SOUTH PORTLAND, Maine - Environmental advocates, along with some local residents, are fighting a lawsuit filed on Friday against the city of South Portland.
The suit, filed by the Portland Pipe Line Company, complains that the city acted unfairly in adopting an ordinance which would ban crude oil from being shipped east to South Portland and loaded onto tankers. Opponents, meanwhile, accuse the tar sands industry of ignoring the will of the people.
Mary-Jane Ferrier is a South Portland resident and a spokesperson for Protect South Portland - an organization dedicated to preventing tar sands oil from Canada from being shipped to the Maine coast for export, something which critics fear could pollute the environment.
The group is one of several that have come together in response to the lawsuit challenging the so-called Clear Skies Ordinance the South Portland City Council passed last summer in a 6 to 1 vote.
Ferrier says they want to intervene in the lawsuit to defend the ordinance, which she says enjoyed widespread support among residents.
"We think it's important that we follow through on the citizen involvement in the development of the ordinance," Ferrier says, "that this was not just a few city councilors sitting around and coming up with an ordinance. This was something that was a ground swell within the city itself."
The suit was filed by Portland Pipe Line Corporation - or PPLC - which operates the 236-mile crude oil pipeline to Montreal, and by a group called The American Waterways Operators, which represents the tugboat and barge industry.
It claims the ordinance seeks to interfere unfairly in interstate and international commerce, and that it violates a number of provisions of the Maine and the U.S. Constitutions.
Attorney Jim Merrill is on the legal team representing the pipe line company. He declined to go on tape, but said in a statement that the company believes "the ordinance unfairly infringes upon the rights of Portland Pipe Line Corporation (PPLC) and other responsible area operators to conduct business."
Sean Mahoney is an attorney with the Conservation Law Foundation, one of the groups seeking to intervene in the lawsuit on behalf of South Portland. He says the city is not exceeding its authority in acting to protect the health and well-being of its citizens.
"Under the Maine Constitution, municipalities have this home rule authority where they're allowed to do that," Mahoney says, "and there's plenty of case law supporting that - and supporting it, in particular, with respect to air quality."
In order to transport tar sands oil east to Maine, PPLC would have to reverse the flow of the pipeline - something the company has repeatedly said it has no plans to do. But Mahoney says the current lawsuit makes that assertion hard to swallow.
"I don't know why you would hire a lot of lawyers and spend a lot of money if that wasn't the case," he says.
South Portland City Manager Jim Gailey declined to be interviewed for this story. He says the city is seeking legal representation before issuing any comment.
