides." Some of these substances, especially crude oil residues such as high-boiling aromatic hydrocarbons, are similar to those found in tobacco tars and may be carcinogens (or cancer-causing agents). Dr. Blumer believes that these substances could well be passed up the food chain to man.

The devastating effects of even small oil spills were documented early in 1970 by Dr. Blumer and his colleagues in Massachusetts. Here are some of his conclusions:

A relatively small spill of fuel oil in Falmouth, Massachusetts, amounting to 600 tons, has extinguished virtually all life in a large coastal area. In the three days before closing became necessary, that area yielded scallops and oysters valued at $3,000 at wholesale prices.

The oil in West Falmouth remains in the harbors, marshes, and offshore at the present time, five months after the accident, in unchanged toxicity. Bacterial degradation has been minimal and has not resulted in detoxification.

The shellfish that were not immediately killed have taken up the oil in their tissues and are therefore unfit for market.

The oil from the spill moves along the sea bottom with moving sediments. Areas that were clean one or three months after the accident are now polluted by this oil.

The fuel oil that is so damaging in West Falmouth is a fraction of and is present in petroleum; therefore petroleum will have the same effect.

Lobsters were killed in West Falmouth. Crude oil fractions attract lobsters. This may prevent normal feeding and attract and expose lobsters to spilled oil. Exposure will lead to incorporation of the oil into the animals. This will make them unfit for the market.

No presently known techniques can restore the damage in West Falmouth. Natural restoration and reestablishment of shellfish will take at least several years.

This is just one of the frightening case histories that present themselves to Washington County's lobstermen as they try to learn what the future holds for them. No one has stated their fears and their resistance more eloquently than Jasper Cates, a full-time lobsterman and occasional versifier from Cutler.