Factions split over LNG ‘advisory' vote {Oregon}

The World Link ^ | August 31, 2006 | Carl Mickelson

[thackney]

Let's have a show of hands.

In an effort to determine which direction the winds of public opinion blow when it comes to siting a liquefied natural gas terminal on the North Spit, some have suggested it be put to a countywide vote.

Rick Wetherell, the mayor of North Bend, floated the idea earlier this month. At a recent Coos County Board of Commissioners meeting, LNG opponents also pitched the idea.

Wetherell made the suggestion after the North Bend City Council meetings became a constant sounding board for LNG opponents.

“I have heard (Jordan Cove officials) say that they don't want to be in an area that doesn't want them,” Wetherell said.

If that's true, he said, and there was a vote that showed no support for the LNG terminal or the pipeline, maybe that would send a message to officials at Jordan Cove Energy Project.

“I would think if Jordan Cove really wanted to know, they might want to do it,” he said. “But, maybe they don't really want to know.”

Bob Braddock, project manager for the Evergreen, Colo.,-based Energy Projects Development spearheading the Jordan Cove Energy Project, said he directed a similar comment to Oregon International Port of Coos Bay Commissioners - but never suggested a vote.

“When I first came and chatted with the port, I said ‘If you don't think this makes sense we will turn around and leave now.'”

He said he got his answer when the port decided to go along with the project. He declined to comment on what weight a speculative vote would carry on the project.

“It's not my issue to opinionate on,” he added.

An advisory vote - similar to a public opinion poll - would carry no influence on siting an LNG terminal here. But backers say it could send a signal to local leaders and project officials about how the community feels about the proposal.

The likelihood of a countywide vote happening appears slim. It would have to be brought by either the Coos County Board of Commissioners, or the Coos County Airport District, whose districts comprise the entire county. (Individual cities and towns also could put the question to voters, but only within their jurisdictions.)

But neither body seems interested.

Coos County Board Chairman John Griffith said, “I don't know. Someone would have to explain to me the usefulness of it.”

But so far that hasn't happened.

“I don't think that a local advisory vote would have much utility when the decision maker is (the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission),” Griffith said. “For the expense involved, it wouldn't have any real utility.”

Coos County Clerk Terri Turi said she couldn't begin to estimate the cost of such an election; adding it would be “very spendy.”

With the passage of the 2005 Federal Energy Act, the role states and local governments play in energy matters is now greatly limited. That appears to have taken the wind out of the sails of local leaders, who again and again have been reciting a now-common refrain: “What can we do? It's up to FERC.”

“The decisionmaker is FERC, which under the law doesn't have to care one way or the other,” Griffith said.

Coos County Airport District Board President Clair Jones said his board has never talked about putting it to a countywide vote, and likely will not.

“We are not considering it,” he said.

Griffith, who opined the Coos County Planning Commission would rule on LNG pipeline related issues, said advisory votes are rooted in opinion and emotion and not what matters - “relevant land use criteria.”

“Just plain old opinion doesn't play into a legal decision,” Griffith said. “It's not a popularity poll. It has to pass legal muster.”

Ken Harlan, a former Coos Bay Planning Commission member, said he is in the middle of the road when it comes to deciding whether an LNG terminal would be good for the area.

But he “absolutely” thinks an advisory vote would be helpful.

“The reason is because the people of Coos County, by my judgment, don't have much of a chance to get involved with their future. And that is really a sad thing. Give these people a chance to have a choice.”

Even without the passage of the latest federal energy act, Griffith said local land use decisions on controversial matters are local in name only. Any land use issue that smacks of controversy is automatically appealed to the state Land Use Board of Appeals, Oregon Court of Appeals and on up the chain, he said.

“It's kind of a hollow process,” Griffith said, calling the local land use process for controversial issues a “fraud.”

Jody McCaffree, of North Bend, has been at the forefront of the LNG opposition for a while. She said Monday she is frustrated with what she's perceived as a lack of interest in an advisory vote by the county - and Griffith.

“He's just not being responsible,” McCaffree said.

She said the commissioners and other local politicians should be on the front lines researching LNG issues.

“The people here are educating the politicians about LNG,” she said. “It should be the other way around. We are the ones who are out there, repeating and repeating the message, spoon-feeding it to the politicians. That's not the way it is supposed to work.”

“It's just very frustrating that they just sit back,” McCaffree said.

Lisa Lagesse, who has a home along a proposed pipeline route in Glasgow, isn't convinced an advisory vote would prove useful.

“A lot of people don't even know what LNG stands for, so I don't know how helpful that would be,” Lagesse said.

Instead, she thinks it would be a better use of time and money for cities to pool together resources and fund an independent review of LNG sites.

That's what happened in Harpswell, Maine, said Amy Haible, who serves on the Harpswell Board of Selectmen, where an independent consulting firm was hired to undertake an LNG cost-benefit analysis for the community. In March 2004, Harpswell voters, by a 56-44 percent margin, defeated a proposed liquefied natural gas terminal planned for a former U.S. Navy base located on town property. The LNG plant could have contributed about $8 million a year to the town in fees and property taxes.

Haible, who now serves as a selectwoman after helping lead the LNG fight, called local opinion “absolutely critical” to the defeat of LNG.

But that was then.

At the time, local opinion mattered.

She is aghast at how the energy policy has changed, putting the federal government in the driver's seat.

“I think it's a shame that the federal government has taken the option of local control out of the equation because it affects local real estate values, it affects local budgets, it affects local people's perceptions of their own safety,” Haible said.

[Red Badger]

Officials Can't Pass Gas in Public?.........

[Yo-Yo]

Ask them in January what they think about an LNG port...

[mugs99]

Amazing...these are the same people who whine about our addiction to oil!
.

[Bean Counter]

Coos County, Oregon has been in the financial pits, ever since the environmentalists shut down the logging industry in the Pacifist Northwest. There isn't much else shaking in Coos Bay except what's left of the wreck of the (former) "New Carissa", and Oregon is dead-set on removing it from the beach as well, eliminating that as about the only tourist draw that there was.

I'm not surprized to see people fighting the LNG terminal. The track record down there is near 100% when it comes to eliminating jobs, so why stop now?

[Salvation]

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