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Doty asks regulators to halt trucking plans
Published October 19, 2009
QUINTANA — An elected official has challenged federal regulators to halt what he calls an “underhanded attempt” by Freeport LNG to circumvent a verbal agreement made with residents during the terminal’s construction and bring big rigs carrying liquefied natural gas on the island.
Town Councilman Harold Doty wrote in a letter sent Tuesday to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that the energy giant does not need to bring gas onto the island by truck anymore because its twin storage tanks are full and has a functional boil-off gas reliquefication facility. The terminal has received two ships since June 25, and the boil-off gas facility catches escaping gas and returns it to the tanks.
Freeport LNG officials, however, say the company has not been acting underhandedly but will continue plans to build a trucking facility and bring big rigs onto the island to prepare for the unknown.
“Freeport LNG believes it is prudent for us to be able to truck LNG onto the island in the event that our tanks get to be low,” said Mark Mallett, vice president of operations and engineering. “Our tanks are full right now, but that does not mean in the future at some point and time we will not need that flexibility.”
The energy commission has not yet approved Freeport LNG’s request to bring trucks onto the island. Freeport LNG officials said it could take five to six truck deliveries per day, totaling 66,000 gallons of gas, about 60 and 90 days each year to keep its tanks full. That would generate traffic of about 540 trucks per year.
“Why can you not call a halt to this folly?” Doty wrote in the letter.
Doty said a bolstered emergency plan filed by Freeport LNG this month was subpar because none of the evacuation procedures to protect residents if a truck carrying LNG was to get in an accident have been tested.
Doty has been dubbed an intervener by the energy commission, a designation that a person has a vested interest in a dispute. If the outcome of the re-hearing is not to the intervener’s liking, they can request for the issue to be heard again.
Freeport LNG proposed evacuation hubs at the beach area at the end of FM 1495 and Quintana County Park, 330 Fifth St., for pickup by first responders. A marine pickup point was proposed at Compass Court near the Intracoastal Waterway, with evacuation routes along the Old Brazos River, Intracoastal Waterway, the Dow barge and Freeport channels.
“This has not been tested,” Doty said. “Nobody has ever tried this to see if it works.”
Freeport LNG wants to make sure it can safely truck LNG onto the island, and wants a “robust” emergency response plan to protect employees and residents, Mallett said. He said the company plans to work with the town.
“We’ll continue to work with Mayor (Wallace) Neeley and the Coast Guard and Freeport Fire Department and FERC until everybody’s comfortable that we do have an emergency response plan that adequately addresses any incident,” Mallett said.
Residents have filed letters with regulators since December stating the trucks would damage roadways and the FM 1495 bridge — the only way onto the island — and could change birding patterns, but a commission environmental study found big rigs would not harm the island.
Residents also argued LNG’s emergency plan was weak and did not support the island’s population, especially during the summer beach season. They said the plan did not address what would happen if a truck carrying gas were to get into an accident on CR 723, the island’s major thoroughfare, or FM 1495, the road that runs atop the bridge.
In July, the energy commission told Freeport LNG it needed to boost its emergency response plan to include how it would protect island residents if an 18-wheeler carrying liquefied natural gas were in an accident.
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