SOUTH PORTLAND – After a narrow loss at the polls on Nov. 5, foes of diluted bitumen, or “tar sands,” won a consolation prize Monday when the South Portland City Council voted 6-1 to pass the first reading of a six-month moratorium on the oil product.

The ordinance, which bans construction of equipment needed to load tar sands onto ships docked at South Portland piers, has been touted as a way to placate residents worried about its alleged toxicity while work is done to effect a more permanent ban.

However, City Attorney Sally Daggett, who drafted the moratorium, has warned councilors against signaling an end game, while members of South Portland’s petroleum industry have faulted the moratorium for tying its hands only, leaving environmental advocates free to make a second run at a citizen-initiated petition, modeled after the recently defeated Waterfront Protection Ordinance (WPO).

If adopted, the moratorium would apply only to unrefined tar sands and not any finished products, like gasoline or home heating oil, now flowing through the port, that may have been refined from tar sands. It also narrowly targets the work of Portland Pipe Line Corp., unlike the WPO, which supporters acknowledge purposely cast a wide net, to prevent the pipeline from forging workaround partnerships with South Portland’s other petroleum companies.

Public comment on the moratorium chewed up nearly three hours at Monday’s council meeting, following similar marathon sessions with many of the same people making many of the same points at workshops on Nov. 6 and Nov. 13. The result, however, was never really in doubt, with only Councilor Michael Pock voting against the temporary tar-sands ban.

“I feel it is not balanced. It is not fair,” said Pock. “Personally, and for the record, I do not like tar sands either, but we have got to work as a body of people to get through this and bring the community together so we can keep the oil companies here and yet, stay healthy.”

Because the moratorium represents a ban, even if temporary, on land-use activity, state law requires that a public hearing be held before the Planning Board. That hearing will be held on Dec. 3. The moratorium will then return to the City Council for another public hearing and final council vote on Dec. 16. If adopted, the moratorium will be retroactive to the first workshop on the topic, Nov. 6, and stay in effect until May 5, 2014.

The moratorium could be extended an additional 180 days, if, in the words of City Manager Jim Gailey, “we make substantial progress” on the purpose of its enactment. That purpose, per Daggett, is to “review and study the potential effects on the city” of tar sands, whether from the burning-off of additives needed to push the thick substance through the 236-mile pipeline from Montreal, or in the case of an unforeseen spill.

Once the moratorium is in place, the City Council plans to convene an ad hoc committee of various stakeholders – oil industry officials, environmentalists, scientists, city residents – to work on an ordinance proposal that would offer some protection from tar-sands transport through the city, while being less restrictive to waterfront companies not engaged in moving that particular product.

According to Mayor-elect Gerard Jalbert, “We’ve already had a ton of emails asking to be on that committee, so it’s clear there is significant interest in that.”

First, however, there are two public hearings and an additional vote to be conducted before the moratorium is finally in place.

At the Nov. 6 workshop, Mayor Tom Blake said any vote on a moratorium needed to be unanimous. He was not contradicted at that meeting. However, Daggett has since said only five affirmative votes are needed for final passage, as required by the city’s zoning ordinance, while Gailey said a simple majority was sufficient to move past the first reading.

Blake said Monday that he “may have misremembered” a 1986 fight over building density, in which he recalled a city councilor having to catch a flight home from a Florida vacation to make a requisite unanimous moratorium quorum.

The current city charter only calls on unanimity, with at least six councilors present and voting, on so-called “emergency” ordinance measures. Such an emergency vote would allow the council to conduct a final vote less than seven days after a first reading and/or put a new ordinance into effect less than 20 days after passage.

There was a brief parliamentary kerfuffle at Monday’s first reading of the moratorium when two members of the audience – Rosemarie De Angelis, a former city councilor, and Lowell Street resident David Orbeton – called on Pock to recuse himself from the proceedings. Both claimed Pock harbored a conflict of interest based on his having performed carpentry work at a Cape Elizabeth home owned by a family with ties to the petroleum industry, whose members were allegedly active in the fight against the Waterfront Protection Ordinance.

“I will not recuse myself on that point,” said Pock, claiming that Orbeton also has done work for members of the same family.

The recusal however, failed.

A vote to allow Pock to continue to take part in debate and to vote on the moratorium question was the only unanimous thing the South Portland City Council has done related to tar sands since the topic first crossed its agenda 10 months ago.

“We may not all agree with a certain point of view but it doesn’t mean that we can’t be objective, or that anyone shouldn’t have a voice in the discussion,” said Councilor Melissa Linscott.

“I think we have a lot of conflicts in the community,” said Cohen. “We all have to make a living. It’s a small community and we are going to interact with one another.”

Cohen, who introduced the moratorium idea at the Oct. 28 council meeting, when the fate of the WPO was still in doubt, also seemed to voice the consensus of the council in what it means.

“I agree, it is a one-sided piece of work,” she said. “It does bind the hands of the businesses while it does not bind the hands of the citizens. But I think it’s the safest way, the calmest way, for us all to come together. I think we are all going to learn a lot.

“Why do we need this moratorium?” she asked, rhetorically. “Because there’s so much distrust on both sides. Hopefully we can come up with something that, while not everyone’s going to be happy in the end, probably, will be the best that we can do.”

Following the moratorium vote, after all but a handful in the audience had left, Larry Wilson, president of Portland Pipe Line Corp. rose to speak.

“I am really moved by the myths, the exaggeration and the rhetoric that has come around this issue, and the complete lack of education on the other side,” he said, mirroring what many on the other side had said during the previous three hours about the $600,000-plus campaign waged by the Working Waterfront Coalition.

Although he has thus far refused to comment on the actual chemical make-up of tar sands, Wilson said he hopes the new ad hoc committee will delve “into the science” at the root of the issue.

“If the moratorium takes us down that path and doesn’t in itself reflect future language of an ordinance, then I can almost sleep a little better,” he said, “because ‘the process’ is what we’ve said all along that we’re after––a seat at the table and an opportunity for collaboration.

“I hear about a lack of trust on both sides and I wonder what’s happened to result in a lack of trust of us since June [when the WPO was introduced], because we’ve done nothing different than we’ve done for 72 years be a wonderful corporate, tax-paying citizen of this community. We’ve certainly done no harm and we’ve not gone back on our word on any issues.

“I don’t understand this lack of trust,” said Wilson. “I don’t understand what causes a community to make decisions based on fear, when you haven’t heard both sides of the issue. What is it about oil sands that makes it so evil to people?”