By Theron Larkins
Staff Writer
CARIBOU, Maine — For Mainers, there is no bigger sense of pride than that which comes from our ability to weather out the frigid temperatures of northern winters. During the last two months, however, temperatures have frequently dropped to negative double-digit numbers and even Mainers, especially those of us in northern Aroostook County, have been harshly tested by the elements. These sub-zero temperatures that are freezing the pipes in our homes and the windows in our cars are not necessarily abnormal for northern Maine, but throughout, what is now the dead of winter, Aroostook County residents are finding it more and more difficult to simply stay warm in their homes. This is, of course, in part due to the below-freezing temperatures we’ve experienced in the previous two months, but what may be playing an even larger role is the rising price of heating fuel. Whether it is fuel oil, propane, electric or even wood pellets, prices for heating fuel are spiking across the board.
According to the Governor’s Energy Office, wholesale electricity prices in New England were nearly 60 percent higher last year than 2012. Propane prices have increased 22 percent since October. The average price of home heating oil is now $3.81 per gallon.
What does this mean for Maine families, who may be elderly, or living on a fixed-income? They sadly will not be able to heat their homes appropriately during a time when propane production in the U.S. is at the highest it’s ever been. Nearly 70 percent of Maine households will be spending more than $3,200 this winter on heat alone. Energy Office Director Patrick Woodcock says, for some families, the cost is too much.
“We’ve had numerous phone calls from people in desperate situations,” he says. “They’ve resorted to sleeping by the wood fireplace. They just don’t have the necessary funds and people are in desperate situations.”
When asked what the Governor’s Energy Office is doing to help these families who can’t afford the rising heating prices, he said more important than anything we must continue to provide people with affordable alternatives for heating solutions.
“That’s natural gas. That’s energy efficiency. That’s heat pumps. There are a range of options,” he says. “What we need to do is prioritize finite state resources to help meet these energy challenges,” said Woodcock. “Natural gas, which is what propane is derived from, is much cheaper in North America than in other places around the world, and with the exportation of propane earning such high profits, we’ve seen a major spike in exporting over the last few years.”
Woodcock points to cheaper and effective alternatives like wood pellet stoves and geothermal heat pumps, which can come with tax credits and rebates of up to $5,000, as well as other incentives for homeowners willing to switch to a more energy-efficient heating system.
However, the blame can’t be placed solely on the fuel companies sending their product overseas, or the reluctance to change someone may have. Woodcock claims there have been other logistical problems contributing to the situation.
“Last year, we saw a huge demand for the propane in the Midwest for the use of drying corn. This caused some serious problems when it came to having enough propane left to heat places, especially in the Northeast,” said Woodcock. “We’ve also had issues with railways around Lac-Megantic. With the cold weather and the snowstorms we’ve come across some challenges that have created a ‘bottleneck’ problem.”
Lac-Megantic is located in Quebec, intertwined with the Appalachian Mountains, just north of the U.S. border. The major railway passing through Lac-Megantic, and down into Maine is owned by the United States-based Montreal, Maine and Atlantic Railway (MMA).
Many Aroostook County residents still remember the railway tragedy that struck our neighbors to the north last July. The small town in Quebec was the site of what is now notoriously known as the “Lac-Megantic derailment,” which occurred when an unattended 74-car freight train carrying Bakken formation crude oil ran away and derailed. Forty-two people were confirmed dead and five others are missing and presumed dead from the fiery explosion. The explosion also tore through more than 30 buildings and nearly half of the downtown area was destroyed.
With the recent Canadian National (CN) freight train derailments in New Brunswick, occurring twice in the past three weeks, it seems more and more evident that railways are not only unreliable, but unsafe during the cold winter-months in the Northeast.
The rail system in this country has been on life-support for many years, and many Aroostook County residents have seen this downfall occurring firsthand with the demise of the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad in 2003. It’s hard for one to imagine the B&A Railroad was still operating a decade ago, merely because their presence seems so far removed. This may be in some part due to those brightly painted “BAR” boxcars that attracted so much attention during the latter half of the 20th century.
Despite the downfall of the B&A Railroad coupled with economic downturn and the departure of heavy industry from northern Maine, the current railways are still a necessity. Now, the question is being asked as to whether or not railroads operating in the Northeast, like CN and MMA, are spending enough money on maintenance.
Cyrille Simard, the mayor of Edmundston, N.B., is questioning CN’s maintenance budget after the two accidents that he hopes are merely coincidence.
“Hopefully it’s just a coincidence, but we have to ask, ‘Do we maintain our railway in eastern Canada the same way we do in central and western Canada?’” Simard told CTV News, one day after the January derailment.
The same question, without making any accusations, could be asked of any railway operating in the northeastern part of North America, where winter weather can make any sort of travel dangerous. If the railway industry can’t always transport the fuel we need to the places that we need it there must be more solutions on track.
The controversial solution that most Maine residents are skeptical to accept as a solution at all, is the increase in fuel storage capacity in the region. Joe Rose, president and CEO of the Propane Gas Association of New England firmly believes the problem could be remedied with a handful of storage facilities strategically placed throughout New England.
“We’re willing to pay for these storage facilities. We’re certainly not asking for public money, but the hard part is getting the permits. Most people can remember what happened a few years ago in Searsport. We were close, but when it comes to something like this getting a community’s support can be difficult,” said Rose.
For someone like Rose who is so heavily invested in this issue there was no shock when propane prices became such a hot-button topic.
“We could see it coming in November. New England is at the end of the string for propane distribution, as I like to say. If we had those previously mentioned storage facilities available to us we could have been trickling propane into the region all summer,” said Rose. “Propane was actually pretty cheap last summer. We simply had no place to put it.”
Looking back at the attempted storage facility in Searsport, Rose says it would have been able to provide 20 million gallons of propane, about 20 percent of what Mainers use in a single winter. Rose went on to praise Maine and its residents for their ability to tough out the cold winters we’ve grown so accustomed to.
“Maine is a beautiful place, but you’ve got to be tough. It’s not an easy place to live during the winter months, but we want to make it a little easier.”
As for any environmental or safety concerns that may be shared by people in places like Searsport and throughout the entirety of New England, Rose didn’t hesitate to set the record straight when it comes to propane.
“As for environmental concerns, propane is a clean emission with no negative side-effects on the environment, so there’s no real issue there,” said Rose. “Of course, safety is always a huge concern, but the technology we have when it comes to building these facilities just keeps getting better. We haven’t had a major propane accident in many years.”
Looking ahead, the solution may still be far off on the horizon. It’s difficult to predict such an outcome, as it will have to play out on a small-scale in places like Searsport, where communities will have to decide for themselves if they’re willing to take the risk.
“It’s also important to remember that these facilities don’t have to be built near the community. So, if you know anyone with 50-acres of land they’d like to offer, we’d be interested,” said Rose, only partly joking. “In all seriousness, we need reasonable highway access for our trucks, so we have to find a reasonable solution.”
What that solution will be is still too far ahead for officials to predict. The wheels of state legislature are already spinning, as Gov. LePage has approved longer hours for propane truck drivers. Mainers, can also recall the 2013 Maine Omnibus Bill that Gov. LePage attempted to veto, but was unanimously overridden by the State Senate.
All the way up in Aroostook County, we can only hope bills like the Omnibus can continue to cut energy-costs, in the future. As of now, these energy-savings appear to be absent, for many Maine residents, or perhaps they’re just buried deep under all the snow.
