Ventura County Officials Try to Plug Loopholes Easing Smog Rules

• White House Pressured Federal Regulators to Exempt Proposed Cabrillo Port LNG Terminal

BY HANS LAETZ

Ventura County smog officials are looking to close the loophole in their smog rules that has allowed federal regulators, under White House pressure, to exempt the Cabrillo Port LNG terminal from the strictest level of smog rules, the Malibu Surfside News has learned.

That action comes in the same week that both BHP Billiton and anti-LNG activists reacted to news that whales and other marine animals could be deafened or killed by sub-sea noise from the factory ship’s 190 decibel gas ovens.

And last Thursday in coastal Louisiana, six crew members were presumed killed when a tugboat hit an offshore natural gas facility and exploded in hundred-foot-high flames. The Cabrillo Port project includes twin gas pipelines, 24 inches in diameter, that would parallel the shore from Malibu’s Leo Carrillo State Beach up to Oxnard, where they would come ashore.

Two Ventura County supervisors said they have directed the Ventura County Air Pollution Control Board to tell the EPA it made a mistake when it said that Cabrillo Port, for regulatory purposes, was part of the 20-mile distant Channel Islands, instead of the 14-mile distant Ventura County mainland.

“We are asking the district to take a position stating to EPA that they made an error in interpreting our smog regulations,” said Ventura County Supervisor Steve Bennett, who sits on the smog agency’s board. “I think it’s really clear that they made an error when they decided this project was classified as being out in the Channel Islands.”

BHP Billiton has said it would offset the 270 tons per year of smog-producing chemicals by reducing smog from other sources in California. The tighter smog interpretation being considered by Ventura County would not be met by the current Cabrillo Port smog plan, Bennett said.

Regional EPA officials reversed themselves after the White House interceded on behalf of BHP Billiton, and exempted Cabrillo Port from stringent onshore smog offsets required for new sources of air pollution. At the time, EPA said it could “exercise its discretion” and consider the ship’s smog-producing gas ovens to be in the offshore air basin, despite the fact that those emissions will blow ashore most of the time.

That decision was a reversal from EPA’s more forceful earlier finding that required BHPB to use a much-stronger set of standards for designing its plant and offsetting its smog.

BHP Billiton successfully lobbied the White House to avoid the costly procedures that some experts say could have made the Cabrillo Port project impossible.

The Ventura County supervisor said the county itself is being careful not to take a stand on Cabrillo Port or the smog issue, because the Board of Supervisors may have to hear an appeal of the Air Pollution Control District’s decision.

“Our county counsel has told us not to take a stand on the application officially, because we might be ruling on the permits,” Bennett said.

Last week, federal officials revealed that BHP Billiton has not furnished data about the impact of loud, continuous noises from the BHP Billiton plant that likely would kill or disable whales. In Houston this week, BHPB spokesperson Patrick Cassidy said the company has “to my knowledge” replied to all federal requests for information.

The National Marine Fisheries Service said its request for noise impacts from the 190-decibel shipboard ovens was sent to the company in 2003, but not answered. The federal agency faulted the BHPB application for mistakenly claiming that endangered humpback, fin and blue whales would not likely be in the area, when such whales are known to inhabit the offshore waters.

Last week, BHPB Billiton sent out a news release noting that the environmental review for Cabrillo Port has entered its fourth year. “We are proud to say that Cabrillo Port’s design of its operations, and the technology it employs, will comply with all applicable requirements of the Clean Air Act and will protect the environment in the safest manner possible,” said Kathi Hann, the company’s Oxnard spokesperson.

Company officials had originally planned to wrap up that review process and obtain needed permits in spring, 2005, but the entire process is bogged down by what the U.S. Coast Guard has termed “data gaps,” and by what other state and federal agencies have termed incomplete or inaccurate information about the project’s impact on Malibu and adjacent coastal waters.

On Tuesday, the Malibu Association of Realtors was told that state and federal approval of Cabrillo Port “is greased,” and that residents need to contact Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger personally to head off approval of the controversial plant 13.8 miles off the Malibu coast.

“If you don’t know the governor personally, you know the people who know the governor,” said Loretta Lynch, a former Public Utilities Commission member who is fighting LNG imports.

Lynch said Malibu needs to use its famous and politically-powerful residents to make noise about LNG, which she likened to the decision to allow nuclear power plants to be built in the 1960s.

Lynch, who regulated public utilities in the aftermath of the Enron energy conspiracy that caused blackouts in California, said the LNG lobby has convinced California industries of an artificial shortage of natural gas, in an effort to drive up prices and sell foreign fossil fuels in this country.