As a long-serving and proud member of South Portland’s working waterfront, I am extremely grateful that South Portland voters stood with their waterfront neighbors and defeated the so-called Waterfront Protection Ordinance last November.

My appreciation from the fall is giving way to alarm. The same off-oil activists who assured us the WPO was a narrowly drafted ordinance that would not impact the established businesses along the waterfront now acknowledge that their plan was overly broad and fatally flawed.

Those who would have eagerly upended South Portland’s entire waterfront last year to accomplish their narrow off-oil agenda are now pushing the city to adopt a disruptive and likely illegal ordinance banning so-called tar sands. As was the case with the WPO, there is a lot the off-oilers aren’t telling us about tar sands and their true intentions.

The Alberta Oil Sands in Canada is the third largest supply of crude oil in the world and is already in our fuel stocks today. While different techniques are needed to extract oil sands from the ground, it ships just like conventional crude once processed for pipeline transportation according to both President Obama’s State Department and the National Academy of Science.

As a waterfront community and as consumers of energy, we need to insist that our elected officials consider the best available science before being pushed into an ill-conceived and likely illegal ban of an affordable and abundant energy source. I hope that is what occurs in the months to come.

Mark Usinger

South Portland