Newsletters

August 2008 - LNG, Allied Waste, Somerset NRG

WELCOME TO GREEN FUTURES !
AUGUST, 2008

Whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.”

 -Philippians 4:8

“You can never get enough of what you don't need to make you happy.” 

 -Eric Hoffer


 The late summer/early autumn weather that we’ve been having lately is much too nice. Don’t you just love it? Easy to miss if you stay indoors …so read this quickly and get outside!

LNG

Wow!!! What a wonderful event on Mount Hope Bay out on little Spar Island. Congratulations to the Coalition for Responsible Siting of LNG Facilities for taking on a logistically difficult task after the initial event’s proponents failed to follow through.

Here are two views from the local press:

By John Moss
The Herald News
Aug 17, 2008
Fall River —
“I’m ecstatic,” said Joseph Carvalho after the simultaneous land and sea anti-LNG rallies Saturday.

The president of the Coalition for the Safe Siting of LNG Facilities was reacting to the overwhelming turnout for a flotilla of civilian watercraft from Spar Island to the Borden Flats Lighthouse in Mount Hope Bay, and an LNG protest on Atlantic Avenue.
 “It far exceeded our expectations with only two weeks to put it together,” he said. “At various times, there were 65 to 70 boats out there.”
 The floating protest followed the route that liquefied natural gas tankers would take through Mount Hope Bay under a proposal by Weaver’s Cove Energy to build an offshore LNG terminal in Somerset.
 At one point, the boats arranged themselves to stretch 1,200 feet across — the size of the proposed 50-foot-by-1,200-foot berthing terminal, Carvalho said.
 As Spar Island is in Rhode Island waters, Attorney General Patrick Lynch joined the protest, kayaking from Warren, R.I.
 Also on the boats were Rhode Island Rep. Raymond E. Gallison Jr., D-Bristol, Rhode Island assistant attorneys general Terry Tierney and Paul Roberti, Massachusetts State Rep. David B. Sullivan, D-Fall River, and Somerset Selectman Lorne Lawless. 
 While the flotilla was in place, about 60 people were directly across from Spar Island in the city’s South End atop an embankment on Atlantic Boulevard, holding “No Hess LNG” signs.
 “We could see them with binoculars,” Carvalho said.
 Carvalho also reported that during the rallies, a plane flew overhead for about 45 minutes, towing a banner that read, “No LNG On Our Bays.”
 In a brief press conference on the island, Carvalho said he and Lynch essentially told those present that “all the waters and resources belong to the citizens in the community who fish in those waters and have been handing that opportunity down from generation to generation.”
 Carvalho added, “It’s this type of quality of life issue that (Hess LNG) would put us asunder with this type of project.”     
 He said he and Lynch designated the waters “LNG-free zones that belong to the people, not to corporate interests.”
 Explaining that it was his first time on Spar Island, Carvalho said, “It was a wild and scenic view. It was gorgeous. I soaked it in. It’s truly amazing.”
 City Councilors Pat Casey and Steven A. Camara organized the land-based protest. Casey is president of the Sandy Beach Neighborhood Association, and Camara co-chairs the Lower Highlands/Historic Downtown Neighborhood Association.
 Camara offered his support to Casey’s group in the longtime fight against the LNG plan.
 Camara, who was aboard one of the flotilla boats, was hopeful that the event accomplished its goal of bringing more attention to what he called “this ill-conceived project.”
 While on the river, he said, a cigarette boat race got underway.   
 “It just shows that the bay is really about pleasure seekers and fishing and things people enjoy,” he said.
 Carvalho said the “tremendously effective” event demonstrated his group’s strong opposition to the proposed LNG project.
 “We’re five-and-a-half years into it,” he said. “We’re not budging ‘til they go away.”


 Read another account by Ted Hayes from the Warren Times Gazette:

 Joe Carvalho stood on the northern shore of Spar Island, a tiny spit of land between Bristol and Fall River, planted his toes into the sand, and looked out at Mt. Hope Bay spread out before him.
 "Spar Island, the Taunton River, Mt. Hope Bay, Narragansett Bay, they belong to all of us," he said, holding a "No LNG" sign. "They don't belong to an energy company like Hess."
 It was just after noon Saturday, and he and more than 100 other like-minded sailors, power boaters, kayakers and activists had just finished a several-mile cruise up the bay to protest plans to build an offshore LNG unloading terminal less than a mile to the north. The flotilla, led by Save Bristol Harbor and Mr. Carvalho's Coalition for Responsible Siting of LNG Facilities, had been in the works for two weeks, but the demonstration - and the number of boaters who showed up - pleasantly surprised Mr. Carvalho and the other organizers, who have been fighting more than five years to prevent an LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) terminal on the Fall River shore and, more recently, an offshore unloading terminal adjacent to the Brayton Point power station.
 "The number of people who came out is testament to the fact that there are many, many people opposed to this inane project," he said.
 It wasn't hard to spot them.
 They came aboard sailboats, kayaks, powerboats and tiny inflatables. Some carried signs and flags - "No LNG," "No Hess," and others - and they were flanked along the way by a small plane trailing a sign that read "No LNG in our bays."
 Fire, police and harbor patrol boats from Bristol and Somerset took part. Bristol Rep. Raymond Gallison Jr., a long-time opponent of local LNG efforts, motored out from his waterfront Bristol home aboard his 19-foot Maycraft, his son Timothy at the wheel. And Rhode Island Attorney General Patrick Lynch, whose family owns property at Touisset Point in Warren, paddled out to Spar aboard a yellow kayak. In all, some 60 boats took part.
 For organizers, the flotilla is only the latest step in a long fight to prevent Hess Energy and its Weaver's Cove Energy LLC from bring an LNG terminal to Mt. Hope Bay. Weaver's Cove officials have argued for years that the need for natural gas is only growing, and bringing unloading and distribution facilities to Fall River will help the economy while having few side effects on life in and around Narragansett and Mt. Hope bays.
 Opponents, though, argue that allowing giant LNG tankers into these crowded waterways will hurt the area's ecology, expose a densely populated area to the threat of accidents and terrorism, and will have huge negative impacts - environmental and otherwise - on Mt. Hope and Narragansett bays.
 Mr. Lynch has been one of the lead opponents of LNG plans for more than five years. He remembers touring a Boston facility some five years ago at the invite of LNG interests, who wanted him to endorse similar plans here. The trip didn't go as they may have planned.
 Between the size of the giant tanker he toured and the amount of security needed to protect it as it made its way into port, he said, "it didn't take very long at all" to come out in opposition to similar plans here.
 In the years since, anti-LNG activists have faced a tough road, as Hess plans have gone through seemingly endless cycles of review before state and federal agencies. An earlier plan, to build a mainland terminal north of the Braga Bridge, was approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), despite opposition from Massachusetts and Rhode Island officials and even the United States Coast Guard.
 Though that plan appears to be languishing, Hess's latest proposal - to build an offshore site just outside of the Fall River shipping channel and pipe the LNG to shore via a pipeline buried beneath the bay - is making the regulatory rounds.
 Opponents with legal power - Rep. Gallison, Mr. Lynch and their counterparts in Massachusetts - say they'll continue to fight the proposal at every turn, but Mr. Lynch said Saturday that he believes LNG's death knell here will ultimately come at the hands of the public.
 "I think what's good about this [flotilla] is that it's somewhat impromptu," he said, sitting in the bow of Rep. Gallison's 19-footer. "It was, 'Hey, let's go out as a community and speak out. That's what's needed. I think the public maintaining their voice is probably, ultimately, what's going to kill this."
 "This is all about awareness," added Rep. Gallison. "Once people understand what's at stake, they'll be against it. It just doesn't make sense."
 As the procession wound down around noon and yielded to a speaking presentation on Spar Island, Bristol commercial fisherman Bob Morris, who half an hour earlier had pulled his nets to join the flotilla, seemed to share those sentiments.
 "Let's get 'em!" he yelled from the wheelhouse of his battered boat, Jarrod Seth, as Rep. Gallison's boat drifted past.

Dump about to devour city?

 The huge Allied Waste (formerly B.F.I.) dump in Fall River appears ready to expand once again. 
 The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection …a.k.a. Department Encouraging Pollution (DEP), despite years of discussion and planning, has yet to create an environmentally protective solid waste management plan for the state.
 Exacerbating this lack locally are the majority of political leaders who, though occasionally raising tepid questions about the environmental dangers posed by the humongous dump, are much more interested in the “host” benefits that derive from having this noisome project in their community.
 Here’s what they say, “Let’s keep our priorities straight …number one priority is keeping the dump open and those “host” fees rolling in.”
 Isn’t water the universal solvent? Doesn’t all s**t flow downhill?

NRG – Not for me …or you either!

 Somerset NRG (formerly Montaup) says they want to use “plasma-gasification” to turn dirty coal into riches for themselves and more carbon dioxide and pollutants for you. Is that possible? Isn’t that somewhat similar to the plan alchemists had back in the Middle Ages?
 We predict the ultimate goal is for Somerset NRG to burn municipal solid waste. Residents of Somerset …Beware! Trash incineration may be coming to a neighborhood near you.
 Somerset NRG’s generating station was under orders to clean-up or shut-down by 2010. DEP gave them a permit to “gasify.” The Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) filed an appeal to the DEP permit allowing NRG to proceed with their falsification …oops! … “gasification”  plan.
 Surprise, surprise! DEP Commissioner Laurie Burt …another in a long line of environmentally clueless …or told-what-to-do DEP Commissioners …denied CLF’s appeal. It looks like the next stop will be state court. Stay tuned.
 

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