I had missed this story last week, but apparently the proposal to put a liquefied natural gas terminal on Outer Brewster Island in the Boston Harbor is not quite dead after all. Back in March, the bill that would allow the LNG terminal to be built on what is currently parkland was sent to a study committee, which the Herald compares to a "legislative graveyard. At that time, however, Bruce Berman, communications director for Save the Harbor/Save the Bay who opposed the plan presciently told the Globe:
"Sometimes bad bills just don't go away. Like boomerangs, they come back, and we're going to stay vigilant."The bill would require two-thirds support in both the House and the Senate to pass and its opponents in the legislature claim that it will be defeated.
As an aside, Regan Communications, the public relations firm hired by AES Corp -- the company pushing the LNG proposal -- was broken into twice last week. If you'll recall Regan was unmasked in February as the driving force behind the "Coalition for LNG Solutions" an astroturf group that sponsored pro-LNG presentations around the state and even featured its own blog. Their sales pitch went something like this: isn't it better to have a potentially dangerous LNG terminal two miles off shore than to have one in the middle of Fall River or Everett? It's hard to argue with that, but even supporters concede that even if the Outer Brewster plan is given a green light, that won't necessarily stop the plan for Fall River or reduce traffic to Everett.
|