SOUTH PORTLAND – A six-month moratorium on waterfront construction billed as a cooling-off period in South Portland’s hotly debated tar-sands fight only served to increase an ever-widening gap last week and promised to fuel further divisiveness.

On Nov. 6, the City Council held a special workshop, less than 24-hours after defeat at the polls of a citizen-initiated ordinance designed to block diluted bitumen – popularly known as “tar sands” – from arriving in local ports via the 236-mile Portland-to-Montreal pipeline. Although five city councilors came out against the Waterfront Protection Ordinance, calling it overbroad and prone to unintended consequences, each one questioned the wisdom of allowing tar sands to flow through local ports.

By adopting a moratorium on construction of equipment needed to load tar sands on ships docked in South Portland, councilors hope to placate residents concerned with its alleged toxicity while the council works with petroleum industry leaders to craft zoning rules less onerous than the WPO.

Once the moratorium is in place, an ad hoc committee made up of various stakeholders will be convened to draft an ordinance regulating tar sands. The moratorium, which will be retroactive to Nov. 6, essentially keeps Portland Pipe Line Corp. from submitting any development applications until the new ordinance is in place.

“I want a cooling-off period,” said Councilor Linda Cohen, who first called for the moratorium at an Oct. 28 council meeting. “I think the public is expecting us to protect them from whatever might be coming down the road. I think this is a good way to stop things and see if we can’t craft something that works for most.”

However, what resulted from the Nov. 6 workshop was two hours of protracted debate, with City Attorney Sally Daggett advising councilors not to signal their intent, and audience members chastising them for not being quite clear enough.

“I’m interested in hearing a commitment from the councilors that the moratorium will be used for the purpose of preventing tar sands from coming through South Portland,” said Smith Street resident P.J. Kragen. “Could we clarify that, that the moratorium is for that sole purpose?”

“I don’t see any alternative for me or any of the people in the community I know except a complete restriction of tar sands through the city,” agreed Crystal Goodrich of Highland Avenue. “There is no way my mind will change in feeling that.”

The Daggett-authored moratorium calls current zoning “not adequate to prevent serious public harm possibly to be caused by future proposed development proposals.” However, it does not promise to ban tar sands, and some councilors appeared willing to take that bait, until Daggett stepped in.

State law, she said, gives municipalities the ability to temporarily ban a legal activity, but only because of potential health risks, or due to overtaxed infrastructure and resources.

“The point of a moratorium is to give everybody some breathing room to study the issue,” said Daggett. “My view is that it’s a mistake, if you are going to have a collaborative process, for all seven city councilors to have already said this is my position on the issue and I am going to be working on ‘X’ result. I think that’s a little bit unfair to the process.

“It would be a mistake to preordain the result,” said Daggett.

Daggett also pointed out that any vote to pass a moratorium must be unanimous, a result that appeared in doubt when Councilor Michael Pock appeared to waver. While most speakers continued to rail against tar sands, “Big Oil,” and Portland Pipe Line Corp., a handful spoke against adopting a moratorium.

One such person was Kathryn DiPhilippo, executive director of the South Portland Historical Society, but speaking on her own behalf. Adopting a moratorium to accomplish what residents had just voted down would be, she said, a slap in the face of Portland Pipe Line, which she deemed, “an incredibly responsible corporate citizen of this city.”

“The history of our city is one of collaboration and working together,” she said. “I don’t see any basis (for a) moratorium whatsoever. To me the cooling-off period is now. This is the time to bring everyone together, so we don’t have such animosity and antagonism in this city.”

Pock seemed to take to that entreaty.

“I go back to the whole idea of trust,” he said. “Evidently, we don’t trust Portland Pipe Line, Portland Pipe Line doesn’t trust the citizens’ group, and nobody trusts the City Council. This [moratorium] isn’t helping us get any closer together.”

It took several minutes for Pock’s fellow councilors to talk him off the cliff, after which a good deal of time was spent debating whether the moratorium should refer to tar sands, or the more neutral term, “oil sands.”

“It’s egregious to change the name from tar sands to oil sands,” said Taryn Hallweaver of Environment Maine, one of many people to lobby for the stronger term because, she said, “The public is expecting the council to act on tar sands.”

Daggett, while conceding that “tar sands” has won the war for supremacy in the media, said the term is a “politically charged” and a “less scientifically accurate” term than oil sands.

There also was concern about whether the product, under whatever name is chosen, should be referred to as “unrefined,” especially after Daggett noted that tar sands already comes through South Portland in the form of heating oil refined in New Brunswick.

“I think we want it to be enough to cover any tar-sands product, regardless of what stage it’s in,” said Mayor Tom Blake.

However, Blake, a leading supporter of the WPO, also let slip that a moratorium process may be entirely moot. Permitting needed to reverse the flow of the pipeline through Vermont could take “another 10 months,” he said.

On Wednesday, after the Current’s deadline, the council was slated to spend 15-20 minutes reviewing Daggett’s final draft of the moratorium, preparatory to a first reading on Nov. 18. Following a trip to the Planning Board, the moratorium is scheduled to return to the council for a final vote on Dec. 16, after which it will begin to staff the ordinance writing committee.

“We’ve received a ton of emails on that already,” said Councilor Jerry Jalbert on Friday. “I think there is going to be intense interest in being a part of that group.

Meanwhile, Blake has called for the formation of a separate committee to mend fences between members of Protect South Portland and the local petroleum industry. That, many said, is a much-needed effort after the heavy slog of the WPO battle.

“In my 50 years in South Portland, I have never seen the type of animosity that has taken place during this campaign,” said Dan Mooers, a local attorney.

But as the ongoing tar-sands war transitions to a new battleground, the final word on the WPO may have gone to Summit Street resident Jeffrey Selser.

Describing himself as an attorney specializing in land use and natural resource issues, having worked cases in 30 states and four countries, Selser said, “I know my way around a land-use ordinance.” Despite concern for the local environment, Selser voted against the WPO, he said, because “it was a poorly drafted ordinance,” he said. However, poorer still were the campaigns waged for and against its passage, he added.

“I love South Portland, but to be honest I’ve been pretty disgusted with both sides in this issue,” he said. “I think both sides have been dishonest. I think both sides have exaggerated their positions. I think they’ve both played fast and loose with the facts. They’ve vilified each other unnecessarily and they have completely divided this community without cause.

“I showed up tonight hoping to see this coming-together everybody’s talked about, and all I see is continued division on both sides,” said Selser. “Please, everybody, stop yelling at each other and claiming the other side is an evil, horrible person, because they’re not. We all live here in South Portland. We all are, at our hearts, good people.”

Saying that the moratorium “doesn’t have to be perfect, it only has to buy you 180 days,” Selser all but begged the council to set aside the parsing of language and adopt the document, as written. The important thing, he said, is to begin the healing process that a moratorium promises, if all sides can stop sniping at one another long enough.

“Oil companies, it’s not going to kill you to wait 180 days,” said Selser. “Pro-WPO people, it’s not going to kill you to come to the table with an open mind that the oil companies might actually have something other than the destruction of the world in mind.”

A CLOSER LOOK

Below is the expected timeline of a proposed “Moratorium on development proposals involving the loading of unrefined oil sands onto marine tank vessels docking in South Portland.”

Wednesday, Nov. 13: South Portland City Council to review revisions made to the zoning ordinance proposal by City Attorney Sally Daggett, following a Nov. 6 workshop.

Monday, Nov. 18: First reading of the ordinance before City Council, referral to Planning Board.

Tuesday, Nov. 26: Planning Board public hearing.

Tuesday, Dec. 3: Alternate date for Planning Board hearing, depending on results of Nov. 18 first reading.

Monday, Dec. 16: Public hearing, second reading before City Council, possible vote on passage.

May 6, 2014: End date of moratorium, if adopted and not subsequently extended.