Environmentalist Sam Duncombe lashed out on Monday at remarks made by Trade and Industry Minister Leslie Miller, who said recently that she was getting attention in her campaign against proposed liquefied natural gas terminals because of the colour of her skin.
ﾠ Minister of Trade and Industry Leslie Miller
ﾠ Minister Miller made his remarks while a guest on the Love 97 programme “Jones and Company” on Sunday.
He said that a black Bahamian would not have been able to get such attention on an issue like LNG.
Mrs. Duncombe, spokesperson for reEarth, said the Minister was skirting the real issue in choosing to play the race card and she called his statement “sad”.
“The minister chooses to bring in the race card, [but] he should engage his brain before he opens his mouth,” she said.
“What kind of ridiculous statement is that to make about the colour of my skin? This issue doesn’t have anything to do with the colour of anyone’s skin; this has to do with the government approving a project that can endanger lives and the livelihood of Bahamian societies.”
She said reEarth has gotten many more signatures on its anti-LNG petition as a direct result of the Minister’s remarks.
She claimed that 1,500 persons have already signed the petition and the group intends to take its cause to the streets.
Mrs. Duncombe also called on the government to grant the public access to all the documents used during the LNG negotiations so that persons could get a better understanding of what the project entails.
“We have to open all the documentations to the public, which means the report from the Environmental Impact Assessment, the documentation that was negotiated between the government and AES, access to the environmental management plan and the guidelines that would govern the facility should be accessible to the public,” she said.
Mrs. Duncombe also raised concerns over the town meeting which was scheduled to be held on Tuesday night, but has been postponed until Thursday.
Minister Miller explained that LNG consultants would not be in town on Tuesday.
The two-hour town meeting is expected to be the last chance for Bahamians to discuss their concerns over the LNG projects, but Mrs. Duncombe said two hours is not enough time to discuss such an important issue.
“They are calling this meeting so our concerns could be addressed. There is no way any meeting of that sort can address all of my concerns because we have never been allowed to see all the EIA. We’ve never been allowed to see their environmental management plan. We don’t know what the guidelines are to govern the facility,” she pointed out.
“Quite frankly a two-hour meeting is not going to calm me down or make me feel any better about it. They have lost all creditability with this issue because we did not have access to the documents. You can not tell me that 20 days is enough to look over a 2,000 page document.”
According to Mrs. Duncombe, reEarth supporters have refused to accept the reasons why the energy companies want to build LNG terminals in The Bahamas.
“Both AES and Tractebel told me that the reason why they were doing the project here was because there was no land available in Florida to do this project and because they had no deep-water ports,” she claimed.
But she said her research has shown that there is in fact available land in Florida for the projects to be located.
“I went on the Internet over the weekend looking at maps of the Florida Keys and there is a number of keys in Florida that can accommodate those facilities. Yes drenching and lying of pipeline would be necessary, but it would be overall close to the United States, which will be the recipient of the gas, so I don’t want to hear that song anymore,” Mrs. Duncombe said sternly.
Mrs. Duncombe said because The Bahamas does not have regulations and laws in place to government LNG plants, companies can take advantage of that.
Re-earth supporters maintain that LNG is harmful especially if an explosion took place, but Minister Miller said the experts have already determined that the AES project would be safe and that LNG cannot explode.
He said in the 40-year history of LNG plants in the United States, there has not been one single loss of life associated with the projects.
“You hear these things about the explosion of an LNG tanker. What they don’t tell you is that an LNG tanker is storing its gas at minus 260 degrees. It is ice. If you hit a tank, the ice would come out. During the Iran-Iraq war, for example, two scud missiles went into two of their LNG tanks. Nothing happened,” the Minister said while on the Love 97 programme.
“How does ice explode? It isn’t practical. It is impossible, but it is what they feed the Bahamian people. And I’m sorry to say, but I must say it is just a pack of lies for their own self interest.”
But Mrs. Duncombe believes that he needs to point out that an explosion in Algeria in 2004 killed 23 people.
She also pointed to other accidents around the world.
“Who is going to monitor all of this? Bimini is the fishing capital and now we are going to invite an industry that is going to be laying a gas pipeline through the ocean where we have hundreds of boaters coming through and fishing going on and you’re telling me there is not going to be an effect? I don’t buy it.”
But Minister Miller said while on “Jones and Company” that anti-LNG lobbyists are spreading misinformation.
The BEST team led by Dr. Donald Cooper has already determined that the AES project would not be harmful and Minister Miller has said repeatedly that the government will make its decision based on facts and not emotions.
By: Bianca Symonette, The Bahama Journal
