The thousands of citizens in Malibu, Oxnard and throughout the state have been asking for an evidentiary hearing, where both parties have to swear under oath that their statements are true as claimed. A company as big and powerful as BHP Billiton should have represented themselves to the citizens of Oxnard, Malibu and California in an honest and forthright manner. Instead, they have tried to buy their way into convincing the state and its citizens that LNG is good for us.
Here are a few examples why BHP Billiton cannot be trusted:
Although BHPB touted LNG as clean fuel, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, this factory ship will emit 270 tons of smog producing petrochemicals into our air annually. The construction project alone will add 450 tons of nitrous oxide pollution to local air. Since Ventura and L.A. counties don’t presently meet federal clean air standards this amount of pollution will put our children and seniors with respiratory problems at risk.
Here is a quote from one of BHPB’s own shareholders: “The Mineral Policy Institute of Australia joins with other concerned shareholders of the company to query whether the company’s corporate responsibility will come under fire for their questionable environmental and social conduct across four continents.
In the Philippines: Their involvement in allegedly unlawful exploration for nickel in Puhada bay. In Columbia: Failure to address the cases of long suffering communities who were forcibly evicted for the expansion of the Cerrejon coal mine.
In Sydney, Australia: Unwillingness to agree to a one kilometer safety zone from rivers in its mining operations. In Indonesia: Recent reports that BHP is going to fight for the right to mine on GAG Island despite an Indonesian constitutional court ruling that concerned the danger and negative impacts of mining in protected forest areas.
In Papua, New Guinea: BHP’s broken promises to shareholders in 2001 that would insure the OK TEDI mine would be well managed after their exit. Now catastrophic predictions of acid rock drainage along the OK TEDI and FLY river systems are likely to exacerbate near life threatening food and water storages.”
California citizens need to come out against this project. Contact your political leaders and tell them to back SB426.
E.D. Ellis
Oxnard