Late last month the Broadwater people filed “supplemental comments” on the environmental impact statement FERC did to study the effects of the huge LNG terminal Broadwater wants to put in Long Island Sound.
The good news – great news, in fact – is that Broadwater has assured us in these supplemental comments that the LNG terminal will have no impacts at all! None! Not only that, but the review process has been as complete as anyone could possibly want!
A few examples: Broadwater has demonstrated that there’s a purpose and need for a major industrial facility in Long Island Sound. Safety considerations have been the subject of extensive review by experts, and safety is not a problem. Even if the animals that live on the bottom of the Sound, and the habitat on the bottom of the Sound itself, are destroyed, they’ll recover. All the hot water and chlorine that the terminal will discharge into the Sound will not do any environmental damage at all. Even though the National Marine Fisheries Service, the government agency whose job it is to oversee commercial fishing, says that the analysis of the impacts on commercial fishing are inadequate, they’re wrong – the analysis is perfectly adequate. The terminal will be located in publicly-owned waters and moored to the publicly-owned bottom of the Sound, and it will require a part of the publicly owned waters to be permanently off-limits to the public, but that does not mean that Broadwater would violate the public trust doctrine. New York State has indicated preliminarily that Broadwater would not be consistent with state policies for use of the coastal zone, but New York State is wrong.
So there you have it. End of discussion. The people who stand to profit enormously if Long Island Sound becomes the site of a huge industrial facility say that everything is all right, so everything must be all right, no?
Labels: Broadwater
1 Comments:
I don't know, the Supplemental was rather humorous, I thought. Because the water intake is only 5.5 MGD, compared to over 1,000 for Millstone, it is not "significant." Plus, as noted, 99.9% of the eggs die anyway! I sure picked a bad day to quit alcohol, Tom. I mean, this reads like the Keystone Cops.
All I know is that if you and I came along with a proposal to suck up 5.5 MGD a day, 365 days a year, to pump it, heat it, and chlorinate it for personal use, we'd be run out of town with a shot-gun posse.
The fact that other units are doing an order of magnitude more pumping does not mean that Broadwater is "insignificant." Of course it is significant. Else, why would be be bitching about it? /sam
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