"Let'em starve to death in the dark."
Posted on 04/27/2006 9:13:36 PM PDT by Flavius
More than 300 Malibu residents vented their anger last week at a hearing held at Malibu High School, loudly hissing and interrupting ship captains and Australian government officials who appeared in support for BHP Billiton's proposed liquefied natural gas terminal 13.8 miles off the Malibu coast.
And once eight company supporters had their turn at the microphone, a parade of Malibu residents took turns lambasting the Australian company for deciding the city's southwestern ocean horizon is the best place in California to anchor a ship with a set of three 14-story high round storage tanks that would regasify LNG imported from around the world. Some 48 people spoke against the Cabrillo Port project during the four-hour hearing, according to one count, with 17 favoring it.
Officials at the State Lands Commission, which held the hearing, had played down the popularity contest aspect of the hearing, which was officially intended to take evidence of possible weaknesses in the project's second environmental impact report. '
But the hearing took a rude turn early. Several LNG opponents from Malibu said they walked out of it because persons favoring the Billiton plan were booed, hissed and prevented from speaking their minds.
"It was boorish and bullying, and I walked out ashamed," said one Malibu West resident, who asked that his name not be used. Several other people echoed his assessment.
Billiton President Renee Klimczak was roundly booed, and unable to finish her speech. When her time ran out, persistent mocking applause caused her to walk away from the microphone without even completing a sentence.
Even when people were behaving politely, the testimony was emotional: fears of LNG tanks exploding, a fireball more than 14 miles wide, leaking transfer pipes and daily danger to wildlife from the use of seawater to cool the ship's generators were expressed at the meeting.
Tim Riley, an Oxnard attorney who has fought LNG terminals for three years, noted that "the techniques for transferring this cryogenically frozen LNG from one ship to another has never been demonstrated anywhere on earth, and we will be the guinea pigs for this grand experiment that they assume will work out of the box."
Statements of support for the project came primarily from union sailors and ship captains, who traveled to Malibu from as far as Boston and Alaska to attempt to assure people that the LNG industry's 40-year record of engineering and operational safety should end any fears.
"I support the Cabrillo Port project because LNG transportation has been proven to be safe," said Doug VanLeuven, a member of the Marine Engineers' Beneficial Association.
Malibu resident Valerie Sklarevsky responded at the lectern: "We don't want your poison here, and we don't want you to make a lot of money here. If this thing explodes, do you think it will be people from Australia who come over here to clean it up?"
Despite the meeting's purpose to discuss the project's EIR, the evening was largely spent with Malibu residents voicing their opposition to it. "I don't want it. It will be visible from my house and I don't want it," insisted resident Tom Grubbs, to the cheers of most of the 300 people in the high school auditorium.
Pointing at the maritime engineers, he lashed out at "those suits over there, from all over the country, who flew in to Malibu to say they want it because they will get checks from it." A similar viewpoint was voiced by nearly every Malibu resident who spoke.
But Geoffrey Hunter, a retired Rocketdyne engineer who lives on Point Dume, took a contrary view.
"There are no computerized models, based on computer tests, that show any danger whatsoever to the mainland," he said. "There is no danger, and I am in favor of it."
Much more typical was the comment of retired journalist Sam Hall Kaplan, who lives in an ocean-view house.
"My view will be ruined, and that's maybe worth a million dollars," he said. "Add up all the ocean views all over Malibu, and that's a billion dollars worth of real estate loss. And just where does Billiton address that?"
The feisty tone of the evening may have been set by the first speech, from a visibly angry Andy Stern, Malibu's mayor until this week, who noted that Billiton had spent millions of dollars lobbying state officials and wooing Ventura County business interests to support Cabrillo Port.
"We don't want your pizza, we don't want your barbeque parties, and we sure as heck don't want your LNG terminal in our city!" Stern shouted. "I have never before seen Malibu with such a feeling of unity on anything, and I assure you the citizens of Malibu will fight you tooth and nail every single step of the way."
He was followed by a pair of Australian government officials, who attested that Australia was a reliable trading partner that would only export natural gas meeting the very highest environmental standards.
"We don't care!" yelled one man in the audience, prompting applause and more admonitions.
Former City Council candidate Ed Gillespie criticized the new worst-case scenario study, which expanded the potential size of a fireball if an explosion from the LNG ship occurred, from the original 1.6 miles estimate to 14.5 miles across.
"This is predicated on only 4.5 mile winds," he said. "You put some real winds behind that and your explosion is going to end up in Malibu in a few minutes."
And a real estate agent, Natalie Soloway, expressed amazement that the Billiton proposal had brought Malibu into the position of campaigning alongside the California Coastal Protection Network, which had bitterly fought Malibu residents on coastal access issues in years past.
"We're even on the same side as [CCPN director] Susan Jordan, now, for crying out loud," she said.
The hearing grew so rowdy at one point that worried State Lands Commission officials prompted Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputies to call in backup from the California Highway Patrol. At least eight deputies and CHP officers were sent to Malibu High School.
One staffer worried aloud that "we're losing control of the meeting." Commission attorney Mark Meir asked the three Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputies to step outside, where he told the deputies their plan to eject unruly attendees "would open us up to charges that we're biased against the project."
Deputies remained outside and radioed for backup, and several minutes later several CHP and sheriff's cruisers arrived. By that time, Malibu residents had begun their statements opposing the BHP Billiton proposal, and the crowd had largely calmed.
After the meeting, the Billiton president said her firm listened with open ears, and may make changes in the project.
"I think we will take these comments and try to address them in a constructive way, to try to mitigate them one by one," Klimzcak said.
At the end of the night, even the ship captains seemed nonplussed by the catcalls, boos and rude behavior exhibited during the night.
"Nah, we expected it; we'd be doing the same thing," said one as he left with his group for dinner at a seaside restaurant, on a world-famous Malibu beach
Put the terminal in Oakland.....if it blows, nothing of value will be lost....including San Fran.
"Let'em starve to death in the dark."
LMAO!
The more liberal the louder the howls.
I would ask if these folks are stupid, but they are libs and that's an automatic "yes." Do they even realize that a fireball 14 miles wide is IMPOSSIBLE??
LOL!
I guess you're right...facts and logic are such relative terms to the folks in Malibu and Hollyweird...
So, it's a question of quantity, not quality ("how stupid can they be" vs "are they stupid")
Screw Malibu! We need the gas more than the Malibuistas. And while we are at it, put up the Wind Farm in front of Ted Kennedy's property and Drill ANWR.
The LNG terminals are located offshore.
If you don't build those LNG terminals, then the LNG ships come dock in your harbor inside your port city. LNG is legal, after all. People ship it; people sell it.
...But the left-wing is reactionary. Any new "energy" construction is automatically opposed in knee-jerk, mindless fashion. This is how the Left has been programmed. They do not deviate from their programming.
So they'll yell and howl and boo and hiss...they might even stop the LNG terminals from being built offshore.
But what they won't stop is the LNG. The giant LNG ships will just come into their ports to unload their legal cargo.
This LNG will be used to create electricity, which in turn the Leftists will use to oppose more LNG construction via their internet chat forums.
...and any semblance of intelligence or sanity in any of the above behavior is purely coincidental...
Wretch! Hack! Puke!
That one is going to give me nightmares.
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