UNSOUND for the sound:
Liquid Natural Gas StorageIn 1987 the Long Island Sound was named an Estuary of National Significance. A beautiful part of New York State’s natural environment, it is the home to thousands of species. And for thousands of people it is a source of income and recreation.
But
those people are not being taken into consideration as Shell and TransCanada Energy try to build an ugly and dangerous liquid natural gas (LNG) storage facility smack dab in the middle of the Sound. The facility will be ten stories high and four football fields long, and will be only nine miles from Long Island’s north shore.
Problems with the proposed Broadwater Energy facility have united Long Island residents across the political spectrum. Besides being an eyesore, the floating facility will set a dangerous precedent — a commercial interest will be taking control of part of a public natural resource. The square mile “safety zone” around Broadwater will severely cut into recreational and commercial fishing, lobstering, sailing, and boating.
What do the people who live near and use the Sound think about this? No one is asking them — there’s no meaningful public participation in this process of turning the Sound into commercial real estate.
Broadwater threatens the environment in multiple ways. The moorings that are required to anchor the floating platform will cover 7,000 square feet of the Sound floor, damaging and disturbing fragile ecosystems. Further, there would be a 25-mile ditch dug for Broadwater’s pipeline that would cause more havoc to life in the Sound.
Those are just the problems if everything goes right with Broadwater. Liquid natural gas is very dangerous — a January 2004 LNG accident in Algeria killed or injured 100 workers. Following a 1973 explosion on Staten Island at an LNG facility that killed 43 people, the State established a moratorium on siting LNG facilities. Once warmed, liquid natural gas itself is extremely combustible, and it burns hotter than oil or gasoline. In fact, an LNG “pool fire” cannot be extinguished — it has to burn itself out. LNG fires burn so hot that they can cause damage far from the actual accident.
We must also be aware that an LNG facility off the shores of Long Island and Connecticut could be a serious security threat. The Congressional Research Service’s Report for Congress, Liquefied Natural Gas Import Terminals: Siting, Safety and Regulation, January 28, 2004, raises the question of how to keep the LNG infrastructure safe from attack. The costs of protecting LNG tankers entering Long Island Sound could reach a sum of $12.48 million per year. The responsibility for security costs associated with the Broadwater project has not yet been determined; residents of Massachusetts absorb 47% of the security costs for the LNG facility in Boston.
It took hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to restore the Sound to its current state. Broadwater must be stopped.
To find out more, contact Jason Babbie at jkb@nypirg.org.