Ft. Worth Weekly
I’m kayaking the bay that separates Port Isabel and South Padre Island when a large dorsal fin breaks the water. Another fin surfaces, and several more. My heart skips a few beats. And it looks like I’m surrounded … by one of the Lone Star State’s most lovable economic resources, a tribe of bottle-nose dolphins that inhabit Dolphin Cove, a rocky and deep sanctuary that slopes to the Port of Brownsville’s 45-foot-deep cargo-ship channel. Hundreds of sightseers visit this cove each summer day, hoping to get a glimpse of these animals that live at the southernmost tip of Texas’ most-visited beach.
The dolphins seem happy and ready to play. Anglers wade a few yards away on a sandy shelf that quickly drops off to become the cove’s edge. One fisherman hooks a fighter as I paddle past him.There aren’t many places in the world where people can be surrounded by archaic wildlife and habitat as they are on this beach that helps etch the United States’ southwestern boundary. There are even fewer such places juxtaposed with notable restaurants, bars, nightclubs, and hotel and condominium rentals like those of South Padre Island.
The combination of natural attractions and first-world amenities has been a lucrative one on this island, which leads the state in per capita revenues generated by regular tourism, nature tourism, sport-fishing, and hotel-motel taxes. These revenues are hugely important to the economic zone that the island is a part of, a region that routinely posts the nation’s highest poverty rate.
Precisely because this area is poor, corporations that want to ship liquefied natural gas from the port of Brownsville — the Valley’s largest city and the nation’s poorest of its size — have found eager audiences for their sales pitch about the jobs and prosperity that their industry could bring. Government agencies and quasi-public corporations have already spent millions, and plan to spend upward of a billion dollars, to create infrastructure here for LNG development, including a power plant, a pipeline, a deepened ship channel, and highway spurs.
But those job-creation claims appear to be overblown, and while the LNG locomotive is picking up steam, authorities and industry spokespeople are sidestepping the question of damage to the environment and to the existing tourism economy that could far outlast any jobs that will be created.
If the public entities involved were to take the money they are spending to underwrite LNG export development and simply give it to the 1,000 or so employees who might end up with semi-permanent jobs, those workers would be millionaires.
To help sell America’s natural gas reserves to China and other countries, the U.S. House passed a legislative package this summer that is now awaiting consideration by the Senate.
As with, it seems, every other highly lucrative but potentially polluting and dangerous development in the petroleum industry, Texas is poised to play a major role in the LNG export business, with more coastal sites being groomed for LNG shipment than in any other state. Four of those are planned for Brownsville, with federal permits already granted, pending environmental review.
(To read the rest of the article, click on link below)
http://www.fwweekly.com/2014/09/10/the-other-end-of-the-pipeline/
REMINDER: saveRGVfromLNG general meeting this Monday evening, Sept 15, 6:30 pm at Galeria 409 Art Gallery. 409 E 13th Street, Brownsville.
11 comments:
Remember when the Japanese were buying all/most of our scrap iron in the 1920's, well, we got it back December 7, 1941.
Lets get brownsville going with the New Economy. When was the last time a dolphin, a butterfly or wrote you a paycheck? Get with the program.
Too sad for words.
When was the last time this journalist from Ft. Worth provided a thousand jove for the most impoverished area in the United States?
Glib remark but those dolphin, butterflies and birds actually write many paychecks every day. They bring in over $100,000,000 to the Valley every year. For example, check out how many dolphin-watch boats are out there. Count up the number of riders each trip and add the total. Now figure that each one of those people is going to eat at least one meal on the Island or Port Isabel (waiters, cooks and busboys), probably buy a souvenir(stockers, cashiers, sales people), maybe go to the sea turtle rescue and do a few other things. Many of them will rent a hotel. They may not be coming specifically to see dolphins or birds or butterflies but these things are part of the whole package and are part of what brings people to SPI instead of North Padre or Galveston. I think it is a safe bet that those dolphins, butterflies and birds write more paychecks and employee more people than an LNG storage center ever will. That gas can be stored anywhere but what we offer in terms of nature can be found only here. It is easy to figure what is in our long term interests.
Very well said to the person that wrote against the uninformed piece of garbage that stated, "When was the last time a dolphin, a butterfly or wrote you a paycheck?" This is one of the reasons why people laugh at Valley residents. People do not use their thinking skills. By the way, dolphins, butterflies and other Valley native animals provide a much better economy to the Valley then those that are in high positions responsible to make the valley a productive, economical environment. Most importantly, dolphins, butterflies and other Valley animals do not steal from the profits they acquire for the Valley.
its going to happen and is already happening, they just transport all natuarl gas offshore to a barge and convert to LNG. See Golar Inc. Its not going to stop, this way people get a good career,job and the Valley prospers.
How are those windmills and solar panels working out for you ?
LNG exports are not going to hurt the environment. Just provide alot of high paying contruction jobs for the four or five years it takes to weld those big tanks together. Perhaps up to a $10 billion investment. Not to mention alot of money for our seaport. What's your beef? The dolphins will be just fine. They like chasing ships in and out of the ship channel.
In fact, the dolphins may not be just fine. As far as I can tell, the sites selected for these facilities are on or adjacent to existing wetlands. These wetlands serve as breeding areas for many marine species and, omitting the details, that leads right up the food chain to dolphins, birds and even people. As it is now, there are recommendations that consumption of some fish, like kingfish (king mackerel) be restricted due to the toxins, such as mercury, in their flesh. These toxins didn't come from inland sources. They came form coastal sites. Dolphin eat kingfish and so do people. Dolphin don't know about the restrictions on consumption. In addition to the direct damage caused by construction on a sensitive site anything that makes it's way into the water has landed in a pretty good distribution system as the tides and currents move it through the enviornment.
As to the question regarding how wind turbines and solar panels are working out for me --- I suppose they are working okay -- clearly this was supposed to be some kind of jab but it was wasted because I don't get it.
"Perhaps $10 billion invested". Invested where? Most of that will go to out of the area pipeline companies and construction companies and to pay landowners who have the pipelines forced through their properties. Tell me, what portion of that money comes to the Valley? I bet that averaged over the years nature brings more money to the Valley then LNG will.
There is a way nature and industrial development can co-exist but we have to stop putting these things in environmentally sensitive places. We can not keep chipping away at our environment without eventually hitting a tipping point where it will be too late. This is a dangerously short-sighted view.
Most people would not believe the notion offered that the dolphins et al bring the valley, ahem, $100,000,000 to the RGV. Are you kidding with this figure!!! This seems plain wrong. Where did you get this figure. Can you back this up? Dont think so. On the other hand Natural Gas can probably provide this revenue.
Dolphins, butterflies and fish are pretty, but they don't write pay checks. Natural Gas does. Accept it.
Smells kinda fishy here did our local congressman have a hand in this govt new law? Just asking? Kinda hard to cose a side the dolphins or the jobs.
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