Remembering the Shoreham protest of 1979

I still can't get over the idea that I'm old enough to look back on a time 30 years ago. But it's really amazing that 30 years ago, I was already an adult -- of sorts; from my perspective at 51, 21 doesn't seem too "adult" to me, even if that's technically true.

Thirty years ago yesterday I was one of the 15,000 to 20,000 people who marched in Shoreham to protest the nuclear power plant then under construction. It was a historic event. Never before had such a large crowd gathered anywhere on Long Island to protest anything. Throngs of people jammed the narrow, winding roads in the community surrounding the power plant. I was excited to be one of them, and had been looking forward to it from the moment I'd heard it was going to happen.

So were a lot of people. A nuclear power plant called Three Mile Island in western Pennsylvania saw to that. On March 28, 1979, one of its reactors suffered a cooling system malfunction that caused a partial core meltdown. Two weeks before the accident, a movie called "The China Syndrome" was released. It was about a meltdown at a nuclear reactor eerily similar to what happened at Three Mile Island, only much worse. The accident at Three Mile Island, combined with the hit movie (whose box office was enhanced by the real-life scare in Pennsylvania, no doubt) helped raise public awareness across the country, and anti-nuclear activists took advantage of that by staging the massive June 3 march and protest.

In truth, I was excited to be part of any big protest. I was too young to participate in the political activism of the 1960s and watched with fascination and awe as the events of the civil rights, women's rights and anti-war movements unfolded, each with its own massive protests and demonstrations -- people getting together for a cause, making their voices heard, showing solidarity against "the establishment" and effecting social change. The no-nukes movement, part of the larger environmental movement, would give me and people of my generation a chance to speak out on an important issue, to work for social change and environmental justice.

I was such a romantic. But the march was anticlimactic for me.

It rained all day that Sunday. The crowd was orderly and quiet, save for some "hell no, we won't glow" and "no nukes" chants. I didn't get arrested for storming the gates, or see anyone get arrested for storming the gates. In fact, I didn't even see the gates. There was such a crowd in those narrow streets, I never got anywhere near the gates. In fact, I didn't lay eyes on the plant itself until years later, in 1985, when I'd moved back to eastern Suffolk after spending six years in NYC. I drove down the town beach road in Wading River to look at the power plant's imposing concrete tower. It was winter, and the area was desolate. I remember feeling spooked by it.

In the years following the march, I would not become an environmental activist, though I would always remain keenly interested in environmental issues. That September, I started law school. And except for one demonstration at the United Nations, I wouldn't be part of any large-scale protests again ¬ -- until two years ago, when I went to a peace march in D.C.

Activism does create change. And Shoreham is a case in point. When the tide of public opinion turned against the nuclear plant, LILCO had a losing battle on its hands. Though LILCO didn't make out too bad: It sold the new public power authority an aged transmission system for a very hefty price -- and kept the income-producing generating facilities for itself. The ratepayers got shafted in that deal. And the taxpayers got shafted after the tax litigation was settled, creating a disastrous situation for the Shoreham-Wading River school district, the effects of which its residents are still coping with today.

But look out: The nuclear power industry is poised to try for a comeback. Nuclear power has a very small carbon footprint. It will help our end reliance on foreign oil. It's clean, efficient and economical, industry insiders argue. But is it safe? And, even if the risk of generating nuclear power is acceptably low, what do we do with the radioactive waste created by nuclear power plants? There are no good answers to that question yet. But global warming, "peak oil" -- the declining world supply of oil -- and international politics are prodding more people to rethink the nuclear option, even though those pivotal questions go unanswered. Meanwhile, the promise of renewable alternative energy still remains largely unfulfilled, since investment in developing solar, wind and hydropower technologies was never much of a priority in America. You can't own the sun, or the wind, or the tides. Now, uranium -- that's another story.

Copyright 2009 Times/Review Newspapers Corp.

Broadwater rehearing denied by feds

By Denise Civiletti

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Thursday denied requests by New York, Connecticut, Suffolk County and the towns of Riverhead, Southold, Brookhaven, East Hampton and Huntington to reconsider its approval of Broadwater Energy's permits to construct and operate a liquefied natural gas terminal in Long Island Sound, nine miles off the coast of Wading River in the Town of Riverhead.

FERC on March 20 issued conditional approvals to Broadwater Energy, a joint venture of Shell Oil and TransCanada Pipelines, to site, construct, and operate a 1,215-foot-long LNG import terminal in Long Island Sound. The commission also issued a certificate of public convenience and necessity to Broadwater Pipeline LLC, an affiliate of Broadwater Energy, to construct, own, and operate a 21.7-mile-long pipeline subsea lateral from the LNG terminal to he Iroquois gas transmission system pipeline in Kings Park.

Both approvals were conditioned on a determination by the N.Y. secretary of state that the terminal would be consistent with New York's coastal management policies. Gov. David Paterson announced on April 10 that the N.Y. secretary of state had found Broadwater's proposed terminal inconsistent with state coastal policies.

The states of New York and Connecticut, as well as Suffolk County and four municipalities, subsequently asked FERC to reconsider its permit approvals after the New York secretary of commerce ruled on April 10 that the off-shore LNG storage and regasification terminal was inconsistent with New York's coastal management policy.

On Thursday, FERC said no.

What legal action the states, county and towns may pursue following FERC's denial was not immediately apparent.

Meanwhile, Broadwater Energy has appealed the N.Y. Department of State's consistency determination to the U.S. secretary of commerce, who has the authority to override the state's consistency ruling upon finding that the terminal is in the interest of national security. That appeal is pending before the U.S. commerce secretary. A ruling on that appeal is expected in early 2009, according to Ted Beuttler, a staff attorney in the commerce department's office of general counsel for ocean services.

Copyright 2008 Times/Review Newspapers Corp.

Chopped liver on the North Fork

It must be nice to run a giant utility. You just do whatever you please, the people be damned, and if enough of the right people get mad enough, you can get them to pay you to stop doing what's making them mad.

At least that's how things have played out with our friendly electric company, the Long Island Power Authority, and the upper crust on the South Fork.

LIPA and Southampton Town have cut a deal whereby LIPA will bury all of a new nine-mile-long 69-kilovolt transmission line through Southampton -- and Southampton rate payers will pick up the extra cost associated with going underground by way of a "scenic view preservation" surcharge. The new surcharge will raise about $10 million to bury the entire line. LIPA was planning to bury part of it, but string 45-foot-tall poles through some of Southampton's most scenic farm vistas.

If this sounds familiar, don't fret. It should. LIPA has buried new power lines on the South Fork before: more than 22 miles worth nearly a decade ago at a cost of more than $70 million. Meanwhile, it insisted on erecting big, ugly new poles on the North Fork, in spite of vocal opposition here. That prompted Southold Supervisor Jean Cochran to ask, "What are we, chopped liver?" A few years back, Riverhead actually sued to stop the erection of a new aboveground power line. And it won the suit because LIPA failed to conduct the proper environmental review mandated by state law. But Riverhead and LIPA eventually came to an agreement under which LIPA buried a small portion of the new heavy-duty line on its easternmost end, near the new substation in Northville.

But the scenic farm vistas of the North Fork continue to be blighted by the towering, unsightly high-tension power lines. And the once-magnificent old trees lining the Sound Avenue historic corridor and the Main Road continue to be "pruned" -- to protect the LIPA lines -- into distorted figures, some so drastically that they become diseased and must be taken down altogether.

Now why didn't we think of absorbing the cost of burying new power lines with a surcharge, like our neighbors to the south?

For one thing, LIPA didn't give us the option. We're not as rich or influential as those Hamptonites, even with the influx of the new, wealthier second-home owners around these parts. More of us are less able to afford the extra $44 a year most Southampton residents are going to cough up to pay for the underground line. And if they don't pay their bills, the town has guaranteed to pony up the money. (Maybe this is an acceptable use of the community preservation fund dough they're apparently flush with over there?)

But who wants to pay another LIPA surcharge, anyway? The power company already has effectively doubled our energy costs by adding, without review or approval by any regulatory agency, a "power supply" charge on top of the per-kilowatt hour rate approved by the Public Service Commission. And now LIPA is planning to increase the power supply surcharge because of skyrocketing oil prices, even though LIPA has overestimated fuel costs -- and overcharged its customers -- by hundreds of millions of dollars over the past couple of years. Indeed, LIPA's financial statements show "excess income" over expenses of $93 million for 2007 and $118 million for 2006. If LIPA were a private company, that would be called a profit -- and a tidy profit at that. So what's the pubic power authority doing with all that "excess" dough? Hopefully, the audit begun by the state comptroller earlier this month at the insistence of North Fork Assemblyman Marc Alessi will give us rate payers a definitive answer.

Meanwhile, if we want to enjoy scenic farmland vistas unspoiled by towering utility poles, we'll have to brave summer traffic in the Hamptons and take a ride through Southampton. Unless, like the rich folk on the south side, we can afford to charter one of those noisy helicopters buzzing overhead and do a flyover. It's much more civilized than sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic on County Road 39 -- even in the back of a limo.

The 60-day difference

What does the 60-day extension of the deadline for the N.Y. DOS really mean, anyway?

Gov. Eliot Spitzer's office: It's an opportunity for more dialogue on a complex issue.

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal: Broadwater still hasn't provided N.Y. with enough information to make a decision.

Broadwater senior vice president John Hritcko: It's just part of the normal review process. (That's about all Hritcko ever has to say about anything.)

Citizens Campaign for the Environment executive director Adrienne Esposito: It's an opportunity, granted to Shell Oil and TransCanada by Spitzer, to mount a massive PR campaign to change public opinion about Broadwater, so that an OK by NY wouldn't spell political suicide for Spitzer.

I think Esposito's assessment is on target. The media blitz has begun. Last night, I went out for a late dinner with my husband. We were at The Birchwood in Polish Town, here in Riverhead. They have several TVs positioned around the pub-style restaurant. The one facing my seat was tuned to Channel 12. In the course of about an hour, four Broadwater commercials aired.

Dick Amper of the Long Island Pine Barrens Society says Broadwater is spending $100,000 on its media campaign. That's barely a drop of oil in the barrel for Big Energy companies like Shell and TransCanada. They could spend 10 times that without blinking. And they just might.

The DOS has already written its decision (74 pages long) and was prepared to issue it on time, according to a source I can't name, but who is in a position (inside government) to know. The DOS does not believe the floating gas terminal is consistent with the state's coastal resources management plan and its decision letter rejects the plan.

It is possible the delay allows the DOS to dot every i and cross every t, just to make sure the decision can withstand the inevitable legal challenges, my source says.

But this delay is awfully convenient for Broadwater, a chance to blanket the air waves with ads, and distribute checks to local charities (like United Way of Long Island, which got $150,000 from Shell and Broadwater, announced at a press conference in Deer Park Tuesday, which I covered for Times/Review Newspapers.)

The delay also allows Big Energy, including the nuclear crowd, to circle the wagons and apply pressure on the ultimate political decision maker, Eliot Spitzer.

Yesterday afternoon, I got a press release from the N.Y. Affordable Reliable Electricity Alliance, or NY AREA, announcing "NY AREA calls for state to approve Broadwater: Essential, clean energy is needed now."

NY AREA is a pro-nuclear group partly funded by the owner of the Indian Point nuclear power plant. Its mission, according to its Web site, includes keeping the Indian Point power plant operating.
NY AREA's chairman, according to the press release, is Jerry Kremer — that's Arthur J. (Jerry) Kremer, former Democratic member of the State Assembly (for 23 years), lawyer and registered lobbyist. Clients for whom he has lobbied government include the tobacco giant Phillip Morris, LIPA, and, according to records on the Web site of the state temporary commission on lobbying, NY AREA. (Click here and type in Kremer in the "lobbyist name field" for records 2004 and later.) Jerry Kremer, his law firm and his various lobbying firms (I counted three) have, collectively, given upwards of $50,000 to Eliot Spitzer's political campaigns since 2003 — including donations to "Spitzer 2010," the governor's re-election campaign committee, according to records on the state Board of Elections Web site.

While Broadwater engages in its PR campaign and spreads "good will" by doling out checks to local charities, you can bet political powerhouse lobbyists like Kremer will be working Spitzer behind the scenes to get the State Department's consistency letter rewritten to approve this behemoth gas terminal.

Esposito, meanwhile, after squawking about Spitzer meeting with Shell Oil but declining to meet with "the people," as been granted an audience with the governor himself Monday at noon in Albany. She's already been warned by his staff that the meeting will be "short."

She'll be rushing back to Long Island in time to debate the merits of Broadwater with Shell CEO John Hofmeister on Channel 12 live at 7 pm.

LIPA's smoke and mirrors

Are you outraged by your electric bill? I know I am.

My bill is effectively doubled by LIPA's "power supply charges" — which the utility used to call "fuel surcharges" before it decided on the new euphemism.

Our cost-per-kilowatt-hour is just about doubled by LIPA's power supply charges. No matter what LIPA calls it, it's a RATE INCREASE, plain and simple. Yet this rate increase has been imposed by LIPA without review and approval by the (so-called) Public Service Commission.

Newsday business reporter Mark Harrington has an excellent article in today's edition: LIPA overestimates cost of fuel, overcharges customers.

In 2006, LIPA over-collected these bogus fuel surcharges by $197 MILLION.

LIPA has been refunding the 2006 excess revenue in 2007. But at the same time, LIPA is continuing to over-collect fuel surcharges to the tune of another $118 MILLION as of September.

LIPA is intentionally collecting more in fuel surcharges than it needs as a hedge against the "volatile" energy market. The result is the near doubling of its "cash, cash equivalents and investments" at the end of its operating year, from $413 million at the end of 2004 to $710 million at the end of 2006.

And last year, Harrington reports, LIPA "voted itself the right to overcollect more than three times the amount it previously could to hold in reserve."

LIPA operates without sufficient oversight. With a complicit PSC, it raises our de facto rates, changes its tariff to increase allowable "reserves" and manages a huge slush fund collected from us ratepayers -- who are struggling to pay our electric bills. Even as LIPA is jacking up our rates and padding its bank accounts to protect us against "volatility" it is shutting off customers who can't afford to pay their LIPA bills. "At last count," Harrington writes, "217,105 residential and commercial customers -- roughly one in five -- were late making payments, and LIPA's practice of shutting off electricity for non-payers spiked last year."

Why do we sit back silently and allow this to continue? This is our money. LIPA rates are effectively a tax. There are few realistic options for most of us but to buy electricity from this monopoly. The PSC was created to regulate utility monopolies and protect the public from abuse. It isn't doing its job. What will it take to get people to stand up and say, "ENOUGH! We demand change!" We have a governor who prides himself on being a crusader for consumer rights. When will we see that brought to bear on the PSC and LIPA? LIPA ratepayers are being shafted. And LIPA is allowed to do whatever it wants with our money with very little oversight. Meanwhile, we just keep footing the bill without a peep.

Hold on to your wallets

Times/Review Newspapers Editorial

November 8, 2007

Think your utility bills are killing you now? Well, get ready to dig even deeper into your pockets this winter, if the state Public Service Commission staff has its way.

The PSC staff is recommending that National Grid, which bought out KeySpan in August, be allowed to recover from ratepayers 100 percent of the cost of cleaning up the 83 contaminated manufactured gas production sites it got from KeySpan. Estimated price tag for the cleanup: over $1 billion. (See Times/Review story by North Shore Sun reporter Anna Gustafson, "Rate payers to foot the bill?") This could raise our utility rates — including the already sky-high cost of electricity — as much as 30 percent, according to local lawmakers. Even if you're not a primary natural gas customer, you're still going to pay. LIPA buys natural gas from National Grid to generate the electricity it sells you. LIPA passes its fuel cost increases directly to ratepayers by way of fuel surcharges, recently renamed "power supply charges," that have effectively doubled your electric costs by adding almost 10 cents per kilowatt to your bill — on top of per-kilowatt-hour charges that are already among the highest in the nation.

Legislators, including First District Assemblyman Marc Alessi, warned us this might happen when the National Grid deal was before the PSC for approval this summer. They implored the PSC to address the cleanup costs in the buyout agreement. Once again, the PSC proved itself more interested in preserving the utilities' profitability than in protecting ratepayers. It ignored the legislators' demands and approved a buyout agreement that was mum on the MPG remediation cost. The ink was barely dry on the deal when National Grid asked PSC for permission to pass the remediation cost on to us, and PSC now appears poised to give the giant utility exactly what it wants.

We urge the commissioners to put the public interest before special interests for a change. Don't make ratepayers pay for the utility's neglect or malfeasance. With crude oil prices hitting $100 a barrel this winter, driving heating and electric costs even higher, Long Island ratepayers simply can't bear this additional spike in utility charges, especially in an economic climate of grave uncertainty. The reverberation effect of this increase could shatter the local economy.

With history as our guide, it's clear the remediation cost pass-through is probably as good as done. National Grid, whose lobbyist is the former chairman of the PSC, has more sway with the commission than does the public whose interest it's supposed to serve. No surprise there. The real question is whether our state Legislature has the independence (from the utility/energy lobbies) and principle to enact meaningful legislative reform, putting the public interest in the forefront of utility regulation, where it belongs. Time will tell. Meanwhile, turn off the lights, bundle up and open your wallet. It's going to be a long, cold, costly winter.

Copyright 2007 Times/Review Newspapers Corp.

$850,000 for what??

LIPA ratepayers (like me) spent $850,000 on a 157-page "compilation" of information (the Levitan report) that Kessel now says LIPA may or may not even use! Kessel asked Levitan in 2005 to do this "assessment" so LIPA could make "a recommendation" to the governor. I'm certainly not anxious for that to happen, because it's pretty obvious where LIPA would come down on Broadwater, at least if Kessel has anything to say about it. But $850,000 of rate payer's money for what amounts to a PR event for Broadwater? That's pretty outrageous, even for LIPA.

Levitan & Associates is an LNG industry consultant. Among other things, it failed to take into account many of the proposed storage facility's costs — both to the environment and to the local economy. The report is a ratepayer-funded $850,000 "justification" for Broadwater prepared by one of the LNG industry's trusted consultants.

Environmentalist Tom Andersen (author of "This Fine Piece of Water: An Environmental History of Long Island Sound") writes in his "Sphere" blog that the 10-year "value" of the Sound, based on data collected by the Long Island Sound Study, is $55 billion. Andersen poses the question: Does it make sense to jeopardize a resource worth $55 billion to the local economy to save $14.8 billion?

Tallying LNG savings vs. cost

It's a huge chunk of change, no doubt about it. Broadwater's floating natural gas facility in the Long Island Sound would save New York consumers $14.8 billion over the course of a decade, according to a report prepared for the Long Island Power Authority by Levitan & Associates Inc., a Boston-based energy industry consulting firm.

The $14.8 billion figure is not a reduction in current energy costs. It represents our potential 10-year savings compared to what the equivalent natural gas would cost regional consumers without Broadwater's one billion cubic feet per day.

Still, it's nothing to sneeze at.

Heck, $14.8 billion is how much we're going to spend to wage war in Iraq between now and, oh, the beginning of autumn, approximately 56 days from today.

It's twice as much as Royal Dutch Shell, one of Broadwater Energy's owners, earns in one quarter of its fiscal year. (The company posted a second-quarter profit this year of $7.56 billion.)

Still, East End consumers don't know how much of that savings we'll see. According to the Levitan report, LIPA ratepayers will save $2.7 billion in natural gas costs between 2010 and 2020 if Broadwater goes online. LIPA CEO Richie Kessel — the one-time consumer advocate who, as an energy executive, has presided over what some irate ratepayers argue is a huge pricing scam on consumers, namely the imposition, without regulatory review, of "fuel surcharges" that equal or exceed energy use charges — says that 20 percent of Broadwater's savings for Long Island consumers is just not enough. As the host community for this behemoth, Long Island should get more, Richie says. Long Island should get more PILOT payments, and more "community benefits" — something of a code word for hush money. "Community benefits" help a company buy the silence, if not the support, of community segments that would otherwise oppose a proposed project. Community benefits often consist of cold, hard cash for schools, towns, community organizations. It's a euphemism for "community bribes," if you ask me.

But you can bet Richie will fight for benefits for LIPA — if not LIPA's ratepayers, whom he seems quite willing to skewer.

I've just read Levitan's 157-page "technical assessment" of Broadwater. It was interesting reading, even holding my attention into the wee hours of Wednesday morning.

As LIPA communications director Bert Cunningham noted, the report is "a compilation" and summary of documents from a variety of sources: FERC's DEIS, Broadwater's "resource reports" and responses to FERC's information requests, the Coast Guard reports, and LNG safety studies. As such, it's a handy little document.

LIPA engaged Levitan to prepare this report in April 2005. Originally, according to LIPA's April 20, 2005, board meeting minutes, LIPA was going to use the Levitan report, which Kessel said he expected to have by September 2005, to form a recommendation on Broadwater for the governor's office. LIPA has since backed off that idea. On Tuesday, Kessel said he didn't know if LIPA was going to make a recommendation one way or the other.

Levitan knows LNG very well; senior members of the firm specialize in consulting to the LNG industry and the firm has a long track record with the industry. Given the firm's background, resources and expertise as an LNG industry consultant, it's hard to understand why it took Levitan almost two years longer than first expected to complete its assessment. But it's not hard to understand why the energy industry consultant would focus on assessing the benefits rather than the costs — costs to the economy, the environment, and the government, which will have to provide expensive security for the operation.

What will the total of all those costs be? We still don't know, but it's no mystery who will foot the bill, is it? Open your checkbook.

I'm wondering what we've already spent just reviewing the Broadwater proposal to date. The preparation of the EIS, government staff time to review applications, documents and submittals, publication of notices, public hearings held, legal fees to firms retained by the county and towns to fight it, all of that. I wonder if anyone anywhere is keeping a tab.

One cost we know for sure: the $850,000 LIPA blew on the Levitan assessment report it was supposed to have two years ago, which LIPA now may or may not use for anything. This makes it a ratepayer-funded PR boondoggle for Broadwater Energy, resulting in headlines about multibillion dollar "savings" that don't factor in costs which may equal or exceed those "savings."

That's an awful lot of fuel surcharge money, isn't it?