Lynch: Floating LNG terminal ill-conceived
By Alex Kuffner
Journal Staff Writer
Testifying before a special Senate task force Tuesday, Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch called a proposal for a floating liquefied natural gas terminal in Mount Hope Bay ill-conceived.
Lynch said the project was developed only in a “knee-jerk reaction” to the demise of a proposed facility on the Fall River waterfront. The floating terminal would threaten public safety in Rhode Island and harm the state’s economy, he said. He specifically referred to the projected high cost for state and local authorities to maintain security around 900-foot tankers traveling up Narragansett and Mount Hope bays to supply the terminal.
“We have 26 miles in a tightly confined waterway.That has to cut through 15 different communities,” said Lynch, a longstanding critic of the LNG plans. “The burden put upon the state and cities and towns is enormous financially.”
Lynch spoke during the inaugural meeting of the Senate Task Force on Liquefied Natural Gas, a special committee that will review Weaver’s Cove Energy’s plan to bring LNG tankers through Rhode Island waters to supply the proposed floating fuel terminal in the Massachusetts portion of Mount Hope Bay.
The task force was created by Senate President M. Teresa Paiva Weed, D-Newport, to answer questions about the proposal’s impact on security, the economy and the environment in Rhode Island.
“While a great deal of regulatory and legal activity is already under way, there are still many questions to be answered and much information to be reviewed,” she said in prepared remarks to open the hearing. “I strongly believe the General Assembly has a responsibility to carefully and objectively review the proposed project and try to answer the questions asked of us to ensure the safety of those who may be impacted by the proposed Weaver’s Cove project.”
The $700-million terminal would be fed by up to 70 deliveries per year from what Lynch described as “mammoth tankers.” Once the ships are offloaded, the LNG would be pumped via a buried pipeline to a storage area in Fall River.
It is Weaver’s Cove’s latest version of a plan to build an LNG facility in the region. The first proposal, for the land-based terminal in Fall River, was dropped after Massachusetts legislators blocked demolition of the old Brightman Street Bridge, which is improperly aligned to accommodate tankers.
State officials, environmental groups, including Save The Bay, and waterfront communities in Rhode Island have battled the LNG plans for years. State Sen. Charles J. Levesque, the chairman of the Senate task force, represents two of the towns opposed to the project, Bristol and Portsmouth. The Democratic senator has been a frequent critic of Weaver’s Cove.
W. Michael Sullivan, director of the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, also testified Tuesday against the LNG terminal, saying the frequent trips of tankers through state waters would disrupt recreational and commercial boating.
“This is a quality-of-life issue,” Sullivan said.
A staff lawyer for the DEM described the agency’s legal efforts against the plan, including the rejection of two applications from Weaver’s Cove. Both decisions have been challenged in the courts.
After the hearing, Gregg Landes, vice president of business development for Weaver’s Cove, said Sullivan and Lynch made a number of misstatements in their testimony. He pointed to a federal review to assess his company’s project.
“Every question has been addressed in that process,” he said.
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