With Broadwater’s plan to build a liquefied natural gas facility in the Long Island Sound dead and gone, it could be time to resurrect another famous pipe dream.
According to David Reich-Hale’s story in Long Island Business News this week, that’s exactly what’s happening.
Politicians from both sides of the Sound told LIBN they’d be willing to consider another location for for the LNG pipeline, which was tabled because Connecticut’s Department of Environmental Protection opposed its original route through the state’s Thimble Islands.
From the story:
Connecticut has proposed an alternative route, but National Grid and Spectra Energy, the pipeline’s developers, have refused to negotiate and have appealed to the federal 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals.
No date for a ruling has been set.
“I’m far from opposing sources of natural gas for Long Island, or any other part of the region,” Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal told LIBN. “We have been willing to discuss alternative routes, but we have not heard one, acceptable alternative” that didn’t involve the Thimble Islands, which are off the coast of Branford, Conn.
The impasse has hit the radar screens of a growing number of Long Island officials, including U.S. Rep. Tim Bishop, D-Southampton, whose district includes Shoreham, where the pipeline, as proposed, would come ashore.
“It’s a big Sound and they should be able to find a route that can be accepted by everyone, including Connecticut,” Bishop said. “It is self-evident that our demand for energy is going to have to be met, in part, by natural gas, and Islander East is a big part of that.
“And I don’t believe Connecticut is going to oppose this no matter what. I believe them when they say they’re strictly opposed to the Thimble Islands.”
Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy is expected to invite the parties to a June summit with the hopes of moving the project forward.
LIBN’s editorial board also tackled the Islander East issue and decided it’s time for United Kingdom-based National Grid to prove it can do something that puts local concerns above its bottom line.
From that piece:
Environmentalists in Connecticut opposed the proposed location and immediately rejected that plan. But the Nutmeg State offered a compromise, to move the pipeline to a different location.
KeySpan declined. Perhaps the plan was too pricey.
With Broadwater rejected, it’s time to give Islander East another shot. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy both have said they’d like to find a middle ground on the pipeline’s location.
All we need is National Grid to agree to talk. Up until now, the best the Islander East execs, unwilling to bend on their own, have done is sue, lose and appeal.
That’s not exactly a middle ground.
So, dear LI Biz Blog readers, since we need the energy, should we push for Islander East now?
Nothing cheers me more than an evironmentalist that lives in a mega mansion and shows up in gas oinking SUV.
There are always envirnmental ramifications for anything we want to do. If we put up a solar array in a field we probably have to sacrifice a few trees, or destroy the grass below the solar panels, yet we build then anyway because the net environmental effect is better than creating power in a fossil fuel plant.
Don’t sacrifice the good for the sake of the perfect. The perfect doesn’t exist and probably never will. Placing Islander East across the sound will disturb shellfish beds in a track that is 6 feet wide across the sound. Compared to the vast amount of real estate at the floor of the Sound, that is a very small footprint. Moreover, in a short time the surrounding clam beds and other bottom dwellers will repair the losses. Any loss will be totally recovered. Meanwhile headline seeking political people will make a lot of noise about what essentially is non-issue. My message to anyone who wants demigogue this, I say “Grow-up.”
Good timing. Now that the courts rejected KeySpan, National Grid, whatever they’re called, can we move on to some alternative energy talk? Solar power is affordable!
We need Islander East and Broadwater.
If solar power was economical, it would be widespread…the market rules!
As natural gas and other fuels become less affordable on Long Island, expensive solar may be used more…but as a result of the influence of pseudo-environmentalists, Long Island’s economy will lose competitiveness with other regions…and Long Islanders will be less wealthy.