noLNG

LNG may hurt our River.

See earlier filing by U.S. Department of Interior on the FERC eLibrary.

7/8/2008 11:26:00 AM

Park service warns LNG may hurt river National Park Service criticizes FERC for faulty environmental review, seeks new report By CASSANDRA PROFITA The Daily Astorian The National Park Service is criticizing fellow officials at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for a faulty environmental review of the Bradwood Landing liquefied natural gas project. Willie Taylor, director of environmental policy and compliance for the park service, has challenged FERC's finding that the Bradwood project would not damage the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail, which includes much of the lower Columbia River. In a letter sent last week, he accused federal energy regulators of consulting the wrong authority in their review of Bradwood's impacts to recreational activities on the Columbia River, and he asked FERC to supplement its work with another, more comprehensive study. "The project will significantly impact recreational users of the Columbia River by limiting or reducing access to the river," Taylor wrote, noting the required 500-yard safety and security zones surrounding LNG tankers during transit and similar zones around the moored vessels will hinder recreation. "(The environmental review) should clearly note that reducing or limiting recreational opportunities on the waterway could negatively impact the local economy in the future." Taylor complained that FERC ignored 11 miles of the Bradwood pipeline route in its cultural resources survey and incorrectly deferred to the Oregon State Historic Preservation Office on impacts to the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail without consulting the National Park Service. "While SHPO oversees cultural, historical and archeological resources, it does not oversee natural, recreational or interpretive resources of the trail, which is under the purview of NPS," Taylor wrote. "Oregon SHPO is not the appropriate authority to determine recreational impacts on the Columbia River." With Taylor's letter, the park service joins the growing ranks of officials asking FERC to delay the Bradwood Landing licensing decision. Taylor asked FERC to wait for two key approvals - from the state of Oregon and the National Marine Fisheries Service - before giving Bradwood project developer NorthernStar Natural Gas Inc. the license to build an LNG terminal and pipeline 20 miles east of Astoria on the Columbia River. Gov. Ted Kulongoski and U.S. Rep. David Wu have also asked FERC to supplement its environmental analysis of the Bradwood project in light of a state energy department report questioning the need for LNG in Oregon. Kulongoski and Wu, D-Ore., also noted numerous aspects of the project have changed since FERC's first environmental review was completed. But like the requests from Kulongoski and Wu, the park service requests will be treated as any other comments would be in the licensing process overseen by FERC. Tamara Young-Allen, a spokeswoman for FERC, said the park service doesn't have any special authority at this stage of the LNG licensing process. The five-member FERC commission in charge of approving LNG licenses can order a supplemental environmental impact statement to be completed before it votes on the Bradwood project, she said, but it doesn't have to. Joe Desmond, vice president of external relations for NorthernStar, said that a supplemental review won't be necessary because all the issues raised by the park service have already been addressed by FERC in its environmental reviews. Desmond said FERC's existing environmental reviews incorporate previous comments from the National Park Service. "There are no new issues being raised here," he said. The FERC board can decide to issue a conditional license to Bradwood before the National Marine Fisheries Service weighs in on the project's impacts to endangered species. Taylor's request that FERC wait for the NMFS determination before making a decision on Bradwood could set the project back several months if granted. Taylor also asked FERC to wait for Oregon's ruling on the project's compliance with the Coastal Zone Management Act, which isn't expected until September. Desmond said Taylor's requests are already conditions listed in FERC's final environmental impact statement, so FERC can issue a license to Bradwood on the condition that they be completed before the project is built. The timing of FERC's licensing decision could be a determining factor in which of three companies wins the race to site LNG terminals in Oregon. The terminals are designed to receive imported natural gas liquid from ships and vaporize it for pipeline distribution. Oregon LNG has proposed a terminal on Warrenton's Skipanon Peninsula and a third terminal is proposed in Coos Bay, but experts say there's probably only enough business for one terminal to be built in the state.

Does it take a dummy to figure this out? When it says NO LNG, it means NO LNG.

Northern Star should pay before building LNG.

To The Eagle:

Thanks to the Board of Wahkiakum County Commissioners for their attention to the proposed LNG terminal and pipeline at Bradwood, Oregon. Our citizens and their properties are the closest to the proposed LNG terminal and the LNG carrier during unloading and river transit. Unfortunately, NorthernStar, the Bradwood promoter, has not been candid in its response to the county.

On December 18, 2007 the Commissioners wrote to the Federal Regulatory Energy Commission (FERC) expressing concerns that the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) does not adequately address the safety and economic impact on the county’s residents.

Our Commissioners requested a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) based on an independent safety assessment and economic impact assessment, to be funded by NorthernStar. The Commissioners also asked FERC to make the results a condition to the federal permit and Final EIS. After no response from NorthernStar, the Board submitted a follow-up letter on April 8, 2008. The answer from NorthernStar reads as follow: “Bradwood Landing has funded Wahkiakum County $100,000 per year without restriction on how they spend the money. A fraction of the money could have been spent on the referenced study or could be spent in the future. Bradwood Landing has generously funded Wahkiakum County for these types of needs”.

NorthernStar’s answer is not accurate. NorthernStar gave the money to a private non-profit organization, Wahkiakum Community Foundation, not to the County government.

Therefore, the control of the money is not within the County government and is not readily available for these studies. Secondly, the cost of these studies could far exceed the amount of the gift. The Public Safety Assessment and Emergency Response Plan (ERP) Revisions and Response Resource Cost Share Report for Clatsop County, Oregon cost more than $170,000.

Even though the LNG terminal would be in Oregon, Wahkiakum County would face enormous expenses for emergency, medical and security services and related infrastructure. We need to know what we would need and how much it would cost.

The funding by NorthernStar and execution of the needed resources should be completed before the start of the operation phase and continued thereafter.

Frans Eykel

Puget Island, WA.

Our Beautiful Columbia River.

And trying to keep it that way!

No comments neccessary.

(Click on the picture)

Board of Wahkiakum County Commissioners file correction

Download wahk. Cty letter april22 2008.pdf  Click on the download link for the complete letter.

Armed vessels on the Columbia an unwelcome vision

Several members of Wahkiakum Friends of the River are featured in Tony Lsytra's article "Armed vessels on the Columbia an unwelcome vision" in today's Longview Daily News. The article talks about the potential for the militarization of the river, noting that "the Coast Guard won't say what kind of armaments the escorts would include, it has been known to use small vessels mounted with M-60 machine guns on the river."

Frans Eykel says "It sets a certain tone. ... You've got that feeling like a little tickle on your back. ... We live in a peaceful area of natural beauty and all of a sudden you get those big ships with the guns and all of a sudden everybody is suspect."

Paula and Gregg Carlson also talked with Tony and are shown sitting on their beach, just across from the site where Northern Star wants to put in the LNG regasification site.

The article is worth a read and the comments...well, let's just say they are typical for Daily News stories about possible LNG plants in the area.

Congressman Baird Opposes LNG Terminal Project

This makes us VERY happy! Thank you Congressman Baird!

March 5, 2007
Congressman Baird Opposes LNG Terminal Project

Washington, D.C. - After careful and thoughtful review of the Waterway Suitability Report (WSR) for the Bradwood Landing Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) terminal project, released last week, Congressman Brian Baird (WA-03) has come out in opposition to the plan.  Below is his statement:

"After reviewing the WSR, I believe there is enough compelling evidence to oppose the proposed LNG project.  While there may be local benefits to the project, including job creation and additional gas production, the overall negative impacts on the entire river system are too great for me to support.   There are three main areas of great concern to me:  the safety and security measures that would need to be implemented to make the Columbia River suitable for LNG and the associated negative impacts on existing river commerce; the impact on the environment; and, the effect the project would have on private property owners.

"In order for the Columbia River to suitably accommodate this project, a number of measures will need to be implemented to manage navigation, safety, and security risks.   Among these are:  increased navigational aids, security boardings, and changes to emergency communications systems.  The report does not outline what the impact of these new security measures will be on the Coast Guard or local law enforcement agencies, but, the burden for paying will fall on the likely fall on the local taxpayers.

"While we are still awaiting the results of the Environmental Impact Study, I have a number of concerns about the project's impact on the environment.  Even if all of the safety and security measures are taken, the impact on the environment and economy remains unknown.  Both commercial and recreational fishing industries could be adversely affected, the long-term impact of dredging and tunneling on endangered and threatened fish species, including salmon, is unknown, and there could be significant ramifications if a leak or spill occurred. 

"Finally, I am concerned about the project's impact on private property owners.  I have repeatedly met with the people whose property would be affected by the terminal or pipeline construction and I respect their position.  For those living on Puget Island, or who may have a gas line running through their property, ensuring a safety and security must be the highest priority. 

"The WSR did identify current security concerns and resource gaps, but the costs economically, to the environment, to those living in the community, and to the river itself are just too much to justify moving forward on this one project.  After thoughtful consideration of all these issues, I oppose the proposed Bradwood Landing LNG site."

Congressman Baird recognizes the final decision remains up to state agencies and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, however, at this time he feels it is important to state his position publicly to best serve his constituents on this matter. Copies of the Congressman's position statement are being sent to FERC, the U.S. Coast Guard, and other interested parties and officials.

Meeting: LNG ships on the Columbia River

This could be the lower columbia river!
Proposed liquefied natural gas (lng) sites on the river would mean tankers like this on our river 2 to 3 times each week.

• Will this impact your business?
• Will this impact the ports?
• Will this impact recreational use of the river?
• Will this impact city and county revenues

Please plan on attending this public forum on the impacts to private property owners, businesses, ports and recreational activities from proposed LNG terminals on the Lower Columbia River.

Saturday, January 13th
1 to 3 p.m.
Cowlitz PUD community room
Longview, Washington
Sponsored by:
Landowners and Citizens for a Safe Community

and now, a word from Bob and Thea Pyle...

Robert and Thea Pyle, who know lots more than a thing or two about the local ecosystem, share a letter they wrote to the Wahkiakum Eagle:

Gray's River, WA 98621
December 3, 2006

Wahkiakum County Eagle
To the Editor:

In recent days,  we have all been barraged with a load of pretty propaganda from Northern Star company--kindly letters and bright brochures in our mailboxes, full-page ads in the papers, promo pieces that those same papers published as "news."  Originating from "Bradwood Landing," which sounds more like a park or an upscale community than a heavy industrial site, these slick puff-pieces promise varying amounts of blood-money for salmon enhancement ($40 million in the brochure, $59 million in the press release), spread over many years.  They paint Northern Star as God's Gift to Fish.

We have some questions for "Si" Garrett and his hench-people:  Just how stupid do you think we are?  Do you take us for hicks from the sticks who have never seen the seductive products of public relations mercenaries?  Do you suppose we've never been fooled before by commercial flak that represents a sow's ear as a silk purse?  (But that old saying is unfortunate in this case, unfairly associating an honest animal, the pig, with these slinky moneybags.)  Did you think we wouldn't notice that these mendacious documents never even mention  "liquefied natural gas?"   And do you think we haven't heard the one  about the high-class woman who accepts a million-dollar proposition, and then takes offense at a second offer of ten bucks?  "What do you think I am?" she asks, indignantly.  "We've already established that, Madame," goes the punch line.  "Now we're just haggling over the price."

We hope everyone who read "Bradwood Landing and the Legacy of Salmon"  feels as patronized, offended, and disgusted as we do.   We hope when  everyone looks at the pretty pictures (including the comically out-of-proportion Puget Island, making it look far away from harm's way), they will see the destruction of the night sky, hear the end of the river's silence, and sense the jeopardy in which these "neighbors"  will place us if they get their way.  "Our Commitment is Total,""  reads the oily text.  That much is true: total ruination of the Lower Columbia.  If we really believed that their "guiding principal" is to "nurture and safeguard the surrounding environment" and that they will "deliver a net improvement in the Lower Columbia ecosystem," we would fully justify their faith in our stupidity.  Don't be sucked in, folks: a deal with these people is a deal with the devil.

Robert and Thea Pyle
Gray's River

Upcoming events: Oct 4th and 14th

On Oct 4th, there will be an informative meeting with federal, state, & county legislators from Washington and Oregon at the LCC Auditorium in Longview, WA. The meeting will begin at 6:30 PM.  Current legislators and opponents in election races will be in attendance.  Topics to be addressed include the government’s use of eminent domain to benefit a private corporation as well as safety and environmental aspects of the proposed Bradwood project.

On Oct 14th, there will be a West Coast Day of Action Against LNG.  We are planning an event now. More details will be sent out soon.  On the 14th, we will be demonstrating along with others in Mexico, California, and Oregon.

How to Love a River

"How to say something fresh about the Great River of the West?  When you stack up the literature of the Columbia, it seems it must all have been uttered already."

Yet, in the following essay, Robert Michael Pyle adds his eloquent voice to our collective imagery and understanding of loving the Columbia River.

How to Love a River
Robert Michael Pyle
Gray's River, Washington

(Note: This essay was written for a public river-reading in Astoria, and subsequently published in Hipfish in April, 2005.  It refers specifically to the LNG facility proposed for Warrenton/Skipanon, but it applies equally to the Bradwood site proposal.)

         When I was a kid, another kid named Sam Hart lived down the block.  Sam Hart was famous for a special talent he possessed.  I knew several boys who could burp on demand, some even to a melody.  But Sam Hart was the only one I knew who could fart on demand.  Hart the Fart, as he was inevitably known, made a party trick of passing gas at a lit match, launching an impressive blue jet.
I don't know how much this skill helped Sam get girls; not much, I'd guess. But Patty Vido once attended a make-out party at his house, to which I was not invited; I could hear the music from my bedroom, and it drove me crazy, as I had a mammoth crush on Patty Vido.  Someone, everyone, was in there kissing Patty Vido, and all I had was the scent of the snow through my window screen and the beat of the stereo on the night air.  But I took comfort in the fact that at least I wasn't famous for my flatulence.  For Sam's part, maybe some kind of popularity was better than none.  In any case, I couldn't help but think of Hart the Fart when I learned of the Calpine liquefied natural gas scam proposed for the Skipanon Peninsula.

How to say something fresh about the Great River of the West?  When you stack up the literature of the Columbia, it seems it must all have been uttered already.  There are the logs kept by Haswell, Boit, and Hoskins on Captain  Robert Gray's Columbia Redeviva, followed by Vancouver's logs and Richard Nokes's Columbia's River.  There are the economical effusions of Lewis, Clark, and their interpreters from DeVoto through Ambrose, Botkin, and Ziak.  Washington Irving's Fur Traders of the Columbia River, Woody Guthrie's Roll On, Columbia, and Chuck Williams's Bridge of the Gods, Mountains of Fire.  Thomas Nelson Strong's Cathlamet on the Columbia, Julia Butler Hansen's Singing Paddles, and Keith McCoy's Melodic Whistles in the Columbia Gorge.  Archie Satterfield's Moods of the Columbia, Archie Binns's You Rolling River, and Murray Morgan's The Dam.  More recently a great spate of Columbia books has flowed forth, including Richard White's The Organic Machine, Bill Dietrich's Northwest Passage, Blaine Holden's A River Lost, and Susan Zwinger's The Hanford Reach.  And don't forget Sam McKinney's Reach of Tide, Ring of History, Robin Cody's Voyage of a Summer Sun, Craig Lesley's Riversong, and even Pyle's "Ring of Rivers" in Wintergreen.

And yet, there is more to say.  Maybe no one has recorded the exact way the current shifted in the lee of Tenasillahe Island yesterday when a raft of common mergansers took wing.  Perhaps the scent of cottonwood balsam when the wind from the Gorge shifts away from Camas has never yet been captured.  I don't suppose any writer has plumbed the depth of black in the sunken shadow of Beacon Rock, or taken down the dialogue where the Willamette and the Columbia finally meet, again and again and again.

Nor has the river's capacity for insults been fully recorded.  We suffer no lack of documentation of dams, no gaps in the catalogue of cataclysm, no dearth of dope on dioxins.  I have sacrificed a perfectly good butterfly net to catching an oil-soaked murre from a spill spit out the river's mouth; I have tugged invasive loosestrife from wapato beds, and written letters about dredging and dumping the spoils of this particular water war.  You'd think the Columbia had already taken our best shot at screwing it up, from Hermiston's nerve gas to Hanford's nuclear waste.  Apparently not.  Now comes the Calpine LNG juggernaut, mainlining toward Warrenton and Hammond like a blue flame for the ages.  And this is why Sam Hart, famous in Hoffman Heights, Colorado, in 1960, comes to mind when I contemplate this new enormity shuffling on our doorstep.  If it makes its way in, get ready for a Sam Hart Special, and I don't mean a party trick.

With an accidental incineration radius of a thousand yards and a burn-zone of a mile or more, this is a new neighbor that can kill--a lethal genie that can't be stoppered, once out of its acrid canister.  The epic shortcomings and monumental risks of the LNG misadventure are well known and described by other writers more knowledgeable than I.  But this wickedness cuts beyond the immediate mischief of eviscerating a pleasant peninsula, endangering its populace, and placing a critical estuary and its uses in immense jeopardy. The knavery extends into territory so near the wild heart of the entire region that many cannot even conceive how persons of right mind could contemplate such an outrage with a straight face and a whole heart. 

Our big river--second biggest on the continent--has suffered clots, stents, bypasses, and all manner of noxious plaque; has weathered dilution, pollution, and solution with every kind of foul infusion; has labored under logging silt and rip-rap, isotope and nucleotide, squawfish and sewage sludge, while watching its salmon slip like so many silverfish down the bathtub drain. But this big river--this aorta of Cascadia--has never before invited full-scale thrombosis with open arms.

Maybe I'm all wet.  Maybe, in this sublimely mercantile age, this is just the ticket.  After all, the Upright Apes of North America, Second Coming, have enflamed the Cuyahoga, oiled the Ohio, quicksilvered the Quebec, hog-tied the Tennessee, PCB'd the Hudson, slimed the Potomac, DMZ'd the Rio Grande, outright stolen the Colorado, leaded the St. Lawrence, sacrificed the Sacramento, laked the Snake, petered out the San Pedro, cemented the L.A., reversed the Labrador, radiated the Savannah, massacred the Missouri, and just plain mo' fo'd  the Mississippi.  Why shouldn't we all get behind this one grand chance, the very best yet, for first-rate, top-flight, full-scale Calamity on the Columbia?  Why should the Cuyahoga be the only watercourse that gets to burn?

Of course, it wasn't, not really.  There was also Whatcom Creek, in Bellingham.

When Olympic Pipeline Company's pipe ruptured, and a bombing wall of gasoline spewed down the streambed, then ignited, three boys were vaporized or worse, and an ecosystem baked beyond function.  Have the Port of Astoria Commissioners forgotten this event?  Did they even notice?  Perhaps they should be required to study the tragedy of Whatcom Creek in all its grim detail, for this is what happens when a gassy new neighbor goes bad.  And with LNG on the Skipanon, the losses would be many more than those three unutterably unlucky lads.

Americans are not alone in their river-blindness, nor even very special; consider the sad Danube, the wretched Rhine, the ruined Nile, the disgorged Yangtze.  But we have been particularly energetic at the task, seldom missing an opportunity to show heroic contempt for rivers.  That's been the easy part: the hydraulic-placered canyons of Colorado and California, the diverted flumes that gave rise to Denver and Las Vegas, the entire Southeast stripped of the richest fauna of pearly mussels in the world.  Hurting rivers takes no great imagination.  Chemical plants and concrete have made easy work of that part of what often resembles a hate-hate relationship.  Want to endear a river to its people?  Slap a freeway along its shore--hey presto!  No, the real challenge is the one taken up by the few who would love our rivers.

Not so few, really; in fact, maybe most, if they only knew it.  Anyone who has ever dunked a worm or cast a fly, raised a topsail or stoked a stinkpot, sailed a board or dipped a paddle; anybody who has set a net from bowpicker or sternpicker, walked the deck of a tug or barge as sunrise breaks free from heavy fog, soaked a toe at the shore or wished to be an otter while flailing away at a mediocre breaststroke--any such a one must know in at least a rudimentary, brain-stem sort of way what it is to love a river.  Maybe everybody loves rivers.  But will we ever learn how to show it?

To love a river well, like a person or a place or anything else, means to attend.  To pay extraordinary attention.  All the time.  To dive deep into the flow of water, time, and land that together lay this river down where it is and not somewhere else, flowing some other direction.  It takes fingering the bits of shell and crayfish carapace and mayfly exuvium that wash ashore; following the ripples downstream as they race, then spend themselves on the beach; watching the rafts of western grebes and tundra swans, the canvasbacks that collect for a few days a year in Young's Bay, the scoters and the scaups and the sea lion nuggets known as buffleheads.  And there is more to it than that.

You have to imagine the pilots climbing the sides of ships in storm; drop the sneer for the folks on the paddlewheelers long enough to realize that this may be their first time on a big river; and consider what it once meant to sleek the current in a canoe beside sea otters, beneath condors.  If you can do all this, and then take it into your heart in a thousand other ways, you can say that you are beginning to love the river in a way that its own giant heart might recognize.  And if, doing all this, you can still imagine casting a vote for Calpine, then you need professional help--maybe a heart transplant, for starters; then a brain.  For the soul, I'm afraid there's no help; or hope. Because it can only be this that led our elected officials to sign such a devil's deal: a deep and abiding inability to love the very entity they are sworn to manage, to nurture, to protect, for all of us who huddle here in the Columbia's lap.  And so it falls to the rest of us, who have chosen to live (not die) along these damaged (but not yet dead) waters, to embrace what's left of the Great River of the West as our home.  Just because a water- course has been sorely compromised does not mean it is no longer worth revering.  Indians still wash their dead in the tepid but living Ganges.  Athabascans yet fish the Yukon between the banks of melting permafrost.  Visiting Philadelphia, near the mouth of its besmirched river, I was struck to see the gray water lit up by thousands of flowers and fruits.  As black children skipped stones on my shore, residents of South Philly on the other side dressed the river in a summer festival transcending all sludge and chemicals. 

For all of its burdens, the Columbia yet retains its essential character--especially our share, the tidal reach.  Despite the jetties and the dredges, never mind the spoils and the wakes, the big river carries on in a state worth embracing--and saving.  When I say it is up to those of us who dwell
here, we voluntary riparians, to love the river enough in the absence of any such impulse from the commissioners, I mean we must exercise that embrace.  And in doing so, one collective utterance must issue from our love-struck throats: NO, we must say.  No, we won't have this.  It shan't happen, not here, not on this river that we love.  We must send them packing, wishing them all bad luck elsewhere.  And when we've done that, we must go out, onto the water, along the shore, or into the hills above; look this river over, breathe in the estuarine air, and say "Yes.  That's how."

Important meeting in Cathlamet Oct 26

Don't let them do this to our river!

That's not a very pretty picture is it? Well, that's what we could all be looking at if the LNG transfer terminal is built at Bradwood. Those tanks are shown at about the right relative size--unlike some other images we've seen--and it gives you a bit of an idea how huge they would be.  And that's without the 300 yard  long ship--you'll just have to imagine a ship the length of three football fields and over a dozen stories tall floating next to it. Come to think of it, that's not too far from the size of those three tanks.

Well, if you don't like that picture much, here's your chance to talk about it with the people who are tasked with listening to our concerns before deciding on the suitability of putting this unsightly, and dangerous, heavy industrial development right on our front doorstep. You can discuss the proposed Liquefied Natural Gas facility that would be placed just across the river from Cathlamet and Puget Island at Bradwood. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the Coast Guard will be in Cathlamet to listen to your comments and answer your questions at 7 p.m. on Wednesday October 26th in the multi-purpose room at the Julius A. Wendt Elementary School.

The last Coast Guard/FERC meeting was in Oregon and, even though the ferry ran late so folks could attend, a number of Wahkiakum residents didn't get a chance to voice their concerns about the negative impact such a plant would have on our community. Fortunately, another meeting has finally been scheduled for this side of the river and we're hoping that everyone gets a chance to come and have their voices heard on this critical issue.

It is important that you come to this meeting—it is the only chance scheduled for residents of Wahkiakum County to be heard locally on the proposed LNG transfer terminal. If you are concerned about this potentially dangerous, heavy industrial development on the lower Columbia, and the impact on our way of life, please come and help us protect the river, and all the people who use it to work, fish, and play.

 A flyer about the meeting is available for download here. You are encouraged to print, post and distribute it (without any changes, please) to help make people aware of this meeting.

Hope to see you there!

Mark your calendars:
Coast Guard/FERC meeting with Wahkiakum County residents
7p.m. October 26th
multipurpose room
Julius A. Wendt Elementary School
265 South Third St.
Cathlamet, WA
map

LNG on the Columbia bad for economy

Studies of the proposed Providence Rhode Island LNG facility at Weaver Cove also makes solid arguments for why LNG tankers and facilities on the Columbia River is fundamentally a bad idea.

The article by the Boston Globe, entitled Studies: LNG tanker transits would affect economy, hurt traffic document how the huge (900' +) tankers carrying LNG "could cause traffic backups, hurt tourism and marine economies and slow emergency response times". In this case, they are talking about Narragansett Bay (a bit bigger than the mouth of the Columbia River), but the blockage of commercial traffic, fishing, and private use due to security zones around the tankers is similar to what we'd face on the Columbia.

The studies focus on the economic impact and baseline safety instead of terrorism concerns. "This has nothing to do with terrorists or tankers blowing up or anything," said Keith Stokes, executive director of the Newport County Chamber of Commerce. "This has to do with our vision over the next 10 years for the economy..."

The article goes on to cite the size of the security zones: "The ships would be protected by a security zone two miles ahead, one mile behind and more than a half-mile on either side..."

If such security zones were implemented here, all traffic on the Columbia River would have to be halted (as well as the highways that run along the river on both sides).

In the Rhode Island scenerio, "Stokes said he was concerned the tankers would change the image of Narragansett Bay in the minds of recreational boaters, coastal residents and developers. 'It turns Narragansett Bay into a highway for these tankers,' he said." Concerns about the traffic delays across the bridges are also cited, as the would not only cause significant delays when the bridges are shut down due to security concerns, but also that "Those delays could prevent fire, ambulance and other services from responding quickly to emergencies." The situation here with the Astoria bridge parallels the scenerio in Rhode Island, where the prospect of regularly shutting down the Astoria bridge is fraught with issues.

Clearly, putting LNG plants on, and LNG tankers in the Columbia River is a poorly conceived idea, especially given that by siting these facilities offshore, it alleviates the need to bring such tankers into the Columbia River at all.