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.
