What’s going on when Heal the Bay and dozens of other environmental groups don’t even show up at a Malibu hearing to address one of the most environmentally controversial proposals ever to reach our shores-a liquefied natural gas plant in the waters off of Malibu? Aside from the very real risk of loss of human life in the event of an LNG leak or explosion, BHP Billiton (the ENRON of Australia) essentially wants to rezone an area the size of several football fields from sensitive marine habitat to an industrial zone. Yet we hear a deafening silence from groups who habitually argue at hearings that sagebrush is ESHA and every residential project on the coast puts planet Earth at risk.
Could it be that these groups get the lion’s share of their funding from more than 50 state grant programs and that they’ve received a clear direction from their benefactors not to challenge Gov. Schwarzenegger’s not-so-secret support of the Cabrillo LNG plant, which is but one of 24 new LNG plants proposed for California?
And is it just a coincidence that within a short time of Schwarzenegger’s meeting with the prime minister of Australia to express his support for the Malibu/Oxnard Cabrillo plant, LNG language placing LNG sitting solely under federal jurisdiction was slipped into the $388 billion federal omnibus spending bill? If the Bush Administration has its way, the feds could place an LNG facility in downtown Malibu, and we wouldn’t have a thing to say about it. Where is our governor to protest this unprecedented usurpation of our state’s rights and local control?
Where are the plans to protect ships carrying LNG and the LNG conversion plant, itself on a ship, from shoulder mounted rockets, missiles or any other number of weapons terrorists could employ to blow up the tankers, the plant or its utterly unprotected underwater pipelines?
Malibu and Oxnard are being asked simply to trust BHP that the plant will be safe. Whereas every other EIR can be read in its entirety by the public, we’ll never be allowed to read the state’s projection of Cabrillo’s safety hazards documented in its “Independent Risk Assessment” because of the Patriot Act!
It is time the environmental community in this state stops criticizing residents who just want to live their lives near peacefully near the ocean and focus on pressuring Gov. Schwarzenegger to make good on his campaign pledge to bring renewable energy to California.
Anne Hoffman