ABSTRACT
I n 1971 the Maine State Planning Office issued a small booklet intended to interest people in the process of comprehensive planning. The publication, Maine Coastal Resources Renewal, offered a sweeping vision of controlled progress along the state's besieged coast, a future far different from the industrial promotions advanced by oil-port developers during these same years. As an example of creative utopian planning, the document described the development of a hypothetical nuclear power plant on the shores of Belfast Harbor in mid-coast Maine. Turning a potential problem into an environmental blessing, Belfast citizens would direct the plant's warm-water discharges into ducts and pipes to heat their homes, their businesses, and then the waters of a swimming beach fronting their new destination resort hotel. An array of aquaculture hatcheries would bask in warm waters near the harbor, and greenhouses would operate year-round. Power from the nuclear plant would attract other clean industries to the area and run an energy-efficient local public transportation system. All of these facilities would serve a population prudently limited to 11,000 permanent and 20,000 seasonal residents. When demand for accommodations reached the prescribed limit, new migrants and visitors would be diverted to another of the 30 nuclear-powered communities projected for the Maine coast by the year 2000. 1
