Agency Says Cabrillo Port Endangers Whales

BY HANS LAETZ

Federal wildlife officials have thrown up a possible roadblock to the Cabrillo Port LNG terminal near Malibu, and said data indicates the natural gas combustion ovens proposed for the ship would be loud enough to damage whales’ hearing more than a dozen miles away from the ship.

In a letter released late Tuesday, the National Marine Fisheries Services said the controversial energy terminal requested by Australian energy conglomerate BHP Billiton will have an unknown impact on whales, sea otters, sea turtles and endangered fish. Federal fisheries experts say their requests for additional information from BHPB, some of them three years old, have yet to be answered.

The Federal Endangered Species Act requires large projects like the LNG terminal to complete an assessment of its impact on endangered animals, and coastal advocates had zeroed in on perceived errors in the Cabrillo Port application. The federal letter lends credence to objections filed by the California Coastal Protection Network and by Oxnard and Malibu residents.

In the new letter, NMFS administrator Rodney McGinnis said that the BHP Billiton LNG proposal was in error when it said sea turtles and three species of whales were “very unlikely” to be found in the Santa Barbara Channel, when they are seen there frequently. Because of that error, NMFS said it could not examine whether loud, continuous noises from natural gas ovens at Cabrillo Port could harm passing whales.

“The determinations made for marine mammals,” McGinnis wrote, “are either incorrect or insufficient.” Among impacts underestimated by BHP Billiton is the danger of LNG ship collisions with whales known to frequent an area that, according to BHPB documents, is devoid of the large creatures.

McGinnis indicated that the amount of undersea noise that would be created by Cabrillo Port could “have a deleterious effect on marine mammals by causing stress or injury, interfering with predator/ prey detection, and changing behavior,” as well as cause temporary or permanent loss of sound, a possibly deadly impact that is not addressed by Billiton.

The federal official said a map of noise impact areas still has not been produced by BHP Billiton. NMFS said some of the data it is seeking has yet to be delivered three years after BHP Billiton was told it needed to provide it to the agency.

A second version of an Environmental Impact Report is nearly six months behind schedule, as state officials grapple with 1400 supposed safety, terrorism and environmental impact errors and omissions spotted by critics of Cabrillo Port.

The NMFS letter was written last July, but only released by the federal government late Tuesday, too late for the newspaper to solicit comments from BHP Billiton and environmentalists.