My Belmont Heights

Dear Friends and Neighbors. The Belmont Heights Community Association recently took a position in opposition to the LNG terminal proposed for the Port of Long Beach. We are opposed to this project because it would impact the safety and welfare of our neighborhood. Our first concern is the safety for Belmont Heights residents would be at risk should a problem arise on one of the tankers or should the terminal be compromised by accident or terrorist attack. There is simply no way to completely sufficiently secure the Port. The risk of rupture or explosion is significant when dealing with a volatile fuel in the nation’s busiest port complex. With multiple petroleum and chemical facilities in the immediate vicinity, and enormous quantities of highly flammable fuel present already, our security concerns cannot be allayed. There has also been no clear indication that the residents of Belmont Heights would not incur the substantial financial risks associated with the high level of security the Liquefied Natural Gas facility would require. The Long Beach area is highly populated and the Port is a major industrial center. Nowhere is there a precedent for this combination of security scenarios. The only existing LNG facility in any way comparable would be Boston Harbor. In order for an LNG tanker to pass into this terminal, bridges are closed, nearby shipping traffic is halted and divers check nearby ships for bombs. Since the Long Beach terminal would be operating 24 hours a day/ 7 days a week in the busiest port in the nation, massive security costs can be expected. There is no reason for us to believe other than that we will be asked to pay these costs, while reaping little or no benefit. There will likely be an increase in air pollution in our neighborhood from the LNG tankers that would idle off our coast. A study released in late March, 2006 showed that the air in the greater Los Angeles area is already twice as dirty as the rest of the country. Long Beach specifically faces massive pollution from existing tanker and container ship traffic. The LNG terminal will only add to that problem, increasing pollution with its massive facility and infrastructure. Additionally, as the proposed LNG terminal could accept shipments from anywhere in the world, there would be a wide disparity in the types of ships that transport this product to our harbor. Some of those tankers burn "bunker fuel", the most polluting fuel a ship can burn. The EIR for this project does not address that issue. Residents of Belmont Heights are being asked to bear the risk of ill health due to air pollution and perhaps the target of a terrorist attack with no real savings in our energy bill. We reject the concept that saving a few pennies each month is worth the threat to our health and safety. Finally, there is no credible evidence that California needs LNG. Studies have shown conclusively that California can free up more than twice the energy as any LNG terminal could create, through simple conservation and efficiency for existing power plants. Until these measures have been fully explored and California has made every effort to expand our capacity for clean, domestic, renewable resources like solar power, there is no reason that residents of Belmont Heights should tolerate the tremendous risks associated with a Liquefied Natural Gas terminal and tankers. LNG Is a non-renewing, polluting foreign fossil fuel and does not solve our long term energy needs and continues our reliance on dirty, polluting sources of energy.