Monday, January 30, 2006

Over the Weekend: More Baloney from Broadwater; Energy Use; Bananas; Gristmill

No, it’s good for you … I wonder if John Hritcko, Broadwater’s frontman for the Shell-TransCanada proposal to put a liquefied natural gas terminal in Long Island Sound, manages to keep a straight face when he talks to the press. I know I couldn’t if I were spouting the stuff he’s spouting.

Here’s his latest: Not only will Broadwater’s LNG facility not do any environmental damage, it will actually be good for the Sound (this reminds me of GE’s late 1990s campaign to avoid dredging the Hudson based on the novel idea that PCBs weren’t actually all that bad).

Here’s what Hritcko said about the LNG monstrosity in Newsday today:

"It should be helpful for the Sound because you'll have this large area that's not going to be traversed by fishermen, so it will be sort of a sanctuary."

They’re not building an LNG terminal; they’re creating a nature sanctuary! We should probably allow more than one LNG terminal then. That way we’d start to see some real improvements in the Sound.

Broadwater, by the way, is scheduled to submit its application to FERC today.

We demand it … Why are we being beset with proposals for two LNG terminals, as well as for a wind farm off Long Island’s south shore? Supply and demand: we demand, they supply. From Newsday:

LIPA said average residential electricity consumption increased by 21.9 percent from 1997 to 2004, more than three times the rate of population growth in Nassau and Suffolk counties. That's despite the higher cost of electricity, which is about 41 percent more expensive now than five years ago, according to LIPA. … The rise in demand - and prices - for natural gas isn't unique to Long Island or even the Northeast.

The story is a follow-up to last week’s announcement that the Atlantic Sea Island Group wants to make an island in the Atlantic and put an LNG terminal on it. Actual details about the proposal are still scarce though.


Bridgeport Bananas … If you had banana on your cereal this morning, the banana likely arrived via Bridgeport. That’s what I learned from Ed Crowder’s story about Bridgeport Harbor in the Connecticut Post. The old industrial port is still a busy place.


I get around … Gristmill, the blog published by Grist (an online magazine that covers environmental issues) has invited me to be a guest blogger/commentator. My first Gristmill post is here.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Actually, it's not unrealistic to expect that an exclusion zone would result in creation of a de facto sanctuary. We could also expect the mooring tower to serve as an artificial reef. In fact, this scenario is a lot more likely than the LNG facility becoming a terrorist target. Baloney? Hardly.

9:31 PM  

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