After taking their message across the state last month, the opponents of the planned expansion of a liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant in Calvert County are planning a January rally.
In a letter sent out Wednesday, Dec. 11, Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN) Founder and Director Mike Tidwell announced the organization has chosen Wednesday, Jan. 8—the opening day of the 2014 session of the Maryland General Assembly—as the day for its rally in Annapolis. The organization is protesting a plan to expand Dominion Cove Point LNG Plant in Lusby. The expansion project would give the plant the capability to export LNG. The facility has long had the capability to import natural gas.
The addition of a liquefaction facility is being touted by its proponents as a major boon to the local, state and national economy. The project will cost an estimated $3.8 billion and take three years to complete. The construction phase will temporarily employ hundreds of workers.
“We will all be negatively affected if Dominion builds its massive export facility on the Chesapeake Bay,” Tidwell stated in his missive. “There will be more pressure to frack in Maryland, more pipelines, more polluting compressor stations and more global warming across our region.”
Tidwell indicated the Sierra Club will be presenting oral arguments in its case against Dominion Resources before the Maryland Court of Special Appeals. The Sierra Club is seeking to hold Dominion to a previous agreement not to export natural gas at Cove Point. Earlier this year a Prince George’s County Circuit Court judge granted a declaratory judgment sought by Dominion that the 2005 legal agreement with the Sierra Club did not explicitly prohibit using the Cove Point facility for the exportation of LNG.
“We’ll rally to stop Cove Point at the [Annapolis] courthouse and then march to Lawyer’s Mall where we’ll take action for a moratorium to protect Marylanders from fracking,” Tidwell stated.
“Over the years that Dominion has owned the property [Cove Point LNG Plant], their concerns for ecological preservation have been above and beyond expectations,” stated Maryland Conservation Council President Paulette Hammond, in a statement Dominion highlighted on its web page about the expansion project. “They have gone well beyond the legal requirements of the agreement at the expense of both direct and monetary costs and donation of their employees’ times and efforts.”
