Jerry Kremer

We need the Port Ambrose natural gas terminal

Posted

Editor's note: Jerry Kremer wrote this column before Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced on Thursday that he would veto the Port Ambrose proposal. For more, click here.

There is an old adage that you can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. That line of reasoning applies to the environmental movement that has opposed the Port Ambrose liquid natural gas project to deliver more natural gas to this region.

At the outset, I want to make it clear that I am involved in an energy policy group that fights for new and existing sources of electric power. But more important, I lived in Long Beach for more than 40 years, and represented the community in the State Assembly for 23 years. I have a keen interest in the quality of life in that city (and have also been outspoken on the need for a full-service hospital and not a simple emergency room).

For those who don’t know anything about Port Ambrose, it involves a ship docking during the coldest times of year 18 miles from shore. That’s the distance between Long Beach and Garden City. The LNG terminal would convert liquid natural gas into gas for sale to National Grid. It would be pumped through an underwater pipeline that has been in existence since 1962. There’s a similar ship operating in Boston Harbor, less than three miles from that city.

During the past two winters, New Yorkers have experienced a polar vortex, a wave of bitter cold. Because there isn’t enough natural gas in this region, supplies had to come from far away, and prices went up more than 400 percent. Consumers across the region paid for the unexpected spike in costs.

Early in 2014, a handful of environmental groups, many from as far away as Pennsylvania and Maine, began beating the drums to get people on the South Shore to worry about this project. They are opposed to any fossil fuels, which include gas. Most of them had never set foot in Long Beach or Far Rockaway prior to this campaign. It was clearly good strategy to capitalize on the fears of people who had been hurt by Hurricane Sandy.

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