Malibu Officials and Activists Challenge
Procedures at First Hearing on OceanWay LNG Proposal
• Congressional Representative for
Project Area Says Terminal Would Be a Prime Terrorist Target
•
Polite anger was simmering at a Wednesday
night hearing on a proposed liquefied natural gas terminal 21
miles off Malibu, when a City of Los Angeles official refused
to disclose information about how L.A. City Hall will make its
decision on the controversial proposal.
Two Malibu City Council members started the
session by publicly criticizing an L.A. City Department of
Public Works official for not telling anyone in Malibu about
the unexpectedly scheduled hearing, and for not holding one in
Malibu, the closest city to the offshore project.
The Los Angeles procedure is of key
importance, as that city holds veto power over
“OceanWay,” a proposed LNG terminal 21 miles south
of Point Dume. Woodside Natural Gas wants to park a pair of
ships at the site and use a regasification process to reheat
LNG and push it through pipes ashore across 29 miles of ocean
bottom, Dockweiler Beach, City of L.A. streets and Los Angeles
International Airport property.
Controversy continued throughout the
four-hour session attended by more than 200 people from as far
away as Ventura, Orange County and San Fernando who offered
suggestions on which environmental issues should be considered
as the proposal is evaluated.
Although critics of the project dominated
the hearing by a 4-1 margin, three neighborhood activists from
the LAX area, where the gas pipeline will come ashore, endorsed
it. Union officials representing pipefitters, ironworkers,
maritime workers and sea captains also spoke on behalf of
Woodside’s proposed OceanWay LNG terminal.
A field representative for Rep. Jane
Harmon, D-Redondo Beach, blasted the proposed LNG import
terminal, which would sit next to LAX, as “an attractive
target to terrorists.” Harmon chairs the House
Subcommittee on Intelligence and Terrorism Risk Assessment, and
represents the LAX area in Congress.
“In my view,” she wrote in
comments read into the record, “locating a complex
network of LNG pipelines under parts of LAX would be tantamount
to adding lighter fluid to a barbeque, at what experts agree is
the top terrorist target in California.”
Malibu LNG activist Natalie Soloway noted
that, unlike BHP’s Cabrillo Port, the Woodside
“OceanWay" project is an open port. “Woodside
can bring gas in from Indonesia, Malaysia, or from Russia,
where there are very few environmental standards.”
Soloway noted that gas from those nations
“burns hotter than our domestic gas and is much more
corrosive to the pipelines. It will create problems with the
infrastructure all the way down to the individuals’ gas
gauges.”
Other objections to the proposed port in
3000 feet of water include environmentalists’ concerns
about LNG ships fatally striking whales, and worries that crude
oil tankers from a nearby Chevron deepwater port might again
drag their anchor and collide with an LNG ship.
A large contingent of Oxnard and Ventura
residents attended the meeting, and said the lessons from the
four-year battle over BHP Billiton’s Malibu terminal are
not forgotten. “I feel like we are talking to drug
dealers, we are addicted to imported oil and these people all
have nice smiling faces and they want to sell us more,”
said Oxnard resident Jim Hensley.
“I am proud of my fellow residents
from Ventura County,” said Alan Sanders of Port Hueneme.
“We learned that LNG was wrong in our backyard, and it is
wrong here.”
Favoring the project was Mike Arias,
president of the Westchester-Playa Del Rey neighborhood
council. “The impact to us as consumers will be
positive,” he said, “as consumers can take
advantage of additional sources of natural gas.”
“The ability to have clean fuel
delivered to us via pipeline from 28 miles off our
shore—that’s real progress,” enthused Art
Pulaski from the California Labor Federation. “And it
will provide jobs for the people who create prosperity in this
state.”
The Los Angeles City project manager, Linda
Moore, startled the Coast Guard official moderating the meeting
when she said, “I would prefer not to [explain just how
the city will handle its decision-making process].”
“I can’t give you an answer to
that question, it’s just too complex to describe,”
she told a clutch of Malibu and Oxnard residents after the
hearing. “I am not in a position to discuss every step of
the project.”
Malibu residents, however, continued to
press Moore about who at the City of Los Angeles will make the
final determinations on the LNG project, which is six miles
closer to Malibu than to L.A. “I would recommend that you
ask that question in a letter to the docket,” she said,
referring to the federal computerized list of public documents.
One Malibuite replied that the docket is
basically an electronic file cabinet incapable of responding to
inquiries and that questions about how the City of Los Angeles
functions should be answered at what was billed as an
informational meeting. But Moore said nothing.
Left unclear is who at the City of L.A.
will decide on whether to allow Woodside to bring its proposed
natural gas pipeline ashore across city-owned beaches, airport
property and streets. The L.A. City charter grants wide powers
to semi-autonomous boards like the Board of Public Works, but
Moore would not say whether that board or the city council
would have final say on any or all of the proposal’s
numerous aspects.
Earlier in the session, Malibu Mayor Pro
Tem Pamela Conley Ulich angrily told Moore that L.A. was
“making this process so cumbersome and difficult.”
Conley Ulich noted that Moore had refused to make the City of
Malibu’s comments a part of the official docket, even
though L.A. is obligated to do so under the federal Deepwater
Ports Act.
“What’s going on here, what are
you afraid of?” Conley Ulich asked Moore.
Again, the L.A. official did not answer.
“I long for the BHP Billiton days,
when at least we had the courtesy and respect to have local
hearings,” said Councilmember Andy Stern. “We
deserve another public hearing, and we deserve it in
Malibu.”
Malibu city officials complained that the
meeting was not advertised locally, that the city was not
formally notified even though it is the closest land to the
project, and that they did not know about it until a Malibu
Surfside News reporter asked them if they were planning to
attend.
Coast Guard officials stressed during the
meeting that public comments can be made in writing, either by
U.S. Mail, or by filling out a form on the docket website. But
officials also noted that the docket is about to be taken
offline for major retooling, and therefore extended the
electronic filing deadline to Oct. 15.
Activists noted that the public is expected
to comment on a 5721-page application that was released without
notice eight days ago. Environmental activist Marcia Hanscom
asked that the comment period be expanded to 90 days but
received no response.
One surprise came near the end of the
meeting, when Keith Lesnick, the director of deepwater ports
for the federal Maritime Administration, revealed that the BHP
Billiton project off Malibu would have faced a federal veto had
the state of California not killed it last April.
“I can tell you now, that if the BHP
process had ever gotten to the Maritime Administrator, it would
have been denied,” Lesnick said at the Wednesday hearing.
