It can’t be easy trying to convince Mainers to support a coal gasification plant.

Even with all the jobs, the tax revenue and domestically produced electricity, coal plants are best known here for the Midwestern smokestacks that pollute our air and lakes.

So maybe you can’t blame the developer of a proposed coal and wood gasification plant in Wiscasset for emphasizing the positive. Especially with the project facing a townwide vote Nov. 6.

But, this week, the company turned up the spin cycle, and ended up a little black and blue.

It started Wednesday when the Chewonki Foundation hosted a scientific seminar on new technology to capture the greenhouse gases from coal plants and inject them deep into the earth. The strategy is seen as a key in fighting global warming, and to the construction of any new coal plants.

Chewonki is a non-profit environmental education center, a campus with solar panels and composting toilets that covers a 400-acre peninsula. Chewonki also is the largest neighbor of the proposed Twin River Energy Center gasification plant.

When the developer first presented its plans last summer, Chewonki responded not by opposing or endorsing the plant but by doing what it does best – education. It put together Wednesday’s conference to learn whether a coal plant on the coast of Maine could realistically capture the global warming gas and then find some deep cavity in the earth to pump it into.

For most of the day, scientists from places like Princeton University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology soberly said the technology to capture and store carbon is too expensive right now and may never be possible in Maine.

Twin River presented its own research, which concluded that the plant wouldn’t be any worse for the climate than a plant burning natural gas and oil, but only if it could somehow figure out a way to remove and store 25 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions.

Overall, it was a tough day for the coal project.

But you wouldn’t have known it from the press release issued by Twin River that afternoon. It said its research proved critics wrong and showed that the plant would benefit the region by reducing energy prices, providing 200 full time jobs, paying more than 80 percent of Wiscasset’s tax burden and reducing dependence on foreign oil.

That was way too much spin for Chewonki, which issued its own statement that it felt used by its new neighbor.

Twin River followed on Thursday with apologies for what it says was an honest editing error. It issued a corrected release that included a sentence clarifying what the study actually said, but still sounding upbeat about it.

Chewonki’s leaders, in the meantime, decided they got all the education they needed. It issued a statement Friday saying the staff is urging the board of directors to oppose the project, and a vote is expected within days.

The decision was based on scientific findings, according to Chewonki officials. The timing, however, was clearly more about setting the record straight and protecting its credibility.

How much the episode hurts Twin River’s credibility might be clearer Nov. 6.

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