County gov't supports LNG pier expansion

Local opinion mixed

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

The project to allow Cove Point to accept larger, more modern liquefied natural gas tankers is estimated to come into service in February 2011. It will require the company to dredge about 120,000 cubic yards of silt from the floor of the Chesapeake Bay and devise an environmentally acceptable means of disposing of it, according to company officials. The project entails expanding each of the facilities' two piers by 150 feet, as well as reinforcing them. Last Thursday, March 26, officials from the Maryland Department of the Environment met with locals and experts at a hotel in Dowell to gauge public sentiment on the proposal.

Dominion envisions using the extra silt to create a "living shoreline" on a portion of the Cove Point beach, a project intended to shield degraded habitat from the brackish waters of the bay. A freshwater marsh harboring rare plants has gradually been harmed by the intrusion of salty water, but the dredged sand could serve to separate the marsh from the bay and allow it, a designated National Heritage Area, to recover, according to Dominion Environmental Consultant Randy Rogers.

"It gives it a chance to convert back to the unique freshwater ecosystem" as runoff and rain gradually remove the salt, he said.

During the hearing Steve Newby, who has lived in Cove Point for more than 30 years, praised the company for its responsiveness to his concerns but did not feel confident about the shoreline plans.

"My objection is to the so-called living shoreline. … I know beaches come, beaches go, that's nature's way, but this is a focal point of the Chesapeake Bay," he said.

June Sevilla, a Cove Point activist who opposes Dominion's pipeline expansion as well as plans for a new reactor at nearby Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant, said she wasn't necessarily opposed to this plan but wanted more information.

Sevilla, who says she has a chemical engineering degree from the Philippines but is not licensed to practice in the United States, said she was concerned that faulty assumptions had been used in computer models used to make projections about the shoreline project. Particularly, she said she wanted assurance that extreme weather conditions, not just typical weather, had been taken into account.

"I am in favor of restoring the freshwater marsh. … I just think the modeling should be expanded a little bit," she said.

Other members of the community spoke unequivocally in favor of the project.

Mike Rudy of Solomons, who is president of the board of trustees of the Cove Point Natural Heritage Trust, said the group did careful research and concluded that the project would be a boon to local ecology.

"The ecology of the marsh, although damaged by the intrusion of brackish water, will recover after a few years [of protection]. … We feel this is a win-win situation, the protection and restoration of a unique habitat on the Chesapeake Bay western shore offers additional protection against the erosion of the shoreline by flooding for nearby residents," he said.

Norman Meadow, a retired Johns Hopkins University professor representing the Maryland Conservation Council, also urged approval of the project to protect more than a dozen rare, threatened or endangered species of plant represented in the marsh. He acknowledged the project might further harm a rare species of tiger beetle found in the area but said that its numbers there are declining anyway.

MDE will have to weigh the "impact on one rare insect with the impact on a unique association of plants, many of them rare but none of them as rare as the beetle," he said. "… There is a reasonable chance of the recovery of the marsh but virtually no chance the beetle habitat will be repopulated."

Meadow has also spoken on behalf of the nuclear power expansion at several hearings.

The county was also heard from, when commissioners' President Wilson Parran (D) spoke on behalf of the Calvert County Board of County Commissioners, praising the plan and asking the state to accept it as the best possible use of the dredge material.

"Dominion Cove Point continually strives to be a good neighbor," Parran said.

Joan Browning didn't speak publicly, but said after the hearing that she is convinced the project should go ahead as planned. Having lived in Cove Point for more than 50 years and endured flooding that ruined expensive property and transformed her backyard into a duck pond, she thinks the project will help make her home more secure.

"Great, let them do it," she said.

"Most of them seem to understand it's a good thing. It's a backyard issue, literally," company spokesman Karl Neddenien said.

emitrano@somdnews.com