News release from Barney Frank
_________________________________________________________
Congressman, 4th District, Massachusetts
2252 Rayburn Building · Washington, D.C. 20515 · (202) 225-5931
FRANK SETS THE RECORD STRAIGHT ON TAUNTON RIVER LEGISLATION
July 10, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE
RELEASE CONTACT: Peter Kovar (202-225-9400)
Congressman
Barney Frank today sharply criticized the wildly inaccurate arguments
brought forward by Republican Members of Congress for the purpose of
blocking legislation (H.R. 415) he introduced to protect the Taunton River
in Massachusetts. The bill is scheduled for a vote in the House of
Representatives next week.
“The Central
issue here is whether people living in urban areas should be eligible for
the benefits provided by environmental protection legislation,” Frank said.
“I believe they should be, and blocking the bill will deny them that
opportunity.”
“The
proposal to include the Taunton River in the national Wild and Scenic River
system primarily affects communities that Congressman Jim McGovern and I
represent, and it also has an impact on some communities in three other
districts,” Frank added. “All five of us who represent these cities and
towns strongly support the bill. Regrettably, out of a desire to score
partisan political points, the House Republican leadership has released a
number of blatant misrepresentations in an attempt to defeat the bill, and
somehow claim that they are helping to address our nation’s energy
problems. The truth is that the bill has nothing to do with energy prices.”
Frank noted
the following points, all of which refute claims by Republicans about the
Taunton River bill, including its relationship to the proposal to establish
a Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) facility on the river in the city of Fall
River.
Local Residents and
Communities.
The governments of all the
affected communities on both sides of the river strongly support this bill,
and it is also overwhelmingly supported by the residents of the area. The
attacks on the wild and scenic designation suggest that environmental
protection and natural resource conservation are reserved for suburbanites
and wealthier people, and are somehow inappropriate for an urban area. The
people who would benefit from this legislation are primarily people who work
daily for a living and reside in a fairly dense urban area. This makes it
all the more important that they have the benefit that would come from this
designation.
History of the bill.
The process that has led
to this bill began in 1999, when the late Congressman Joe Moakley, at the
request of local residents, introduced legislation to study designating the
Northern part of the Taunton River as Wild and Scenic. After the bill
passed in 2000, the Interior Department recommended including the entire
river in the study. When that idea was also backed by the affected local
communities, Frank supported it. Subsequently, the study recommended
including the entire river in the Wild and Scenic system, and Frank filed
legislation to do that. Thus, the process of designating the river began
well before the proposal to establish an LNG plant in Fall River (which
first became public in 2002), and it is flatly inaccurate to claim that the
bill was drafted expressly to prevent the LNG proposal from going forward.
Status of the LNG
Facility.
The proposal to establish
an LNG plant in the area began several years after the initiation of the
wild and scenic designation. When Frank first learned of the proposal, he
noted – as he did when the idea for expanding the wild and scenic study area
was first broached – that his support would depend on the reaction of the
affected communities. When the communities argued against the LNG facility
on safety grounds, because it would be too near a residential area in Fall
River and because the LNG transport vessels wouldn’t be able to navigate the
river safely, he joined with them in opposing the plant. While designating
the river as wild and scenic would likely be incompatible with the LNG
plant, that is simply a further sign of the inappropriateness of the site
selected for the LNG plant. In fact, the LNG plant has already been
rejected twice by the Coast Guard on safety grounds and also by the Commerce
Department for environmental reasons. Of course, these are agencies of a
Republican Administration. Further rejections by federal and state agencies
are likely if the company persists in its efforts to establish the LNG
facility. The proposal is also opposed by former Bush Administration
national security official Richard Clarke on safety grounds, and was
opposed, when he was Massachusetts Governor, by Republican Mitt Romney.
Condition of the
River.
Under the bill, the wild
and scenic designation has various segments, and the portion of the river
where the LNG plant has been proposed would be designated as “recreational,”
a status totally in keeping with the current uses of that section of the
river, which includes a State Heritage Park featuring among other
attractions the World War II era battleship U.S.S. Massachusetts. The bill
would designate another segment of the river as recreational, with the rest
“scenic”; none of it would be designated as “wild”. Frank has supported a
proposal – predating the LNG proposal -- backed by the current and previous
Fall River mayors to open up part of the lower portion of the river for
recreational and tourism purposes. This project, currently in the planning
stages, would involve the construction of a hotel, marina, river walk and
related facilities, a concept that would fit in well with the recreational
designation.
Energy Supplies in
New England.
Frank and other supporters
of the bill are doing their part by supporting other efforts to bring needed
energy supplies to New England. For example, Frank and several of his
Massachusetts Congressional colleagues supported the establishment of the
ocean-based LNG site now up and running off of Massachusetts’ North Shore.
This offshore LNG site (which is far from populated areas) has the capacity
to receive 400 million cubic feet of LNG. The new facility took an initial
delivery of 1 billion cubic feet of natural gas in March, but has received
no additional LNG deliveries since then because of low demand.
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