I would like to encourage the city of South Portland to stand up for itself on the issue of the Waterfront Protection Ordinance by bringing it to a vote through a citizens initiative in November.

The situation facing the city is first of all a David-and-Goliath confrontation, in which one of the largest corporate giants in the world has blithely assumed that South Portland would have no problem defacing its historic waterfront, contradicting its carefully crafted Comprehensive Plan, and endangering its residents, not to mention the entire local environment from the bottom of the harbor to the top of its atmosphere and as far out and inland as one can see.

But on another level again, South Portland’s action on this proposal will have further-ranging repercussions of significance to the future of this planet. The proposed smokestacks are part of the apparatus of a tar sands oil transport scheme that is one more large nail in the Earth’s coffin, as the oil and gas giants wrack and squeeze the earth’s crust for every last drop of dwindling resource.

If South Portland can successfully bring simple common sense to bear on this outrageous presumption by the giants of the profit-over-planet mentality, then humanity will be a bit closer to saving itself.

Cynthia Stancioff
Chesterville