Recently it was disclosed that BHP Billiton has not only has taken three years to (still not) provide requested environmental impact reports, but most especially has lied about the effect of underwater noise from its re-gassing equipment upon passing whales. This proposed terminal is quite close to the marine reserve and also right in the Alaska-to-Baja migratory path of the grey whales. How can they so cavalierly attest that the vociferous engine rumpus will have no effect on a species, which rely on super low frequency (and the ability to hear it clearly), not only to communicate but also to locate food and mates? We have already tested this extremely loud disruption type fully, with the Navy’s LFAS mapping debacle. Herds with bleeding ears, beached and dying, are not a pretty sight.
This company is one of the world’s biggest polluters of Third World countries. They set up mining ops all over the world and, because usually the populace has no financial clout, they do what they like and sail off with their profits, dumping the degradation of landscape and water into the laps of those left behind. Baja, land of birthing grey whales, has its own supply of natural gas available to us in the north should we need it. Give Billiton short shrift. We don’t need their fossil fuels tanked over from Australia three times a week for 10 years, providing two-thirds again the air pollution we already have in San Pedro Port (downwind) to say nothing of hotter ocean waters because of their ill-use of the sea as a cooling-tank. Heated salt water, clogged with a dead fish and mangled plankton effluent is not what we need surrounding a foreign tanker off the coast of California. We need some other method of power, which adds to our health and freedom, not reduces it.
Beate Nilsen