Dirty Energy

Tar Sands

The Tar Sands Oil Threat to Maine

Canadian gas and oil giant Enbridge Corporation has a plan to pump dirty tar sands oil in existing pipelines from eastern Canada and through Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. The 1950's era pipeline enters Maine near Bethel and crosses the Androscoggin River, and proceeds southeast along Sebago Lake (the drinking water source for greater Portland), to Portland Harbor in Casco Bay.

Tar sands oil is the world’s dirtiest oil. Mining it destroys large swaths of Alberta's Boreal forest, and requires a massive amount of energy and carbon pollution. Compared to conventional oil, it’s more corrosive, toxic and much more difficult to clean up. In 2010, Enbridge’s pipeline in the Midwest spilled 800,000 gallons of tar sands oil into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River, and it still hasn’t been cleaned up.

Pumping tar sands oil through Maine is just too risky.

Take Action

Reports and Fact Sheets

Want to get involved? Email maine.chapter@sierraclub.org to get more info or join the campaign.

 

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Cleaning up the Dirty Coal-Burning Schiller Power Plant

Protect Seacoast families from coal pollution

The Schiller Station coal plant is a bad neighbor. Located on the banks of the Piscataqua River in Portsmouth on the Maine-NH border and built more than half a century ago, Schiller is a major polluter that threatens the health and safety of families in the Seacoast. The City of Portsmouth and the Maine towns of South Berwick, Eliot, and Kittery are directly in the "plume" of Schiller's sulfur dioxide pollution.

The Schiller Plant's dangerous emissions are predicted to cause York County, Maine to fail the federal health standard for the powerful pollutant sulfur dioxide, which worsens adult and pediatric asthma, chronic bronchitis, emphysema and other respiratory and pulmonary diseases.

Schiller puts people's health at risk:

  • In Maine's York County, 42,452 children and 30,512 adults ages 65 and older are at-risk for chronic respiratory and pulmonary illnesses such as asthma, chronic bronchitis, emphysema, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes, according to the American Lung Association.
  • Maine's Department of Health and Human Services reports that 16% of 5th and 6th graders in York County were diagnosed with asthma in 2009, and nearly 1,140 emergency department visits were due to asthma in 2008.

It's time to clean up Schiller Station.

(Eliot clean air activist and Sierra Club member Kim Richards)

UPDATE: On Tuesday, June 11, 2013, voters in the town of Eliot decided to send a Clean Air Act letter to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency asking it to investigate Schiller’s air pollution and to work with the owners of the power plant to clean it up to meet current federal health and safety air quality standards.

To learn more about the issues, see the resources below and to get involved in cleaning up the Schiller coal plant, contact us at maine.chapter@sierraclub.org.