WANTED: IDENTIFICATION OF LNG ROGUE GALLERY

“This is a Private Meeting.”

IMG_4575I’m driving to the restaurant about 9 Wednesday morning when I spot a dozen anti-LNG protesters waving their signs around the Tourist Info/SCDC office in downtown Coos Bay. Now it comes back to me: I had received a notification of some kind of LNG-promotional event today, so I stop and roll my window down. Jody McCaffree and her comrades-in-arms walk up to ask if I’m attending the meeting.
“I think I will. I believe I got an invitation. But I’ll go get my camera.”
And so I do. Walking into our $1.5 million mausoleum to tourism that faces the wrong way, I ask where the meeting is. “Back through that door,” says the senior citizen volunteer. At least he’s friendly. Not long ago a couple of customers told me that one of the elderly female volunteers had told them the Blue Heron was a terrible place to eat, and the owner a genuine ogre. “Don’t go there,” was the message of the Tourist Information Center. But when I confronted Timm Slater, the Chamber manager, he was utterly unable to help. Nobody had done it.
So I walk into the meeting room, which holds about twenty people. I don’t recognize most of them, but Timm Slater is there, and to my left the woman who stars in the leggy music video for Coos Bay progress that I watched the other day. Except for the legs and something about coal export and LNG, I couldn’t make out much of it. She stares at me as if she’s feeling molested. I start taking notes. The speaker at the head of the table, who looks about 30, asks me who I am.
“I’m Wim de Vriend, from the Blue Heron restaurant just down the street. And you are?”
“Welcome,” he says, I’m Ray Bucheger,” and hands me his card. He is from an entity called BoostSouthwestOregon.org, whose motto is: “Self-Reliance through Clean Energy Exports.” And then he continues his presentation. The company is serious about the LNG facility, since it has already spent over $130 million on the project. I don’t doubt it; they’ve been at it since 2005, but you gotta spend money to make money. He explains that the LNG plan consists of three projects: the export facility itself, the power plant, and the 234-mile pipeline, built by eminent domain. But the pipeline will also bring natural gas to people in Jackson and Josephine counties. I thought they already had it and besides, the $51 million 1-foot pipeline that already runs to Coos Bay has not even made natural gas available to ten percent of those who voted for it. Then a fellow on my right speaks up:
IMG_4570“What are you doing here?”
“I got an invitation for this meeting.”
“You didn’t get an invitation.”
“Really? I seem to remember getting one, from the Chamber of Commerce. I’m a Chamber member. Besides, you’re meeting in a public building.”
“You must have got one for the noon meeting,” another fellow helpfully interjects.
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, this is a private meeting, and you will have to leave,” the first one decides.
“OK, what happens if I go home, check my email and find out I did get an invitation?”
“Then you can come back.”
“That’s not very helpful. What are you guys afraid of? You’re too easily intimidated.”
“We’re not intimidated, but you will have to leave.”
“OK.” I grab my notes and my camera, quickly shoot a couple of pictures of the assembly and walk out. Outside, Jody’s group has dwindled to a half dozen. I can see how secret meetings are not good catalysts for public protests. Their invisible nature makes it hard for the public to put it all together.
“I got kicked out,” I tell them. “They’ve got stuff to hide. Just like FONSI and SCDC and the Port with their confidential agreements.”
Jonathan asks how I like his sign. It’s a police tape: CRIME SCENE. DO NOT ENTER. Haha, that’s a good one.
“You know,” I observe, “in all this protesting, has anybody ever talked to the fishermen in Charleston? Whenever an LNG ship is moving through the bay, the Coast Guard will prohibit all other vessel traffic. It’s called a safety zone.”
“Yes, and they won’t give any notice,” someone adds.
“Right, so tourists coming to Coos Bay for a day’s fishing will be told to forget it, with no notice. And what about the commercial fisherman who wants to head out for a 3-day salmon season or a 1-day halibut season? The Port is already complaining that moorage revenues in Charleston are down. Do they think this will improve that?”
Back home I check my email. I did get an invitation, but it’s for a presentation by the same guy at a noon meeting of the Chamber. Then I check the pictures. The ones at the meeting are not too sharp, but sharp enough to show one of the assembled progress boosters giving me the finger.
Open invitation to all readers: Help identify the rogues.

[click on images to enlarge]