Texada Island residents overwhelmingly oppose natural gas plant

"The known risks that come with the tankers and the LNG project are not acceptable to Texada Islanders," said Childress. "We consider Texada an affordable paradise and want to keep it that way. This project is not wanted, not needed and certainly not green."/

Andrew A. Duffy
Times Colonist
Tuesday, December 18, 2007

A community group organized to fight a proposed $2 billion megaproject on Texada Island says residents of the island are overwhelmingly against establishing a liquefied natural gas terminal and electricity generating facility in their backyard.

Texada Action Now claims to have a petition signed by 84 per cent of the island's adult population telling WestPac LNG Corp. to catch a ferry and leave.

But even without the petition, the project has hit a stumbling block.

Premier Gordon Campbell's establishment of a climate action team with a goal of reducing the province's greenhouse gas emissions by 33 per cent by 2020 has forced WestPac to put its project on hold.

The company has pushed back the potential in-service date of the project by as much as 18 months to late 2014.

"We have decided to delay filing a project description which would have triggered the environmental assessment process," said WestPac president Stu Leson, with a nod to Campbell's green initiative.

"We will spend the next eight to 12 months just trying to understand what the new regulations will be and what impact it will have on our project, and then design a project that will fit with what the premier is trying to accomplish."

TAN's goal is to kill the project outright.

"With the petition, we wanted to dispel the fiction that Westpac was putting out that there was support for the proposal on Texada Island. We think it shows Texada Islanders don't want this," said Chuck Childress, chair of the TAN board. He added that getting their message out in front of the heavily technical hearing process was essential.

"We want to get the issue out there well ahead of the process and the premier's green plan and the legislation that's coming," he said.

"But from the perspective of climate change and reducing carbon emissions, it's common sense and logic that tells you that you can't reduce emissions by burning more carbon-based fuels."

Westpac's proposal would see the establishment of a terminal for liquefied natural gas and a 600-megawatt electricity generating facility on Texada. Imported gas would come in compressed, liquefied form in tanker ships to the island on a regular basis.

The gas-fired plant would be the largest independent source of electricity in B.C. and could generate enough electricity to power 450,000 homes.

Leson said he is not surprised there's opposition to the project, but said the company is listening, especially as it's in a hurry-up-and-wait mode until the government releases details of its green plan.

"Some of the residents on the island, at least those willing to listen to all the facts before making a decision, have raised some legitimate concerns like the routing of an electrical transmission line. We understand them and so we are now looking at different routings to minimize the impact on them," he said.

According to Childress, TAN's concerns range from emissions, how the project will change the island's makeup to the potential for disaster with tankers carrying liquefied natural gas through the Strait of Georgia.

"The known risks that come with the tankers and the LNG project are not acceptable to Texada Islanders," said Childress. "We consider Texada an affordable paradise and want to keep it that way. This project is not wanted, not needed and certainly not green."

© Times Colonist (Victoria) 2007