A year of division (continued) BY ALEX IRVINE

AUGUST

In late August, Weil tapped Greg Williams, a partner in the Washington office of Houston law firm Bracewell Patterson, to represent the town. Weil and Williams have worked together on energy projects since the mid-’80s, and the firm Williams left to go to Bracewell Patterson has in the past represented Transcanada. In 2000 and 2001, Williams’s CMS Cameron McKenna acted as counsel in Transcanada’s sale of its 49 percent stake in a $325 million energy project in Tanzania. The purchaser was a subsidiary of the AES Corporation, which in the early ’90s attempted to build a coal-fired power plant in Bucksport.

Danni Sabota of Bracewell Patterson refused to say whether the firm has represented ConocoPhillips or Transcanada in the past. "As a matter of client confidentiality and client courtesy, we don’t reveal the names of companies we’ve worked for," she said, despite the fact that Bracewell Patterson’s Web site trumpets a list of "representative clients" including Coral Energy, FPL Energy, GE, Pacific Gas& Electric, Tampa Electric/Peoples Gas, and Valero Energy Corporation. (The firm also represented Enron, which may account for their sensitivity.)

If ConocoPhillips and Transcanada aren’t or weren’t clients, though, there is by definition no issue of client confidentiality, so Sabota was being either careless or disingenuous. Linsi Crane of ConocoPhillips says that the company is not using Bracewell Patterson right now, and she also made a point of mentioning that Bracewell Patterson represents environmental groups (why she’s speaking up for them isn’t clear, but we’re sure Bracewell Patterson appreciates it). Crane wasn’t sure if ConocoPhillips had used Bracewell Patterson in the past. Heidi Feick of Transcanada promised to look into the question but never responded.

"We certainly had to do conflict checks" before taking the town on as a client, Williams says Bracewell Patterson’s current involvement, "and nothing came up, so there isn’t a problem in terms of a conflict."

That doesn’t mean that Bracewell Patterson has never represented either of the two companies; it just means that the firm has met what USM law professor David Cluchey calls "the standard for success of representation for former clients." This standard demands that "if the new representation is substantially related to the subject matter of the former representation, then the former client has to give informed consent to that representation." Since Fairwinds is paying the town’s legal bills, the two companies behind it have clearly given this consent.

None of this necessarily means that the parties involved have a conflict of interest. It does demonstrate how chummy and secretive the energy industry is, though, and it lends a certain amount of weight to the allegations that Weil relied on his personal connections rather than a disinterested examination of the town’s needs in selecting counsel.

"If somebody believes if you know something about this, if I do, I’m compromised," Weil says, "then anybody who knows anything about it is compromised and what we want is neophytes."

"There’s no law firm in the US that deals with LNG matters on behalf of consumers or municipalities," he adds, "because we’ve only had one FERC [Federal Energy Regulatory Commission] application seen through the process . . . inevitably if you want to get somebody who knows something about LNG and LNG terminals, they’ve worked for people who are developing them."

This is also true, Greg Williams says, when it comes to choosing consultants. "There hasn’t been a situation like this. It’s the first of its kind," Williams says (which lets some of the air out of his claim that his previous experience shepherding towns through energy deals is useful to Harpswell). Because of the lack of people with expertise representing towns dealing with LNG concerns, Bracewell Patterson offered the town a list of consultants from the industry.

The town selected Michael Cathey and Christopher Cannon. Cathey, Williams says, is "well-regarded as a real expert" and has "a substantial resume in the LNG area." He’s also known both Williams and Weil for many years.

"He has worked on [environmental impact statements (EISs)] for FERC," Weil says, "and if we ask him a question, he answers based upon a very extensive knowledge of the studies and the work that’s been done."

Cathey has indeed worked on EISs for FERC, but perhaps not in a context that will reassure citizens of Harpswell that he’s an objective party. He was until recently director of business development for Williams Gas Pipeline, a division of the Williams Companies, a Tulsa-based gas corporation. Around this same time, he was also director of rates and strategic planning for the Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Corporation, or Transco, a subsidiary of Williams, and a director of the Pine Needle LNG storage facility in Stokesdale, North Carolina. Transco’s address happens to be exactly the same as the address of Cove Point LNG Limited Partnership, the company organized to refit and expand the Cove Point regasification terminal in Maryland — and FERC lists Cathey as a corporate officer with the Cove Point Partnership. As of October 28, he was working with El Paso Energy Bridge Gulf of Mexico LLC, developing an offshore regasification terminal 116 miles from the Louisiana coast, but according to the company he has since left.

So one consultant hired to represent the town of Harpswell has been a major player in the natural-gas industry for the past several years, has opened one LNG terminal in the face of loud local protests, and was until recently working on opening a second. Without doubt, Cathey does have extensive knowledge of the work that’s been done; the question is perhaps whether he also has Harpswell’s best interests at heart.

The town’s other consultant, Christopher Cannon, works out of the Los Angeles office of Environ Holdings, Inc., a multinational industrial consulting firm with offices in the US, Europe, and Asia. Cannon’s biography on the Environ Web site boasts of his "18 years of experience as a technical manager for large multi-jurisdictional industrial siting, environmental review, and permitting projects, including power plants, landfills, open-pit mining operations, and refineries." He was an energy adviser to Minnesota congressman Martin Sabo, in which capacity Cannon "worked on reauthorization activities for the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act."

Environ specializes in helping large corporations get things done. The company’s Web site says that Environ’s "understanding of the regulations, the regulators, and the regulated community helps us to navigate clients successfully through increasingly complex regulatory programs," which is formidable indeed, but doesn’t speak to why Christopher Cannon is useful to Harpswell when, at this point in the Fairwinds negotiations, there is no regulatory program to navigate.

Williams is diplomatic when asked about the possibility that his and his consultants’ long ties to the energy industry will predispose him to view Fairwinds favorably. "I think probably the best way to put it is that we certainly understand the venture’s point of view, but we also understand the concerns the town ought to be considering as well." Representing both sides of an issue "gives you perspective," he says, adding that "because we understand the industry, we are thoroughly familiar with the kinds of things that the good citizens of Harpswell ought to be concerned with and we will ensure that their interests will be protected."

"You need to look at the ultimate product," Williams says, his argument being that if the lease agreement proves satisfactory to the town, they’ll vote for it, and that will prove that he and the selectmen and the consultants have done their jobs. He is puzzled by the suggestion that the town might have benefited from the inclusion of people from outside the industry on its team of representatives.

"The fact that you have experience working for a town doesn’t help you unless you’ve had experience with LNG," says Williams. "You take that expertise, and then you cogitate on how those factors affect the town." He discounts the possibility that such cogitation might be assisted by people with expertise in, say, public advocacy, environmental issues, or fisheries science.

So does Weil, in his own inimitable fashion. "We’re not in an advocacy situation here," he says, getting a bit agitated. "What we needed was expertise."

A suggestion that perhaps a little expertise in advocacy might have been useful is met with open scorn. "If I want to know the best way to reduce the impact of the pipeline on the bottom of the bay, and Michael Cathey gives me a cogent, forceful reply that gets the job done, that’s what we need. Not," and here Weil rolls his eyes and makes extravagant finger quotes, "advocacy background."

The fact remains that Michael Cathey’s definition of low-impact is likely to differ substantially from, say, Friends of the Coast’s. And the selectmen acknowledge that because they were under a tight deadline they turned to people they knew — which means people Weil knew. "Given the timetable before Fairwinds was going to pull the offer off the table," Weil says, he first suggested Greg Williams and then the selectmen "relied on Greg Williams to find us the best experts they could."

"There was a great deal of discussion" about the names on the list Williams provided, Selectman Knight adds. "The yardstick for me was not whether this person had worked in this or that industry but whether they had the expertise we needed."

That may be true, but if Williams’s other statements on the topic are any guide, it’s difficult to see how anyone not deeply tangled in the LNG industry would have gotten onto the list.

There’s a real myopia at work here, a genuine inability of people like Weil and Williams to understand that other backgrounds and perspectives might be valuable to their negotiations — not to mention to the individual selectmen’s recommendations that will accompany the public release of the lease, whenever it’s finalized. They’re working on an energy deal, pure and simple.

The other thing at work is Weil’s arrogance and temper. At the end of the group interview conducted with the Phoenix, he abruptly stood and began stabbing his finger at me. "If people see something in the lease that’s there because Michael Cathey sold out to the gas industry, I’ll be real surprised," he barked, and stalked toward the door. At the doorway, he turned back. "You look at the product. It will look like it’s been written by a rabid environmentalist!"

SEPTEMBER

On the day of the selectmen’s public announcement, Bill Millar remembers watching people move boxes into the building across the street from the Anchor and wondering what they were up to. Then Harpswell Town Manager Kristi Eiane called the Anchor and dropped an unsubtle hint that they should cover that evening’s Board of Selectmen meeting, at which point, Millar says, "We made a beeline over there to find out what was going on."

The Fairwinds office was open the next day.

An early signal that the Fairwinds proposal would exacerbate the town’s existing tensions came with a now-notorious letter to the October Anchor. The writer, Val Locke, expressed her opposition to the project and then with stupefying insensitivity wrote, "I am an educated 46-year-old business executive who still works full-time. My husband is a 47-year-old, very successful builder. Neither of us is an 80-year-old retiree or a fisherman with a 10th-grade education, people who can be influenced by large corporations with pretty trifold brochures, or a group of completely transparent, over-eager local politicians."

Locke apologized for the letter, but — as subsequent letters to the Anchor made clear — it immediately became a kind of rallying cry for project supporters. In much the same way that distaste for the tactics of CasinosNO! kept the casino referendum viable much longer than it had any right to be, Locke’s letter has for some Harpswellians turned the Fairwinds question into a referendum on the town’s changing character. (Notice a similar dynamic with the Westbrook and Saco racino questions?)

Discussion on the various Fairwinds Web boards also frequently claim long-time residency as a kind of authority, and speakers at Planning Board and selectmen’s meetings routinely identify themselves as full-time, seasonal, or non-residents. Complaints about, and condescension toward, recent arrivals are the norm. Val Locke probably didn’t say anything a number of other Harpswellians hadn’t privately believed, but she did pick the scab of socioeconomic tension at an unfortunate time.

People on both sides are taking advantage. Peter Micciche is only too happy to contend that the Fairwinds opposition is concentrated among people who came to town after the Navy fuel depot shut down. "There are a few new people who don’t remember what it was like because they didn’t live here then," he says. "The vast majority of our supporters are folks who were here then and had a relatively benign experience with this site and are willing to take the advantages of this site because of them seeing it as a minor effect on the community."

He also points out that Chris Duval, spokesman for Fairplay for Harpswell, "just officially registered to vote in Harpswell in October," although Duval bought a house in the town last year. "By that standard, I’ve lived here as long as he has," Micciche adds.

The locals kicked back around the stove at Watson’s General Store in Cundy’s Harbor see things a little differently. "All the new people that have been buying up the houses around here, all they see is the money," one of them said recently. "They’re the ones that’s going to vote for it." Nobody disagreed, but then none of those new people were there eating hot dogs.

At the Dolphin Wharf rally, several people opposed to the project claimed that they’ve received threatening anonymous phone calls and been intimidated in other ways. One outspoken anti-Fairwinds resident said, "I expect reprisals" as a result of his actions. "People are scared here."

Asked about these claims, Micciche laughs out loud. "You’re missing the boat here. We gave away 250 signs, and within a few days all of them were gone. Do you see any opposition signs missing?" (How would I see them if they were missing?) "Yesterday we did a police report because our sign here at the office was vandalized for the second time."

He picks up steam as he goes on. "I’ve been accused of going to church for some kind of political thing. It’s absurd to accuse someone of having false spirituality to try to get a few votes. My goodness, what does that say of the people who suspect people of that? Have you been on the Web sites? Have you seen anything even remotely negative from the supporters in comparison to what kinds of things the opposition are writing?"

It is fair to say that the anti-Fairwinds people have by far the sharper public tongues. But the fact that Fairwinds opponents have acted improperly doesn’t mean that Fairwinds supporters have not, does it?

"Oh, it does," Micciche insists. "We have made it very clear that we will publicly denounce them personally if we hear of negative things."

What opponents of the project fail to understand, Micciche says, is that Fairwinds are "as much supporters of people who are against the project as people who are for. We just want to know the answer."

Really? A spokesman for a project who doesn’t care whether the project is successful?

He chuckles and backtracks a little. "Of course I want it to succeed. But if they don’t want us here, we’ll go away. We’re not going to buy a piece of private property down the road and build one anyway."