The Changing View Of Long Island Sound

Before the trees grew up and blocked the view, you could see Long Island Sound from Newtown’s highest point on Holcombe Hill. The Sound is now out of sight, but not out of the minds of Newtown’s selectmen. They voted this week to support a resolution by the Connecticut Fund for the Environment to oppose a proposed floating fueling platform for liquid natural gas (LNG) in the middle of the Sound.

Despite growing opposition by elected officials around the state, from the selectmen and mayors of several towns and cities both along the shore and inland to the state attorney general and governor, there may be little anyone can do to block the construction of this facility. Gov M. Jodi Rell last week created a task force to investigate the impact of the LNG terminal on the state. While she was doing that, however, President Bush was signing into law a new federal energy bill that provides a full menu of perks and special considerations for the energy industry, which is already enjoying record profits with the run-up in fuel prices. One of those considerations clears away local obstacles to LNG import terminals like the one proposed for the Sound by giving federal regulators the last word on siting issues.

The facility, proposed by Broadwater Energy, LLC, would be built in New York waters, nine miles off Long Island Sound and 11 miles off the Connecticut shore. It would be huge — 180 feet wide and 1,200 feet long — bigger than the largest cruise ship ever built, the Queen Mary 2. The floating terminal would have a capacity of 350,000 cubic meters of liquefied natural gas and eight billion cubic feet of natural gas. Its potential for cataclysmic accidental environmental disaster, or as a well-placed target for terrorism in the midst of densely populated areas in New York and Connecticut, is so great that a large area around the terminal and the massive tankers it will serve would be declared off limits to all the other recreational and commercial activities. This portion of the Sound would become a private industrial site.

Roughly ten percent of the nation’s population lives within 50 miles of Long Island Sound and shares the benefits it affords as a recreational resource and a commercial fishery. If federal regulators let this project go through, they will effectively give away portions of that shared public resource to the energy industry without serious consideration of the local interests and preferences of the people of Long Island and Connecticut. They will also deal a serious blow to decades of efforts to clean up Long Island Sound and herald a dramatic sea change in public policy affecting its future — a policy that allows expediency to trump the environment, corporate interests to trump the public trust, and profits to trump people.

If this is the future of Long Island Sound, we expect more and more towns in Connecticut and Long Island will be planting trees to block the view.