Candidates uneasy about LNG in Long Beach

Candidates for the 5th Council District in Long Beach aren't so sure about Sound Energy Solutions / Mitsubishi's proposal to put a liquefied natural gas facility in the heart of the City.

Q: How do you feel about the [proposed] LNG [facility] in our harbor?

Monica Blumenfield: I'm opposed to the LNG...[It] could wipe out parts of the downtown area...

Dave Radford: All the information on LNG is not in yet...I'm still lookin' and readin' and thinkin' about it...

Vice Mayor/Councilwoman Jackie Kell: I do think the LNG plant will be built but offshore. We're going to have 5,000 new residents downtown [new condos, residential units] and we have the new Pike @ Rainbow Harbor and so I don't think we should have the LNG plant in the middle of two harbors which make up the third largest port complex in the world, but I do think we could have it built offshore and there are companies that specialize in doing that.

Dennis Porter: I would have to agree that it's not in yet as to how safe LNG is...I would say that offshore would be better...

Ed Barwick: Having lived adjacent to a nuclear power plant for a long time when I was in the Navy in the north Atlantic, I look at more of the probabilities of an incident and I look at what's there. And there's almost no incident that's been dictated for that facility [in the Port of LB] that would go beyond the perimeter of the facility, so I think it's a reasonable thing to do. We still have additional information to look at, but I'm leaning toward the fact that it would be probably be safe enough to put in the harbor and it would bring clean burning natural gas that everybody is clamoring for in the city and the environment and I think it's important we look at alternatives to clean the environment.

Gerrie Schipske: I think we need to combine a couple of things. One, our own police and fire department went to the city of Boston [which has an LNG facility in a suburb adjoining their harbor]...and they came back and they were very, very disturbed and very concerned about the safety, the unsafe aspects of locating an LNG facility in the Port of Long Beach. And consider this: in 1992, the coastal zone commission took a look at a proposal to put an LNG plant in the port of Los Angeles and said no, it would be unsafe because of the earthquake fault that runs through the ports. This is just a hundred yards away. Long Beach does not need to be a target. I think we need though to ask how we got ourselves into this situation that we're backing into an LNG plant...We need to talk about how decisions are made in Long Beach and how the citizens get into the fact after the decision was made behind the rail.