LNG Critics Take Concerns to Sacramento

• Coast Guard Hearing Date Completes Countdown

BY HANS LAETZ

Three public hearings within nine days. Two make-or-break votes. And three “telephone books” full of scientific, technical and “save-the-whales” reports to be read and digested in three weeks.

That’s the daunting task facing volunteers and activists from Malibu and Oxnard over the next six weeks, as the decision-making process for the liquefied natural gas terminal lurches into full-speed-ahead mode after four years of delays and confusion.

A delegation of Malibu and Oxnard residents met Monday in Sacramento with members of the California State Lands Commission, the agency that manages the land beneath the Pacific Ocean from the high tide line out to the three-mile line. “If we have a shot at killing Cabrillo Port, that’s where it will happen,” said Malibu resident Natalie Soloway after returning from the state capital.

Soloway, along with Kathryn Yarnell and Chamber of Commerce executive director Rebekah Evans, met separately with two of the three members of the Lands Commission. They were unable to get an appointment with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s delegate to the commission, but talked with Lt. Gov. John Garamendi and state Controller John Chiang, the two Democrats who make up the majority of the three-member commission.

“I got the impression that neither Garamendi nor Chiang think this is a very good idea,” Soloway said. The three-member panel sits as a quasi-judicial agency, which means its members are not allowed to offer opinions until after the public hearings and vote.

Evans said Garamendi asked them what studies have been done “about the possibility of one of these things getting hijacked at sea, and then rammed into Santa Monica at full speed.” Comprehensive terrorism assessments about the possibility of a hijacked LNG carrier at Cabrillo Port have not been made, and will not be conducted until after Cabrillo Port has been granted a license, the Coast Guard confirmed last week.

Although the possible detonation of a hijacked LNG ship has not been exhaustively examined, blacked-out sections of the current Cabrillo Port plan appear to indicate that limited studies have been made about an LNG ship ramming the stationary LNG terminal, with a 14.4-mile-wide fireball raised as a very remote worst-case possibility.

Several residents of Oxnard and Port Hueneme attended the meeting with the Malibu delegation, and made a joint plea to keep Cabrillo Port’s 30-inch, high-pressure natural gas pipeline out of the farmworker housing areas near Oxnard.

“We made it a point to address the ‘not in my backyard syndrome,’ said Evans. “We said ‘not anywhere in California,’ and I think they were very impressed that Malibu and Oxnard are together on this.”

Meanwhile, a Lands Commission spokesperson said Tuesday the agency would release about 3000 pages of environmental impact report and supporting data as quickly as it can be printed. The information will be distributed and posted online some time between March 9-16, depending on how quickly the three phone-book size volumes are completed.

That study will address the 1400 specific objections raised by coastal residents and lawyers last year, as well as 120 questions raised by the Coast Guard in 2005, when it said BHP Billiton had supplied insufficient data to evaluate the project’s safety, operations and pollution impacts.

Also this week, the Coast Guard confirmed its public hearing at the Oxnard Performing Arts Center is tentatively set for 5 p.m. Wednesday, April 4. No decision will be made there, the Coast Guard and U.S. Department of Commerce will issue a decision from Washington at some point this spring.

Just five days after the Coast Guard hearing, the next critical hearing will take place at the same location. The California State Lands Commission’s three members will vote Monday, April 9, on the fate of Cabrillo Port, by deciding whether to allow huge pressurized gas pipelines to cross state tidelands as they come ashore from the offshore aircraft carrier-sized ship.

And four days later, on April 12, the Coastal Commission will determine if the project is consistent with the state’s Coastal Plan and the Federal Coastal Zone Management Act.

Even if Cabrillo Port sails through these three assessments, the project still must obtain a hotly-contested federal smog permit, as well as address whale and wildlife impact issues that are matters of major contention.

Finally, if Cabrillo Port is approved, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will have until June to decide if he will exercise his power to veto the plan.

ANTI-LNG DELEGATION—Among the contingent who went to Sacramento were (left to right): Jim Metropulos, Lead LNG Lobbyist, Sierra Club California; Mike Stubblefield, Sierra Club, Los Padres Chapter; Kathryn Yarnell, Realtor and Malibu Business Roundtable; Lt. Gov. John Garamendi, whose office they visited; Carmen Ramirez, Cause No LNG Alliance; Tim Flynn, Oxnard City Council; Natalie Soloway, Malibu Association of Realtors; and Rebekah Evans, CEO Malibu Chamber of Commerce.