Smack in the middle of Long Island Sound does not seem to be the best place for a liquid natural gas terminal like the one proposed by Broadwater Energy and approved the other day by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
It’s not because gas piping on the seabed and tanker traffic on the surface will have much effect on the environment. Indeed, the environmental complaints against Broadwater are almost comical. If Connecticut’s politicians cared about the Sound half as much as they care about their opportunities to pose as environmentalists, they’d forget about Broadwater and appropriate a few hundred million dollars to replace the state’s antiquated sewer systems.
The problem with Broadwater is mainly safety. When a tanker is docked alongside, an LNG terminal is a floating bomb and a terrorist target, and the Sound has much traffic with densely populated areas nearby. While the shore would be 10 miles away and that probably would put enough distance between people and explosions, there’s no way to test it. A more deserted place would be better, maybe something off the eastern coast of Maine.
But the gas pipelines, the gas customers, and the energy demand generally are in New York and Connecticut, even as Connecticut’s politicians act as if there isn’t some risk in all forms of energy, as if none of that risk should be borne by the people benefiting from the energy being used, and as if the rest of the world should be glad to bear the risk on Connecticut’s behalf.
This is the NIMBY philosophy — “not in my back yard” — and in Connecticut it is compounded by the dedication of the state’s delegation in Congress to preventing the development of energy resources anywhere in the country: no more oil drilling in the tundra in Alaska; no oil or gas drilling off the coast of Florida, lest the beach views of wealthy retirees be impaired; no new refineries anywhere; just wind, solar, and hydropower projects, as long as they’re somewhere else, and a lot of talk about fuel cells, which aren’t likely to provide much power but which Connecticut aspires to manufacture and profit from.
It would be nice if, instead of throwing contrived indignant tantrums, just one of Connecticut’s top officeholders could acknowledge from time to time that energy has costs and that its costs have to be borne largely by those who use it. It also would be nice if Connecticut’s top officeholders could acknowledge more often that everything has costs and that someone has to pay them.
Chris Powell is the managing editor of the Journal Inquirer.
