“As the author of a recent book called “The JOB Messiahs,” which covers forty years of failed development efforts in Coos Bay, I know quite a bit about that subject. I am in favor of healthy growth for this area, where I’ve lived since 1971. I’m also a restaurant owner who stands to gain from the construction of the Jordan Cove LNG terminal, which would bring many well-paid workers to town – for a little while. But I’m opposed to it, since it will be the capstone of the local “economic development” crowd’s destructive record. Thanks to their industrial obsession, this remote place has become a mini-Detroit, the only part of thriving western Oregon mired in a permanent depression since 1980. They tell us the Jordan Cove project will reverse that. It will do no such thing.

First, I should remind you that back in 2005, Jordan Cove proposed to build an LNG import plant in Coos Bay, not an export plant. From a national point of view that plant was justifiable, since a shortage of natural gas was being predicted. Since then the fracking revolution has turned shortage into surplus, but Jordan Cove seems to think that it should now be entitled to build an export plant. All LNG plants, import or export, pose the same local risks and inconveniences, and the jobs they create are few or, in the case of Coos Bay, likely negative. But this time our national interest will not benefit, either. Jordan Cove is a Canadian company, and the gas shipped from Coos Bay will be 70% Canadian. This wipes out the balance of trade argument. Why doesn’t the company export gas from British Columbia? Going through Coos Bay seems like a terribly round-about way to do business. But then, that was true of the 2005 import plan too. It was to bring natural gas to California, a state that had blocked all LNG plants. In 2005 as well as today, Jordan Cove chose Coos Bay because nobody else wanted it. You may also be aware that important American industries oppose LNG exports because they need the gas to produce chemicals, fertilizer and steel. Cheap gas has induced such industries to repatriate jobs from overseas. The few dozen jobs that Jordan Cove promises to create can’t make up the industrial jobs lost elsewhere; and that’s without even considering the local jobs lost due to 200 harbor closures a year, the pipeline construction by eminent domain, and the fear factor. Promises that the presence of natural gas will attract other industries here are nonsense; we’ve had it for over ten years, and it has done nothing.

The area where the LNG plant is to be built, Coos Bay’s North Spit, is a former sand shoal that became beaches and dunes. The northwestern summer winds will carry airborne hazards from the Spit to the county’s twin population centers, the cities of North Bend and Coos Bay. The low-lying Spit is also extremely vulnerable to the major earthquake which has a 37% chance of hitting Coos Bay during the next 50 years, along with a huge tsunami. Earthquakes of .9 or larger have hit this coast at average intervals of 240 years, and the last one occurred in 1700. The damage will be comparable to what occurred in Japan two years ago or even worse, because the Japanese were better prepared. Even so, they had not counted on a tsunami big enough to wipe out the power to their nuclear plants. Officials of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plants had dismissed such concerns because they had a 19 ft seawall. During the 2011 tsunami, waves 43 to 49 ft tall destroyed the power plant for the reactors’ cooling systems, resulting in a meltdown. (In some parts of the Japanese coast the waves reached 133 feet.) Jordan Cove has proposed to build its power plant on a 30-foot mound constructed of dredge spoils, which may well be liquefied by the quake.

Like a nuclear plant, an LNG plant needs power. Without power, and having already been lowered or raised or tilted by the earthquake, Jordan Cove’s terminal is at risk of losing massive amounts of LNG. Exposed to the atmosphere and to the water in the bay, this liquid will quickly turn into gas, and become a moving fireball which within 30 seconds can cause second-degree burns on exposed human skin a mile away. The city of North Bend is less than half a mile away. Emergency services will be completely inadequate.

During the last forty years our “economic leaders” have favored and subsidized the following big plans for the North Spit: a garbage-burning plant, a major fish-processing complex, a coal export terminal (1980), a sea-floor mining project, a fabricator of oil field equipment, a nickel smelter, a chromium smelter, a pulp mill, a steel mill, Jordan Cove’s LNG import plant, a container import facility, and yet another coal export terminal in 2011. None of these became reality. Most were promoters’ scams or frivolous proposals, in which a large corporation used Coos Bay as a bargaining chip to obtain subsidies elsewhere. But those never-ending headlines about new industries had their effects: they deterred new residents. Instead such people settled in other coastal towns north and south of us, all of which have seen substantial growth, with property values 25% higher than those in Coos Bay. Even while not yet built, the LNG export plant continues those trends; if it’s built they will turn worse. Sulfur vapors creeping into people’s homes 24/7 have the same effect on their happiness as do the fears generated by LNG. Most important, history has proved that our “economic leaders” do not represent us. Their 1990 pulp mill proposal generated such a storm that the voters abolished two of the Port Commissioners’ offices in May of that year, and that November they passed an initiative that blocked the mill entirely. And just last month, the local Democratic Party’s Central Committee refused to consider a union-backed endorsement of Jordan Cove. They also refused to reconsider a resolution they passed several years ago, opposing its LNG import plant.”