In the aftermath of NGL Supply Co. withdrawing its application to develop a new liquid propane distribution terminal at the Rigby Rail Yard in South Portland, opponents of the project say they were justified in questioning whether the project met city code and was safe.
The opponents also say making those arguments does not mean that South Portland is unfriendly to business, as implied in a statement by Kevin Fitzgerald, regional manager at NGL Energy Partners, which was released on March 18.
In his statement, Fitzgerald said that after a year of “good-faith effort by the company to address all legitimate safety concerns and to comply with the city’s existing and prospective regulations, it has become apparent that some in city government are determined to oppose the project by any means possible and under any circumstances.”
He added, “We are confident that another Maine community will value the jobs, financial investment, tax revenues and energy security our terminal will provide.”
The South Portland/Cape Elizabeth Chamber of Commerce expressed disappointment that the project wasn’t moving forward.
“We had hoped that the applicant, the city and area residents would work toward a resolution that balanced the residential and commercial interests at issue,” Michael Vaillancourt, chairman of the chamber’s Municipal Affairs Committee, told the Current this week.
NGL Supply began looking for a new location after the state began a redevelopment project on Portland’s waterfront, more than a year ago, that would leave no room for NGL’s longtime local distribution center to continue operating.
Company, state and South Portland officials originally agreed that the railyard in South Portland would be a good spot for NGL to relocate, but then residents began to question the plan, arguing not only were there safety issues involved, but also that the plan did not meet city code.
Now a member of the City Council, resident Eben Rose successfully argued that NGL’s initial project design was not allowed under the city’s local rules, which ban development of any new propane storage facility in excess of 10,000 cubic feet.
NGL then submitted a second, scaled-down plan, while members of the City Council, including Rose and Brad Fox, argued for a moratorium and an update to the city’s fire code, both of which could have effectively stopped the NGL project.
While the moratorium failed, on Monday, a divided council approved changes to the fire code that would require a 1,257-foot buffer between significant public facilities and any new propane distribution project. That vote was a first reading, with a public hearing and final vote to follow.
The vote this week was 4-3, with councilors Maxine Beecher, Linda Cohen and Claude Morgan opposed, according to City Clerk Emily Carrington.
This week Rose told the Current, “It’s unfortunate that NGL’s ongoing and outgoing message was one of business-unfriendliness. What they neglected to state is that the scale of terminal they had proposed (in three tries) was (and) is against local codes.”
He said NGL could have sought a zoning change, but instead the company “tried repeatedly to convince local officials and the Planning Board that they were complying with code by claiming that tanks were not tanks, propane was not (a petroleum gas) and that maximum storage limits could be exceeded as long as each individual propane molecule was on-site for less than 24 hours.”
Rose said that ultimately, the issue was not “whether we like propane or don’t like propane. It is about following the rules (and) I would contend that consistent and fair treatment under the law is an environment that is friendly to businesses and residents alike.”
Fox agreed with Rose that none of the NGL proposals ever “met the requirements of our city ordinances no matter how NGL tried to reconfigure it to get around our specifications.”
He also said that NGL’s withdrawal “isn’t the end of the world for a billion-dollar corporation. But it could have been the end of the world for the (adjacent) residential community had the dangerous facility been built.”
Tex Haeuser, the city’s planning director, said he was surprised that NGL withdrew its application, particularly as his office hadn’t sent the company “any questions or comments for some time.”
Haeuser also admitted that in this particular case, “I don’t think the process worked as well as it should have.”
In the end, however, he said, “I think we in planning/code learned that for complex projects like this one (there’s a need) to slow down our assessments of how they fit with the ordinances, to be a bit more transparent, to provide more notice to the public prior to hearings and to bring in outside experts when needed.”
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