Broadwater Decision Early Next Year?

Adrienne Esposito of Citizens Campaign for the Environment put the word out yesterday afternoon that she has heard that FERC''s final environmental impact statement for the Broadwater LNG terminal proposed for Long Island Sound is scheduled to go to the printer in December and released to the public by the end of December or in January. She says she also heard that the state will then want to move quickly with its decision, so figure early in 2008 we'll know the fate of that proposal.

Suffolk County Wants FERC to Reject Broadwater's Latest Filing or Reopen the Public Review of its LNG Proposals

Lawyers representing Suffolk County say that because the deadline for public comment has passed, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has two choices in dealing with the extensive additional information Broadwater submitted recently on the environmental impacts of the liquefied natural gas terminal it wants to build in Long Island Sound:

1. It can ignore the information, or

2. It can reopen the public comment period.

Newsday reports:

In the letter sent Tuesday, lawyers Biblow and John M. Armentano say, "Having chosen to withhold information it contends is supportive of its position until after the issuance of FERC's draft environmental impact statement, after the close of the public hearing, after the time expired to submit written comments to the [draft impact statement] and after the intervenors and other opponents submitted their comments ... Broadwater must not be allowed to supplement the record in this fashion."

I couldn’t agree more but as I’ve said before, so many questions have been raised by so many agencies, that reopening the review, issuing a supplemental impact statement, and taking public comment again is essential.

Broadwater's Hot Water

Broadwater’s liquefied natural gas terminal would take in millions of gallons of water from Long Island Sound, use it as a coolant, and then discharge the water back into the Sound at a higher temperature – an average of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit warmer. This is called thermal pollution, and the scientists and government experts who have reviewed the Broadwater environmental impact statement think it is potentially a problem. They also think that the impact statement did a poor job analyzing it. Sam Wells, who comments frequently here and who used to live on the Sound in Connecticut, sent me some further thoughts:

Duck Island, circa1972

Duck Island is a very small island off Westbrook, Connecticut, which was probably in view of famous folks like Katharine Hepburn’s house on the shore. We didn’t know that back then, as they were secretive over there, not like us commoners in Clinton. So once every year, a bunch of us Clintonites would sail or motor over there to “take over” Duck Island, right in front of their famous yacht club. Seriously, we planted a flag, had a barbeque, honked our horns, and it was a blast. It wasn’t more than a shelly sand spit of maybe 5 acres.

But that summer there was an unusual outbreak of red jellyfish, the Lion’s Mane, known for its intense sting similar to that of a Portuguese Man-O-War. My little brother got stung by one across the chest and nearly drowned, right next to about 50 other boaters and swimmers on good old Duck Island. He screamed, went under, and we had to fish him out.

Being a kid, I listened to the men-folk ponder the massive infestation of the red jellyfish, talking in low, serious voices: “maybe Millstone … nuclear power plant … cooling water.” True enough, Millstone Unit One down by New London had just opened up a few years earlier in 1970, and the watermen noticed a different mix of fish, especially trash fish, and now an invasion of the Lion’s Mane. The power plant used ocean cooling water and could have been warming up the Sound on the incoming tide.

In subsequent years I found that the connection between the Lion’s Mane and Millstone’s cooling water might not have been exactly true, since the Lion’s Mane thrives in colder waters but will end up in the shallow bays and inlets in the summertime. Within a few years the infestation simply disappeared. However, because of warmer water temperatures the ecology of that part of the Sound shifted tremendously and fundamentally, at least in our minds on that hot, becalmed day on Duck Island.

It turns out that thermal pollution is a big issue for Long Island Sound, even if the tipping point didn’t occur in 1972. Warmer peak summertime water temperatures allow for more rapid blooms of certain kinds of algae, given the increasing nutrient loads. Bacteria decompose the dead algae and consume the available oxygen. Thermal pollution continues to be a relevant issue even today, with large industrial projects being proposed such as Broadwater.

FERC Says No More Broadwater Hearings, Which Is Fine. The Real Story is in the Written Comments.

FERC has rejected a request by Congressman Tim Bishop to hold more Broadwater hearings. Bishop will act outraged, no doubt, but to me this is no big deal. Though required by law, the hearings are a show. True, they are an opportunity to mouth off in public but they're also an opportunity to demonstrate that a lot of people don't want an LNG terminal in Long Island Sound. So on that count, the goal was accomplished.

More importantly, anyone who wants to be heard by FERC can send written comments. And as I've tried to show in previous posts, a lot of the written comments have been devastating.

So I'm not worried that there won't be more hearings. But if, based on the written comments (click here and then enter "Broadwater" in the 'text search' box, near the bottom), FERC doesn't require a lot more work on Broadwater's environmental impact statement, that will be a travesty.

Face Facts: Broadwater's Environmental Impact Statement Needs to Be Done Over

Anyone who thinks the federal Energy Regulatory Commission is going to finish the environmental impact review of Broadwater’s liquefied natural gas proposal in three months or so, which is the official schedule, is fooling himself, and that includes the folks at Broadwater, Shell and TransCanada. Or to say it a different way, if FERC does finish the review in three months, I think a strong case can be made that it will have been severely derelict in its duty.

What other conclusion can one come to after reading the written submissions by responsible government agencies and scientists (click here and then enter "Broadwater" in the 'text search' box, near the bottom)? The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Marine Fisheries Service, the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, and the Connecticut LNG Task Force all make compelling arguments that there’s simply not enough information, and the analysis is not rigorous enough, in the draft environmental impact statement, to decide whether the environmental impacts of the project outweigh the benefits. A supplemental impact statement is needed, without question. Here, for example, is what the National Marine Fisheries Service says:

NMFS notes the proposed safety zones that would be established around the FSRU [shorthand for the LNG terminal] and any tankers coming to deliver LNG would at least temporarily exclude traditional commercial and recreational uses of LIS. Commercial and recreational vessels would be prohibited from entering the permanent safety zone surrounding the FSRU and in the moving envelope surrounding approaching tankers. NMFS believes the safety zones are likely to displace commercial and recreational fishermen, particularly those operating in the eastern basin of LIS that rely on trawling or use of fixed gear. This displacement has the potential to create an economic and social hardship for a number of fishermen. While the eastern basin and its offshore approaches would not be subjected to the permanent closure contemplated around the FSRU, lobstermen and other fishermen effectively would have to cease operations and move away to avoid a safety zone whenever a LNG tanker approached. As indicated in the DEIS, LNG deliveries would occur on a very regular basis. This could disrupt some fishing operations to the point that they could no longer effectively tend their gear. The DEIS does not adequately assess the loss of access and economic impacts on commercial and recreational fisheries, particularly in the eastern basin and its approach. Similarly, the collateral losses that would accrue in both Connecticut and New York should recreational boating access become disrupted for the life of this project should be evaluated.

Keep in mind that the National Marine Fisheries Service is not composed of a bunch of crazy environmentalists. It’s a branch of the U.S. Department of Commerce, and when it says that legitimate commerce might be disrupted, it’s worth listening to, particularly because Broadwater seems to have abandoned its argument that the LNG terminal will have no environmental impact in favor of an argument that it’s worth proceeding with the project because it will save consumers money, namely $400 a year. See this New London Day story, for example.
But what kind of a tradeoff is that? The project will damage the Sound and it will damage a part of the Sound’s economy, but it will save us $400 a year.

Who is convinced by that?

Suffering Mortality at the Hands of Broadwater

It seems as if the experts at FERC were a bit premature when they concluded, in their exhaustive and comprehensive environmental impact statement, that Broadwater’s gargantuan liquefied natural gas terminal would have no affect on the environment. Or perhaps they don’t consider the destruction of hundreds of millions of an estuary’s fish larvae and eggs a year to be worth worrying about.

The estimate of the amount of fish larvae and eggs that will be destroyed annually by Broadwater comes from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in a January 18 letter to FERC. The letter points out that the LNG terminal, and the tankers that will carry LNG to it, will draw as much as 30.9 million gallons of water a day from Long Island Sound. That water will contain fish eggs and larvae. Of particular concern are the eggs and larvae drawn in by the tankers. As the Fish and Wildlife Service delicately puts it:

All of these organisms would likely suffer mortality.

The specific fish that are likely to suffer mortality are weakfish, scup, fourbeard rockling (seriously), tautog, sea robin, Atlantic menhaden, windowpane flounder, bay anchovy, smallmouth flounder, sand lance, and butterfish.

The estimated number of eggs and larvae of these fish that will suffer mortality is as high as 275 million a year. Somehow the experts who wrote and reviewed this exhaustive and comprehensive environmental impact statement, which concluded that Broadwater would have no affect on the environment, forgot to study that issue.

The Fish and Wildlife Service is also looking into whether two federally listed birds – the piping plover and roseate tern – might also suffer mortality. The draft environmental impact statement forgot to study that issue as well.

I suppose if you were charitably inclined you might say that it was an oversight on FERC’s part that it studied the environmental impacts of a giant industrial facility in an important estuary and forgot about what the impact might be on fish. If you’re less charitably inclined, like me, you’d think it’s just lame. I don’t think that FERC, under the influence of Broadwater and Shell and TransCanada, and presumably knowing full well that the issue of fish eggs and larvae suffering mortality is a big problem at power plants on the Hudson River and elsewhere, would leave that information out of the DEIS on purpose. Would they?

Judy Benson of the New London Day is apparently the only reporter reading the FERC online files. She had the story in Saturday’s paper

A One-of-a-Kind Meeting for FERC

How pathetic is this? FERC met in public yesterday with three of the scientists who last month criticized the Broadwater draft environmental impact statement for its inadequate analysis, and when the meeting was over the guy from FERC admitted they’ve never really done that kind of thing – meet with, like, scientists – before:

“This was a rare opportunity. We don't typically have ... folks in like yourselves to take a hard look at what we've done.”

Kind of makes you wonder about the rigor with which other FERC environmental impact statements have been compiled.

This New London Day story has some details of what Ralph Lewis, Roman Zajac and Peter Auster said, which is pretty much what they said last month. Supposedly someone in Connecticut state government is preparing a transcript of their original testimony last month and promised to send it to me, but I haven’t seen it yet.

Meanwhile, I like the way this guy from Long Island put it:

“New York and Connecticut are not separated by Long Island Sound, we are joined together by Long Island Sound,” said Kevin McCarrick, a councilman from Brookhaven, N.Y.

And the Courant outlines the Broadwater (dis)approval process, here and here.