Battle against LNG readied

Note from Greetings: If approved, this would, every other day, take very dangerous LNG tankers past potential terrorist targets, such as the Naval War College and the Naval Undersea War Center, as well as through very populous areas. In this day and age, and with reports of new terrorist strikes being planned... why would this President and Congress provide another potential terrorist target when it is not needed for energy supply?

It would also dredge up a previously polluted bay and shut down jobs to an entire region that has high unemployment at a time when they are trying to "promote" adding jobs.

Where are you on this, President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Majority Leader Reid? Not to mention our Senators Reed and Whitehouse? (To his credit, Senator Whitehouse has said he opposes this.)

By Phil Zahodiakin , Jamestown Press

Grassroots efforts to block a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal proposed for Mt. Hope Bay have redoubled in the wake of a federal appellate court decision slamming the door on the R.I. agency that reviews applications to dredge in the state’s coastal waters.

Under the proposal from Weaver’s Cove Energy, a subsidiary of Amerada Hess, the LNG terminal would be constructed about a mile from the Fall River shoreline, where a storage facility would be built to receive the gas from an expected 140 supertanker shipments per year.

The East Passage, which the tankers would use to transit into Mt. Hope Bay, is deep enough for the ships, but Weaver’s Cove would have to dredge the channel leading up to the site of the terminal – a project requiring permits from Rhode Island, Massachusetts and the Army Corps of Engineers.

On Oct. 26, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston ruled that the Coastal Resources Management Council had run out of time to process the permit application from Weaver’s Cove, leaving the application review in the hands of the Army Corps of Engineers.

John Torgan, Narragansett baykeeper and advocacy director for Save the Bay, said the volume of sediment that Weaver’s Cove would have to dredge “is upwards of 3.5 million cubic yards.” However, all but 230,000 cubic yards of the total would be dredged out of Massachusetts waters, and “the Massachusetts review of the permit application for that dredging is alive and ongoing,” he said.

Torgan also said that “there are still some 21 state and federal permits that Weaver’s Cove has to obtain before starting construction.” Moreover, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which regulates natural gas transmission facilities – and which will have the final say on the project – has yet to issue an environmental impact statement for the proposal.

An earlier proposal, which failed to pass U.S. Coast Guard muster, proposed to build the terminal on a shoreline site north of the Braga and Brightman Street Bridges. Weaver’s Cove responded to the Coast Guard’s concerns with its 2008 proposal to site the terminal in the bay.

Save the Bay this week launched a campaign “to make sure that people are aware of the Weaver’s Cove proposal and the EIS, which may be released before the end of the year,” Torgan said. “The EIS will be several ‘phone books’ thick, and we want to equip people with the information they’ll need to provide FERC with informed and appropriate public comments. It’s all part of the overriding goal of our campaign: Preventing this project from going forward.”

To that end, said Save the Bay Communications Director John Martin, the group this Monday started running its campaign messages in newspapers and radio spots. The group also has a commitment for billboard space on Rt. 24 or I-195 – whichever billboard becomes available first.

Additionally, “a number of environmental groups have asked for links to our website,” Martin said, “and we’ll be e-mailing our message to all our members – a constituency of 12,000 people. Our social networks account for many more supporters, and we’ll be reaching out to them as well.”

The website also includes etools that enable people to send letters – or Save the Bay’s recommended letter – to their senators and representatives, Martin said.

“We have a downloadable petition which we’re asking people to circulate in their neighborhoods or their places of worship or anywhere else where people are picking up on our concerns,” he said. “We’re also in the final stages of setting up an online petition. We’re hoping to sustain our amplified campaign all the way up to the EIS hearings, which FERC could open this winter. But, that’s not to say that people haven’t been hearing our message: We were quite encouraged by the strong response of our constituency when they heard about the court decision.”

The decision affirmed a U.S. district court ruling against the CRMC – which, Weaver’s Cove asserted, had waived its right of review by failing to issue a decision on the permit application within the timeframe specified by the federal Coastal Zone Management Act. The CRMC argued that the regulatory clock could not start ticking until the application was complete. But the district court ruled that the timeframe, which is intended to ensure that no individual state can arbitrarily delay a project, had been violated.

CRMC Public Educator and Information Coordinator Laura Ricketson-Dwyer said that the council had not engaged in any “arbitrary” delay.

“We had to know where the dredge material would be going,” she said. “We have a prerequisite regulation requiring applicants to provide a letter of acceptance from the disposal facility.

“We were concerned,” Ricketson Dwyer continued, “because Weaver’s Cove had indicated that the material would be sent out of state, but we didn’t have their plan and, as the responsible state agency, we had to make sure that the material wouldn’t return in Rhode Island. We didn’t want a situation like the infamous New York City ‘garbage barge to nowhere.’ We didn’t want a ‘dredge scow to nowhere.’ So, based on that lack of information, we could not accept the application as complete.”

Michael Rubin, an assistant state attorney general and chief of the environmental unit in the state AG’s office, represented the CRMC in the Weaver’s Cove case. He said that the state would not appeal the decision of the three-judge panel to the full panel of First Circuit Court judges, adding, “We have suffered a setback, but that’s all it is. There are many more fronts on which we intend to fight this proposal. The decision does not preclude FERC from forcing Weaver’s Cove to return to the CRMC for a review of issues that weren’t included in the court decision, including the hazards from scow transits.”

Rubin explained that there is a threat of environmental damage from dredge sediments spilling off the barges.

“There is also a concern about the hazards from the 800-foot tow lines,” he said. “You’d be looking at approximately 1,000 scow transits through Newport harbor, including transits at the height of the boating season, and there are documented cases of masts being ripped off sailboats by those cables. The court decision doesn’t preclude a review of those hazards, so this decision is not, by any means, the end of our fight against this abomination.”

Rubin added that there will be exclusionary zones around the tankers, and that their arrival in the bay will be practically unannounced.

“Assuming you’re listening to the marine band on your radio, you’ll have 15 or 20 minutes in which to get out of those zones – two miles ahead of the tankers and one mile behind – or you’ll find your boat being boarded by Coast Guardsmen or private security agents,” he said. “I am not exaggerating. It’s going to be a very grim scene out there if this proposal goes through.”

Information about the Save the Bay campaign is available at www.savebay.org.

Jamestown officials outline LNG concerns

A NOTE FROM GREETINGS: This has no upside. One tanker explosions can cause the damage of 5 Hiroshima bombs, with a major bay being closed at will by a private corporation, with the aid of the U.S. Government. The areas of concern are (immediately) terrorism, in that it's near a naval base; area of a blast with such a large population on both sides of the bay; a major bridge to an island community closed when the tankers ferry up the bay; unannounced closings of the bay; the danger of the permanent storage facility inland to an even larger population, such as Providence; costs to local municipalities (who cannot afford it) of police escorts; the closing down of a vibrant bay community to business and recreation for all others.

By Phil Zahodiakin , Jamestown, RI Press, 09 13 09

As a long-standing proposal to ship liquefied natural gas (LNG) up the East Passage gains momentum, so does concern about potential disruptions in and around Jamestown. A recent Coast Guard conclusion that an LNG terminal would not pose navigational risks if it were sited in Mt. Hope Bay has increased the possibility that the project will win a federal permit.

Under the proposal from Weaver’s Cove Energy, LNG tankers would use the East Passage for the journey to the terminal, which would be built a mile from the Fall River shoreline. Whenever a loaded tanker steamed north, both the Pell and Mt. Hope bridges would have to be closed as the ships approached and departed.

“First and foremost are the safety concerns about the volatility of the cargo, and the risk of either an accident or terrorist activity that could ignite the ship, which would have devastating consequences for any nearby communities,” said Town Administrator Bruce Keiser.

“In addition to the safety issues,” Keiser said, “we are also concerned about [navigational prohibitions when loaded LNG tankers steam north] because the East Passage is very heavily trafficked by recreational boaters throughout the course of the summer, and any restrictions on the free and unfettered use of our waters is something that we strenuously object to. We don’t think those waters should be reserved for commercial interests, which would deprive recreational boaters of the opportunity to use the bay during our few short months of favorable boating weather.”

Moreover, due to security concerns, the schedule for LNG shipments would not be announced in advance – which means that long-planned events would inevitably be disrupted shortly before, or even after, they start. All loaded LNG tankers sailing through busy waters are surrounded by exclusion zones, which typically prohibit boat traffi c from coming any closer than a mile astern, two miles ahead and 1,000 feet to port and starboard.

Consequently, the flotilla of boats anchored off Ft. Adams during music festivals would presumably be ordered to immediately disperse if a LNG tanker was approaching the East Passage within 1,000 feet of the fort. In addition, “We have numerous sailing regattas during the course of the summer and they could be substantially curtailed or disrupted without notice,” Keiser said.

Dave Blydenburg, dockmaster for Conanicut Marine Services, is concerned about the exclusion zones as well. Providing a host of services to boaters in Jamestown harbor, Conanicut Marine also offers moorings, and Blydenburg suspects that the outer edge of exclusion zones established for Weaver’s Cove tankers “could cross our moorings.

“If they do,” Blydenburg said, “then anyone requesting a launch to bring them ashore would obviously have to wait out the tanker. But [the exclusion zones] could have other impacts [on recreational boaters]; for example, if someone was trying to duck into harbor ahead of a storm, and there was a tanker coming into the bay, they would have to wait, too. Or, if there were some emergency out in the passage while a tanker was passing, we wouldn’t be allowed to go out there.”

Blydenburg wondered if “the [Coast Guard] and [the Department of Environmental Management] will have the manpower to strictly enforce the exclusion zone.” However, all of the details involving security for LNG shipments passing through Narragansett Bay remain unknown. None has been publicly revealed, and all such information was redacted from the Coast Guard letter announcing its conclusions on an off-shore terminal.

Because the security details remain cloaked in secrecy, it was difficult for Jamestown Police Chief Thomas Tighe to predict the impacts of LNG shipments on his force. During Pell Bridge closures for shipments of compressed natural gas, “Basically, the state police comes in and closes the bridge while the tanker is passing below and we haven’t been asked to do anything other than assisting them with closing the bridge.”

Chief Tighe has had an opportunity to observe a LNG tanker steaming away from another U.S. port, and, during that visit, “The only security we were seeing was that the police from two communities would ride along the shoreline as close as they could to the water to make sure everything was okay. But, I haven’t seen any plans as to what would be entailed for our department and what kind of shoreline security they would ask for.”

Currently, the Jamestown police force has 15 officers, including the chief.

“At any given time, if no one is out sick, we have three people involved with our regular patrols: two cars and the dispatcher,” he said. Would the allocation of additional officers to shoreline security as many as four times a week place a significant personnel burden on the force? Chief Tighe declined to speculate because, he said, “I just don’t know what our role in shoreline security would be.”

Opportunities to comment on the LNG proposal

The next significant opportunity to comment on the Weaver’s Cove proposal for a LNG terminal in Mt. Hope Bay will come when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission publishes a draft environmental impact statement for the project. The EIS, which is expected in September, will be available at the e-library page of the FERC web site at http:// www.ferc.gov/docs-filing/elibrary.asp. To view public comments and other documents relating to the previous Weaver’s Cove proposal, go to the FERC site, click on “advanced search,” type “Weaver’s Cove” into “text search” and click submit.

Comments on the proposal can also be sent to members of the Rhode Island and Jamestown congressional delegation by calling or emailing Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, (202) 224-2921, http://whitehouse. senate.gov/contact/; Sen. Jack Reed, (202) 224-4642, http://reed.senate.gov/contact/contactshare. cfm or Rep. Patrick Kennedy (202) 225-4911, https://forms.house.gov/formpatrickkennedy/IMA/ contact.htm.