Governor’s LNG ‘Message’ Has Coastal Residents Concerned

• Spokesperson for Schwarzenegger on Energy Policy Says ‘His Position Has Not Changed’

BY HANS LAETZ

A mass mailing to coastal residents by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has some worried that the governor is backsliding on his recent pledge that he has not made up his mind about a proposed liquefied natural gas terminal off the Malibu coast. But a spokesman for the governor says there has been no change in position.

The form letter sent by the governor’s Office of Constituent Affairs late last month appears to endorse the concept of LNG imports, and says “his administration is working to ensure that BHP Billiton’s proposal to build the Cabrillo Deepwater Port LNG Facility 14 miles off the coast of Oxnard would follow California’s stringent environmental, health and safety guidelines.”

One LNG opponent, Shirley Godwin, said she is worried that the governor’s latest letter omits important language from past correspondence. “One of the things that is missing is the line that he hasn’t made up his mind yet,” she said. “That is very conspicuous by its absence.”

LNG opponents and their scientific experts have said there is no way the plant could be built without significant waivers of air pollution and safety rules.

On Tuesday, a spokesperson checked and affirmed that “the governor has not changed his position.” Bill Maile, the governor’s spokesman on energy matters, said from his Sacramento office “I can’t get into the minds of other people, but his position has not changed.”

Schwarzenegger, being sworn in for his first full term this week, holds veto power should the Cabrillo Port initiative from BHP Billiton win regulatory approval from five federal and state agencies. Decisions on the floating industrial facility to be anchored 16 miles off Point Dume are expected this spring.

Godwin and other anti-LNG activists note the governor has been on record as supporting the BHP Billiton project, until a terse statement was issued in the governor’s name in late October. “I have not taken a position on the BHP project at Oxnard, or any LNG project. As governor, it would be inappropriate for me to take a position on any specific project before the review process is complete,” the statement read.

Opponents note that Cabrillo Port is 14 miles from the Malibu City Limits and 22 miles from Oxnard. The governor’s most-recent letter also erroneously describes the environmental impact of twin undersea gas pipelines coming ashore in an Oxnard wildlife park, activists said.

Rory Cox, a San Francisco-based environmental activist, said the governor’s Christmas-time letter doesn’t surprise him. “Like many controversial matters, he seemed to time this right in the middle of the holiday season, when he knows a lot of people aren’t paying attention,” he said in an e-mail Tuesday.

Key Schwarzenegger advisers and strategists are on the LNG industry’s payroll, and BHP Billiton is one of the largest lobbying spenders in a State Capitol awash with special interest money, activists said.

Members of the Malibu/ Oxnard anti-LNG group, called Coastal Advocates, are working with the California Coastal Protection Network to lobby against Cabrillo Port. CCPN Executive Director Susan Jordan told supporters last week that $30,000 has been raised locally towards the estimated $500,000 legal effort to block the plant.

Local activist Ozzie Silna has pledged to match the first $100,000 raised in Malibu and Oxnard, and Jordan said last week a second donor has pledged to match the second $100,000 donated here. The City of Malibu has also donated $50,000 to the fight.

The money is being spent to hire lawyers and expert witnesses who have already managed to find substantive safety and environmental problems with the proposed $800,000,000 LNG terminal, Jordan said. Cabrillo Port is already nearly two years behind schedule as federal and state regulators examine the more than 1400 specific objections filed by local residents.

Those objections will be evaluated in a final, third version of the project’s Environmental Impact Report, scheduled now to be released in late February. The California State Lands Commission will hold a public hearing, probably in Southern California, in early March, and the California Coastal Commission will likely vote on it in mid-April.

The project must also be approved by the Coast Guard and U.S. Commerce Department, and then win a key waiver of anti-smog rules from the Environmental Protection Agency. If it is approved by all five agencies, then the Governor has final veto power.

A final decision on the high stakes project, worth more than $5 billion to Australia’s largest company, is expected by June.