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A good idea then — and now

Perhaps the only truly new aspect of the plans to harness energy from the enormous tides of Down East Maine is the sophisticated technology that might actually make it happen this time around.

A hydraulic engineer from Minnesota named Dexter Cooper, a summer visitor to Campobello Island, had the same idea back in the 1920s as he pondered the power potential in the 70 billion cubic feet of seawater that coursed into Passamaquoddy Bay with each incoming tide.

According to various histories of the Passamaquoddy Tidal Power Project on the Web, Cooper's ambitious plan involved damming both Passamaquoddy and Cobscook bays to generate some 3 million megawatts of electricity annually. The incoming tide would be trapped in Passamaquoddy Bay, then released in a continuous flow through turbines into Cobscook Bay. Water would then be released back into the Bay of Fundy.

In 1935, Cooper's Campobello neighbor, President Franklin Roosevelt, thought enough of the energy-producing scheme to secure $10 million in relief funds to begin construction. That year in Eastport, a workers' village was built that included a school, hospital, machine shops and more than 100 houses.

But less than a year later, the massive New Deal project ended when federal funding was cut over concerns about the environment, fisheries, where a suitable market might be found for all that electricity and how it would be transmitted.

Quoddy Village was later used for the National Youth Administration and then as a training base for Seabees in World War II. The houses are now privately owned, and a dike built for the project supports Route 190 from Eastport to Perry.

The Quoddy Maritime Museum in Eastport houses the original working scale model of the Passamaquoddy Tidal Power Project.