a tale of two walls

A mock vapor-cloud wall suggests what’s at stake from Dominion’s plans for Cove Point. //photo from Calvert Citizens for a Healthy Community.

Outside was the mock vapor-cloud wall.

Listed on the mock wall were the air pollutants and carcinogens that Dominion’s proposed plant would routinely or accidentally send from its compound into the lungs of playing children and their parents. Forming part of the mock wall were boxes with labels, each written on by opponents of Dominion’s plans: Wall of Shame, Wall of Poisons, Wall of Cancer, Wall of Decreased Property Values, Wall of Corruption.

Inside the Patuxent High School auditorium in Lusby was the seemingly impenetrable wall of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Also possibly mock, as two FERC staff members and a court reporter — instead of the commissioners — sat at a table on the stage Saturday for this single public hearing on the environmental review of Dominion’s planned facility that would liquefy and export fracked gas. FERC concluded in May that the facility would pose no significant risks.

Outside, Dominion erected a tent and catered pulled-pork sandwiches and side dishes for its mostly blue-shirted supporters.

Between the Dominion tent and Chesapeake Climate Action Network’s mock vapor wall, Chesapeake Earth First! and Food Not Bombs set up a card table and handed out brown bag lunches with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, an apple and a banana to the mostly red-shirted opponents waiting in line to enter the school.

Initially, opponents of the project and the real vapor wall had wanted to set up the replica in another spot opposite Dominion’s tent. But an officer had rejected the idea.

“This is their event. This is their expansion,” the officer told Lusby resident Tracey Eno. By “their,” he meant Dominion’s.

“Whose event?” Eno said, incredulous. “This is everyone’s event.”

Back inside, the FERC staff seemed earnest enough and extended the hearing an extra 90 minutes, until 7:30 p.m., giving everyone who had signed up a chance to speak. Anyone who could wait that long, anyway. Drew Cobbs’ name was called out in the late afternoon, but the executive director of the Maryland Petroleum Council was long gone.

One of the FERC staff, Environmental Project Manager Joanne Wachholder, became tearful while praising the patience of 13-year-old Katie Murphy, who spoke late in the day.

“Please stop this expansion. You might just save some lives,” Katie said.

“I’m so glad you got to talk,” Wachholder said, rising and walking to the edge of the stage to offer a box of doughnuts to the girl.

Mostly, the staff listened intently, took notes and kept track of time, cutting off the very few who went beyond the allotted three minutes.

Those in favor called Dominion a “great corporate citizen” and the project a source of jobs and tax revenues and perhaps a pool for the high school. “This is about jobs, about good family-sustaining jobs,” said Mark Coles of the Building and Trades Council. Tax revenues would pay for teachers and public safety, said Brad Karbowsky, a Huntingtown resident and member of United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters. Kelvin Simmons of the Lusby Business Association said he had confidence that Dominion would protect the Chesapeake Bay. “All construction jobs are temporary,” said Austin Pacheo, whether 2 days, 2 weeks or 2 months. These jobs, he said, would last three years.

Where proponents see jobs, those opposed see poisoned air, the threat of a catastrophic fire, and increased fracking with accompanying pipelines and compressor stations. They pressed FERC to conduct its most thorough environmental review and said the risks to safety, health and the climate of this venture far outweighed jobs, tax revenue and corporate benevolence. Most were from Lusby and Southern Maryland, but some had traveled from Montgomery, Howard and Frederick counties, Baltimore and Virginia.

“Come to my house, sit on my front porch swing and look across the street and imagine the future of my home,” said Rachel Heinhorst, whose front door is a hundred yards from Dominion’s front door. Her three children play football, soccer, Frisbee and catch fireflies less than 200 yards from where the boilers and turbines would be.

Coming from the plant, she said, would be nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, volatile organic compounds, hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, carbon dioxide, hazardous air pollutants. “My children will be breathing dangerous levels of these pollutants every day. They will know what is across the street, because we will have to explain emergency preparedness, and they will be scared. My daughter will be scared. She will look at me and want me to assure something that I cannot. I cannot say that I can protect my children from this, but you can.”

“Dominion and the Calvert County commissioners focus on two things:  jobs and tax revenue,” Tracey Eno said. “That’s all they’ve got. They never talk about the risks.” Such as, Eno said, “Risk of death by asphyxiation in the event of a flammable vapor cloud; 20.4 tons of air pollution emitted every year; 275,000 gallons of water used every day; constant noise for the next 20 years or more; up to 85 more tankers polluting the [Chesapeake] Bay each year; foreign ballast water bringing invasive species to the Chesapeake; more traffic; increased greenhouse gases; terrorist target. Does Homeland Security know about this?”

Don’t sacrifice people for profits, Eno said. “Everyone says ‘money talks’ and ‘this is a done deal.’ It’s ‘David and Goliath.’ … I want you to at least know who your decision will affect and how unfair this is.”

Bill Peil lists the hazardous and cancer-causing chemicals that would come from the plant. //photo by @johnzangas DCMediaGroup

“Who would put 20 tons of toxic and hazardous pollutants on a neighbor’s lawn?” asked Bill Peil of Dunkirk. Hearing no takers, he continued: “That’s what’s going to happen every year” if Dominion’s plans proceed. And that would be in a routine year, never mind an accident. Many of the pollutants are carcinogens, he said. “Unfortunately, the word carcinogen is not mentioned” in FERC’s environmental review.

“This is not about jobs,” said Marcia Greenberg of St. Mary’s City. Although everyone is concerned about jobs, she said, “Dominion has turned this into a discussion about jobs.” She voiced her outrage that the commissioners weren’t present. They have “a huge responsibility” to balance the facts in this divided community, she said.

Several speakers noted that the environmental assessment omitted the population of Lusby: 2,473 live within a mile of the plant, according to Calvert County emergency planners. The evacuation plan is not so much a way out as a way in for emergency crews, Eleanor Callahan of Lusby complained: The plan “maroons residents.”

“No jurisdiction can handle a fire” of the sort that could happen at Cove Point, said Mickey Shymansky, a DC firefighter and Lusby resident. In April, he resigned his post as local assistant fire chief because he thought the department was understaffed and ill-trained to handle an accident at the export plant. “I am so brokenhearted,” he said. His brother was a firefighter at the Pentagon when terrorists attacked on 9/11. “We cannot have that here. Please hear my words. When I’m at work protecting the nation’s capital, who’s going to protect my family?”

For six and a half hours, the FERC staff called on speakers according to names on sign-up sheets at the entrance to the school auditorium. By the end, 105 people had spoken, 38 in favor, 67 opposed and urging the more stringent environment impact statement. Dominion said on its Facebook page that 75 to 80 percent were in favor. Which is wrong even if Dominion counts the 50 comment sheets that one proponent turned in.

Wachholder, from FERC, had sharp remarks for only one speaker: Mike Tidwell, executive director of Chesapeake Climate Action Council.

The day before, Tidwell told the FERC staff, the state Public Service Commission had ruled that the proposed project would provide no “net benefit” for Marylanders. For causing higher utility bills, the PSC ordered Dominion to pay $400,000 a year for 20 years to help compensate low-income families. For contributing to climate change, Dominion would have to pay another $40 million over five years into a fund for renewable energy. But the PSC approved the permit for the on-site power plant.

“It’s inconceivable that FERC doesn’t see the hazard” of this plan, Tidwell said. “FERC seems to not want to see how hazardous this is….Why wouldn’t FERC want to quantify the risk?” He criticized FERC’s failure to consider the consequences of fracking: “If fracking weren’t happening, what would Dominion export?” He called FERC’s environmental assessment a failure and said the people in Garrett and Frederick and other counties across the state want a similar public hearing.

“NO. We are not doing that,” Wachholder said sternly.

Tracey Eno says she remains an optimist. That David and Goliath battle? We all know how that turned out, she said. “All we need is one stone.”

— elisabeth hoffman

The hearing is underway.//photo by @johnzangas DCMediaGroup

day of reckoning

I’m back in front of the courthouse doors with Steve Bruns, Joanna LaFollette and Sweet Dee Frostbutter.//photo by Ann Marie Nau

As penalty for disturbing the peace and blocking safe passage at the courthouse in Frederick on an icy day in March, Steve Bruns, Joanna LaFollette, Sweet Dee Frostbutter and I — aka the Frederick 4 – must perform 24 hours of community service at a nonprofit of our choice and be on our best behavior for a year. (That would be the state’s definition of best behavior.)

Our action was one of several protests opposing Virginia-based Dominion Resources’ expansion plans in Maryland, including a compressor station in Myersville and a fracked-gas liquefaction and export facility at Cove Point in Lusby.

We know who is really disturbing the peace and hindering safe passage through our communities. Not the Frederick 4 or the Cumberland 4 or the Calvert 6.

Just hours after our sentencing, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) released its 242-page environmental review for Cove Point. Despite pages of discussion about deflagration (when a vapor cloud “encounters” an ignition source) and fireballs, of fragments flying through the sky “at high velocities” and shock waves, of radiant heat and unconfined ethane and propane clouds, FERC has concluded that all this will be taken care of. Not to worry. 

In addition, FERC apparently agrees with Dominion that fracking has nothing to do with this project. Because Dominion can’t be sure where and how many wells will be drilled, all this fretting about fracking is mere conjecture: “In addition, specific details, including the timing, location, and number of additional production wells that may or may not be drilled, are speculative. As such, impacts associated with the production of natural gas that may be sourced from various locations and methods for export by the Project are not reasonably foreseeable or quantifiable.” 

FERC also says methane’s global warming potential is 25 times that of carbon dioxide. Wrong. That compares the two greenhouse gases over 100 years, an arbitrary time frame, particularly given our climate emergency. Methane’s toll is 84 times worse over 20 years, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But FERC is not considering this project’s full climate harm from fracking, piping, compressing, spilling, exploding and shipping anyway. (The latest fracked gas pipeline would run through Maryland, just east of Cumberland. The lastest spillage has oil flowing through the streets of Los Angeles.)

Also deemed speculative was the “No Action Alternative,” because FERC has to consider that only if it does the most thorough type of review. FERC has decided this lesser review is sufficient for the Cove Point project.

We get one public hearing to object to this report: Saturday, May 31, 1 – 6 p.m., Patuxent High School, 12485 Southern Connector Boulevard, Lusby.

Last week, the Obama administration released the latest National Climate Assessment, which shows that climate change is happening here and now, not just in far off lands and in the future. Although that has begun as well. More deluges, droughts, heat waves, wildfires and rising seas are upon us. Scientists also released a report showing that the West Antarctic ice sheet has begun an inexorable retreat. The cause of all this chaos: our insistence on exhuming and igniting fossil fuels to power our economy. Which was fine (for some) — until we realized it wasn’t.

The Frederick 4’s action was “part of our continuing protest against the accelerating destruction of our environment by the natural gas industry,” said Steve Bruns, one of my co-conspirators. “We protest the silence of our government officials at every level. It’s time that all of them, from the local, state and national levels, spoke out and put a stop to the pollution of our air and water, the ubiquitous fire and explosion hazards, the sinkholes, and the earthquakes, which have all resulted from gas fracturing and transport. … We ask that all parties join us in the fight for clean air, clean water, and safe, renewable energy in Maryland.”

Although FERC repeats this fallacy in its report, fracking is not a bridge fuel. Once the frack pads and wells, pipelines, compressor stations and export facilities are in place, fracked gas will be an endless highway to an environmental, health and climate disaster. The path of extreme energy extraction is part of the business-as-usual strategy. It’s utterly inadequate. 

Before our sentencing, we asked about serving our time with, say, Sierra Club, Myersville Citizens for a Rural Community, HoCo Climate Change or Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN). Our CCAN-provided lawyer, John Doud, said not to push it. So be it. Better, perhaps, to work with an unrelated group. We can learn of their struggle. And tell them of ours. I’m thinking recruitment.  

–elisabeth hoffman

cleveland’s lesson for cove point

[This blog post first appeared on CCAN’s web site.]

While they’re in town this week, Dominion officials and shareholders should stop by Cleveland’s Grdina Park.

That playground marks where three shiny spheres and a giant cylinder once held millions of gallons of liquefied natural gas (LNG). They were a technological wonder in 1944, because 600 times more natural gas could be stored when liquefied at minus 260 degrees F.

But on Oct. 20, 1944, a spark ignited gas vapor seeping from one of the tanks, unleashing a fiery explosion. Homes along 61st and 62nd streets burst into flames, trapping residents. The gas flowed into the sewer system, launching manhole covers, bursting pavement, rushing into basements. Numerous blasts and waves of blistering heat shattered windows miles away. Telephone poles smoked and bent, grass caught fire, walls turned red, people’s shoes felt as if they were melting.

The East Ohio Gas Co. disaster left 131 people dead and hundreds injured. It destroyed a square mile of Cleveland’s east side, including 79 homes, two factories, 217 cars, seven trailers and a tractor. Nearly half the victims, including 21 never identified, are buried at Highland Park Cemetery on Chagrin Boulevard, where a monument honors the dead. If children had not been in school, the toll would have been much higher. After the disaster, public utilities started storing natural gas underground, in depleted wells, rather than as potential bombs in aboveground tanks.

This week, on May 7, less than four miles from Grdina Park, Dominion shareholders will consider dazzling CEO compensation packages and lucrative projects, including the proposed Cove Point LNG export plant in the Chesapeake Bay community of Lusby, Maryland. This $3.8 billion facility would liquefy fracked gas, pump it onto tankers and ship it to Asia.

But fears about explosions, thermal blasts, and limited escape routes dominate the debate. This facility, if approved, would once again place LNG tanks and much more next to too many people.

Opponents have raised numerous objections. The facility would ensure more fracking, compressor stations and pipelines. Exports would also raise prices for American consumers and manufacturers. A U.S. Department of Energy report shows that exporting gas harms every sector of the economy save one: the gas industry. And all that fracking, piping, compressing, chilling, shipping and re-gasifying is a climate nightmare.

But the most poignant alarms are from Lusby residents who live nearby. So near, in fact, that 360 homes are within a 4,500-foot radius. A vapor cloud, according to a state report on an earlier expansion, could drift nearly that far and still ignite — with a spark from a car, a lighter, a grill — enveloping all in a flash fire. Which sounds too much like Cleveland 1944. The nearest homes are 850 feet away. Confusion is widespread about a 60-foot-tall, three-quarter-mile-long wall around the site. Dominion calls it a sound barrier; documents suggest it would also serve as a vapor barrier; and company officials recently told residents that flames from an explosion could travel up the wall and, thereby, over the houses.

The unusual design, confined to the footprint of the existing and dormant import facility, means Dominion has to cram into tight quarters a utility-scale power plant, compressors and liquefaction equipment, and storage tanks for gases and toxic chemicals. Even minor accidents could escalate into a catastrophe. And 1,000-foot tankers would frequently lumber out of port with their explosive load.

Dominion insists accidents won’t happen. But residents have read with growing anxiety about the deadly 2004 explosion at an LNG export facility in Algeria, and more recent blasts at gas-processing plants in Washington, Wyoming and at Dominion’s Blue Racer in West Virginia.

In April, the local assistant fire chief resigned over concerns that his all-volunteer department lacks the staff, training and equipment to handle a disaster at the plant.

Despite all the hazards and questions, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is sticking to its lighter-weight environmental review and plans only one public hearing. The Obama administration even wants fast-track approvals for gas export facilities as another hammer in the geopolitical toolbox to use against Russia. Dominion will tell shareholders that Cove Point fits well with this nationwide rush to export gas.

Ideally, we would weigh the long-term effects of fracking and exporting on gas prices, our health, foreign policy, the climate. At the least, though, the explosion in Cleveland nearly 70 years ago teaches that LNG facilities have no place near homes and schools, playgrounds and parks, beaches and fishing docks. If they belong anywhere, and that is not a given, they belong in remote areas, not next to neighborhoods.

–elisabeth hoffman

 

speaking out against cove point

Ori Gutin tells members of the state Public Service Commission that college students want clean-energy jobs.//photo by CCAN

Southern Maryland residents filled the Patuxent High School auditorium in Lusby on Saturday afternoon for state regulators’ sole public hearing on Dominion Resources’ plan to build a $3.8 billion facility for liquefying and exporting fracked gas from the town’s Cove Point plant. Area residents urged members of the Public Service Commission to deny Dominion’s permit on the grounds that the project would benefit the gas industry but threaten local safety and property values as well as the Maryland economy. Ruth Alice White attended the hearing and testified on behalf of HoCo ClimateChange. Following is her account of the day. Chesapeake Climate Action Network staff also provided some material.

By RUTH ALICE WHITE

This is one for the history books. Will the people of Calvert County and Maryland be able to persuade the state Public Service Commission that a liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facility, the fourth-largest in the nation, is a bad idea for Cove Point?

The Public Service Commission (PSC), whose members are appointed by the governor with approval from the General Assembly, will just listen today. A sign says the room has 800-plus seats. Not every seat is filled but most are, and some people stand at the back and at the sides.

We know union members will talk about jobs. They have a huge food tent in the parking lot, which we anticipated because of a Facebook announcement.

Some arrived as early as 7 a.m. to line up for the noon hearing, because the testimony is in order of sign-ins. My goal was to arrive by 8 a.m., but I am later and already about 12 people are in line — all but one opposed to the facility. As the union workers come in from their parking lot breakfast, they are appalled to see us in line and protest the line. We hear police are in the area to keep order.

We sign in with relative order and a minimum of jostling. Finally, the commissioners start the hearing only a few minutes late and explain the ground rules: Each person will have five minutes to speak; commissioners will not comment or ask questions.

The first and second person to testify were not in line. The first is Calvert County Commissioner Gerald Clark, who says: “Good leadership is making decisions under duress from citizens.” He characterizes opponents as “emotional.”  Someone says, “Who elected him?” Mostly the audience is silent. But as he drones on, people start to call out: “Five-minute rule.” Because of his position, he is apparently exempt from the time limit. He mentions jobs and tax revenues. He doesn’t mention the secret tax breaks the county commissioners gave Dominion.

Up next is the county sheriff, Mike Evans. He is confident that his office can handle security at proposed plant. He doesn’t mention a hearing in Annapolis last week when Sen. Roy P. Dyson’s expressed grave concerns about whether the Department of Natural Resources Police would be able to handle security threats at Cove Point.

Chiquita Younger, who grew up in Lusby, says Dominion has left too many questions unanswered.//photo by Ruth Alice White

Finally, those who waited in line and signed up to testify are called to speak. Patuxent High graduate Chiquita Younger, a Lusby native and program associate at Interfaith Power & Light, is first.  “Congregations across Maryland feel called to protect our climate and our water, so they oppose Dominion’s plans to build a major climate polluter that will export fracked gas,” she said. “But I’m here to testify today because, for me, this is personal. I grew up in Lusby, and my family has deep roots here. I’m here to speak out for my niece, my sister, my mother, my grandmother, and all those in Calvert County who have not been able to get their questions answered about the pollution Cove Point will cause and the dangers it poses to their neighborhoods.”

Jorge Aguilar, the southern region director of Food & Water Watch, says LNG exports won’t help the middle class – a theme repeated frequently by those testifying. “Natural gas companies always fail to deliver on the rosy economic forecasts they make,” he said. “In fact, a recent Department of Energy study on LNG exports said that the net economic benefits will actually lead to lower real wage growth due to increases in the price of natural gas domestically. The Cove Point project is an environmental and economic disaster waiting to happen.”

Sitting next to me is Robin Broder of Waterkeepers Chesapeake. She testifies that exporting LNG from Cove Point will increase pressure to frack in the George Washington National Forest, the watershed that provides the drinking water for millions in the Washington, DC, area. “What happens here will have ripple effects across the region,” she says.

Mike Tidwell, director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, says the project will have radical effects on the entire state and region. “The PSC is here to serve the entire Maryland public. … Economically, it is hard to argue this makes sense for the state,” he said, because everyone will pay higher prices for natural gas.

Jean Marie Neal of the Cove of Calvert Homeowners Association lives across the road from the proposed LNG export facility and she, of course, is concerned about safety.  But she emphasizes fairness and process. How did Dominion evade the law that requires two years between project application and construction? Why did county commissioners waive zoning and building codes for the project? Who is safeguarding the citizens? Oh, and that six-story “sound barrier” Dominion has been talking about for months to “protect” citizens from noise at the site? A Federal Energy Regulatory  Commission (FERC) document posted to its website this week shows it is also a barrier for containing flammable vapor clouds in case of an explosion. FERC has said the proposed wall is insufficient and needs to be expanded. Why did Dominion repeatedly say the wall was only a sound barrier? And the supposedly 3,000 jobs (1,700 to 3,000, Dominion said) are JOB YEARS, so if 1,500 people work two years that counts as 3,000 “jobs,” Neal says.

“As a resident living and raising a family very close to the Dominion Cove Point terminal, I am alarmed that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is on the verge of approving one of the first LNG export facilities ever to be built in the United States —within 4,500 feet of approximately 360 residences and next door to a public park,” says Sue Allison, a homeowner living within view of Dominion’s facility and a member of Calvert Citizens for a Healthy Community. “I call upon the Public Service Commission to demand that FERC produce a publicly accessible, rigorous, quantitative assessment of the risks that Dominion’s facility poses to those residents living, playing or attending school in close proximity.”

Greg Farmer, who lives in Calvert County and worked on economic development in the Clinton administration, testifies that this is NOT economic development.

University of Maryland student Ori Gutin explains how unpopular this proposal is with many at the College Park campus who long to work in clean-energy jobs. Those in favor of Cove Point argue that the plant is good for business. But Gutin and many others say solar and wind could provide so many more jobs now and in the future — if only we would invest that money now.

Tracey Eno, a homeowner living within 1.5 miles of Dominion’s facility and a member of Calvert Citizens for a Healthy Community, says some people say they are environmentalists but “I am a people-ist. I am worried about the people.”  She mentions health and safety risks, decreasing property values, and the sound wall that is really a vapor cloud wall. This massive, unprecedented industrial plant would be next to where people live, she says.

David Harding talks eloquently about Little Cove Point Road and the planned overnight heavy traffic — to avoid traffic jams during the day.

I speak for www.HoCoClimateChange.org and echo common themes: air and water quality, beauty of the area, the sound/toxic vapor barrier, more compressor stations and pipelines throughout Maryland, increase in fracking (including the Taylorsville Basin, which extends north from Virginia to Annapolis), increase in gas prices, and the fact that gas is not a bridge fuel — it is a bridge to a cliff and fatal for our children and grandchildren. The whole gas process leaks methane, which increases climate change. So many friends in Howard County share these concerns. I feel their energy around me, and this helps me speak up and keep my voice strong in this huge room, standing at these intimidating microphones.

One woman testifies that she’s concerned about the facility’s proximity to the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant. She calls the plan a “privatization of profit and socialization of risks … and the local residents are left with all the risks.”

Cathy Mazur says Lusby is already a non-attainment area for air quality. Dominion will have to purchase carbon offsets in other areas in order to pollute the air here. But, she asks, how will offsets elsewhere help Calvert County residents who already have substandard air?

One man, questioning the wisdom of exporting the gas, testifies that propane exports have led to a shortage of heating fuel for homes across the country this winter.

The hall had been filled with union workers, but as they trickle out during the hearing the folks remaining are predominately those wearing red shirts and “NO COVE POINT” stickers.

Dan Craley asks whether some jobs and tax dollars are worth polluting our children’s future?

More testimony pro and con. A supporter of Dominion paints opponents as retirees who care nothing about the unemployed or the working class. But he ignores the hardworking Calvert citizens present who are obviously not of retirement age. He also ignores that Dominion is seeking maximum profits with short-term jobs rather than investing in solar and wind and green technologies that will provide many more jobs for many years to come. The weight of this unending recession on middle-income and unemployed people, on those foreclosed and risking foreclosure surfaces repeatedly in the testimony of those supporting this project. But this one project will not solve the job and money woes for Calvert County or this state. It will enrich Dominion and the gas industry, but impoverish residents in ways described so eloquently.

My head is spinning, but the next speakers do not reply to these attacks. They move on. Kelly Canavan points out that this project does not provide power for any Maryland residents and is not in the public interest. There is no trade-off with this plant. We get the pollution. Dominion gets the money. That’s it.

Janet Ashby tells the PSC members, “Your duty is for the necessity and convenience of MARYLAND.”

I am ready to leave – it is midafternoon and many people, mainly supporters are still here. But I stay to hear a few more. “Without health, money is meaningless,” Cathy Zumbrun says. She fears an accident and distrusts the gas industry.

As I walk out, the last speaker is trying to use black comedy – a last-gasp argument against all of us naysayers. She starts dramatically, almost yelling: “You will die.” Pause.  “I will die, too. We will all die. Global warming – is this really real?” Her point is that all life has risk and that we have to live now and move forward. She pokes grim fun at everyone who has talked about real consequences from building this plant.

All I can think of as I walk out is the movie “Dr. Strangelove.” I guess I am punchy after all this. But I have missed time with my husband and haven’t spoken yet to my daughter or grandson today. Those I love pull me back. And in the hour-and-a-half drive back, I talk to an old friend from high school who grew up in Maryland but lives in Arizona. Can she understand what our state and region are facing now?

Mike Tidwell of CCAN says the Cove Point plan is a radical turn in the wrong direction for Maryland.//photo by Ruth Alice White