If you were wondering how much more dead the dead Broadwater liquefied natural gas plant that was proposed for the middle of Long Island Sound back in 2004 could get, the answer is, it could get really, really dead.

Today it was announced that Broadwater Pipeline LLC had requested to withdraw from its Federal Energy Regulatory Commission certificates, which were granted in 2008. In 2009, the U.S. Commerce Department ruled against the project, effectively killing it.

A joint effort of Royal Dutch Shell and TransCanada, it would have put a huge LNG facility just inside the New York side of the Sound along with a nearly 22-mile-long underwater pipeline. Groups in both states, with then Attorney General Richard Blumenthal leading the legal effort, fought it for years, arguing it was dangerous and detrimental to the environment.

“Total withdrawal of Broadwater may seem anticlimactic, but to me, this is a powerful reminder of all we accomplished by working together on both sides of the Sound to protect this treasured resource we share,” said Rep. Lonnie Reed, D-Branford, in a prepared statement. Arguably Reed’s public career was ignited by her anti-Broadwater activism.

So for Broadwater, to paraphrase the immortal words of the munchkin coroner in “The Wizard of Oz”: It’s not only merely dead, it’s really most sincerely dead.

Avatar photo

Jan Ellen SpiegelEnergy & Environment Reporter

janellenspiegel@comcast.net

Jan Ellen is CT Mirror's regular freelance Environment and Energy Reporter. As a freelance reporter, her stories have also appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Yale Climate Connections, and elsewhere. She is a former editor at The Hartford Courant, where she handled national politics including coverage of the controversial 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. She was an editor at the Gazette in Colorado Springs and spent more than 20 years as a TV and radio producer at CBS News and CNN in New York and in the Boston broadcast market. In 2013 she was the recipient of a Knight Journalism Fellowship at MIT on energy and climate. She graduated from the University of Michigan and attended Boston University’s graduate film program.

Leave a comment