Saturday, October 21, 2017

Revisiting the Cameron County Commissioners' Foolish Decision to Give $400 Million Tax Abatement to LNG Plant

Explosion at LNG Plant in Algeria Killing 26
There's a reason no LNG plant is located at Waikiki Beach near Honolulu or among the Douglas Fir along Puget Sound in Western Washington. 

Why would leaders in either area be so short-sighted as to risk irreparable harm to their priceless environment, destroying it for their children and children's children?


Your County Commissioners, Sofia Benavides, Alex Dominguez, David Garza and Gus Ruiz are just that short-sighted, not just in approving a hideous LNG plant near the Port of Brownsville, but in gifting the ultra-rich corporation nearly $400 million in tax abatements.(One might excuse Mrs. Benavides as she's pretty much clueless, but she ran for the office, thus bears responsibility. County Judge Eddie Trevino voted against the abatement.)  That's like paying someone a huge sum to destroy your home.

"But doesn't NG stand for natural gas, a clean burning fuel?" some confused residents ask.


Yes, but that's not what an LNG plant does, burn natural gas.  It compresses natural gas to 1/600th of its original volume, a messy, dirty, complicated, heavily polluting process.

At the Port of Brownsville, the proposed LNG facility would dump millions of gallons of heated effluent each day into one of the healthiest shallow-water bays in the world. The plants’ 500-foot flaring towers—which release mercury, hydrogen sulfide, helium, carbon dioxide, hydrocarbons and other impurities from the natural gas—would burn a couple of miles downwind from the state’s most popular beach.
Local environmental groups estimate that air pollution will quadruple in the Brownsville-South Padre Island metroplex, a 10-mile stretch of coastline, residential neighborhoods and small businesses that may soon sit under the brown-cloud haze of pollution already familiar to residents of industrialized regions like Corpus Christi, Galveston and Houston. 

The purification and refrigeration process for LNG is so energy-intensive that the amount of greenhouse gas emissions for this region would be staggering.

Now, imagine three huge LNG plants, the number currently applying, along Padre Island Highway from the Port of Brownsville to near Port Isabel.  Think ahead to about 2030, when the current shrinking demand for natural gas worldwide drops below profitability.

Cameron County will be stuck with 500 foot tall piles of hazardous waste and chemical cleanup.  Who will pay to remove the dangerous eyesore?

4 comments:

  1. Wake up sleepy heads. Brownsville is burning.

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  2. Dont forget to blame the port of Brownsville commissioners because it was they who opened the gates to this polluting industries at a time when the tax-supported port is running a profit and is in no critical need for rent money. At this point, Brownsville has no more say so about LNG coming here. They already paid the rent for 20 years, in advance, something the port is very proud of, like a cat offering a putrid mouse carcass. We're basically fucked. I guess the feds probably weren't too impressed with the multitudes of brown people rallying on Elizabeth street day in and day out to protest the LNG vomiting of toxic shit all over our fishing waters and polluting our gulf breezes. We sold us out. Our state reps, La Rana Oliveira and Eddie the Turd and his progenitor, our slimy GOP ass licker supreme, state senator Eddie "Fuck U" Lucio, fuck everyone except County Judge Eddie "The Shrew" Treviรฑo, who for some strange reason, kept a promise and voted against LNG tax breaks. Something is out of whack. It just don't sound right to say that Eddie Treviรฑo done the right thing for no reason at all.

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  3. F_ck'em all crooked politicians! You know who you are dirty crooks. You all can go to hell with your LNG BS!

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  4. Pay them back at the ballot box. Carlos Masso seems to be the most politically ambitious of the lot. Don't vote for him and tell him why. Others will be coming up for re-election. Do to them what they did to you. Also, watch their political contributions. Who gets money from LNG. It will probably be washed so keep a careful eye out. They are going to try to hide their payoffs.

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