Ann Morrill, with the Kickemuit River Council, supports a bill that would restrict the size of ships, and cargo, passing beneath bridges that span Rhode Island’s waterways.

The Providence Journal / Connie Grosch

PROVIDENCE — Rhode Island’s best weapon in the battle against LNG, opponents say, may be a bridge.

State legislators are considering a proposal that would prohibit liquefied natural gas tankers from traveling under the Mount Hope Bridge by banning any ship with hazardous cargo from passing under any Rhode Island bridge without a 25-foot clearance.

The supertankers ride 130 feet above the waterline. The bridge has a clearance of 135 feet.

The proposal is in response to a plan by Weaver’s Cove Energy that is now before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to build an LNG offloading facility in the Massachusetts portion of Mount Hope Bay.

To get the LNG there, the tankers would have to travel through Rhode Island waters, disrupting boat traffic, and pass under the Pell and Mount Hope Bay bridges, halting traffic.

Rhode Island officials and citizen groups, including Save The Bay, are passionately — and almost universally — opposed to the plan for economic and environmental reasons.

However, the state lost its best chance to directly challenge the project when the Coastal Resources Management Council took too long in considering it.

Now, opponents seem to be taking a cue from Fall River, which stopped an earlier incarnation of the Weaver’s Cove plan — one that called for building the facility in Fall River — by blocking demolition of the old Brightman Street Bridge, which is too narrow and improperly aligned to accommodate the massive tankers.

LNG opponents, at a State House hearing Wednesday evening, made no secret of the Weaver’s Cove proposal being the target of the bill, H7014.

Most of the hearing consisted of witnesses pointing out that the bridge is too important to Aquidneck Island and the rest of the state to risk an accident, especially one that would involve a highly volatile fuel that, if released and ignited, could burn people as far as a mile away.

Weaver’s Cove did not send anyone to testify, but spokesman James A. Grasso noted Thursday that the Coast Guard has already declared that the tankers can pass through Rhode Island waters. “If the Coast Guard approves it, we shouldn’t have a problem.”

David A. Darlington, chairman of the Rhode Island Turnpike and Bridge Authority, said 5 feet of clearance “is a frighteningly small amount of space,” and even minor contact with the structure could cause serious problems.

“The bridge deck is not designed to take impacts from anything,” he said. “It’s designed to sway with the wind, but it’s not designed to take any impact.”

But Capt. Vincent Kirby of the Northeast Marine Pilots Association testified that the 25-foot limit seemed irrational and an extra margin of safety was not necessary.

A clearance of just 1 to 3 feet “is the acceptable minimum vertical clearance for any bridge that I’m aware of, domestically and internationally,” said Kirby, who spent five years as a deck officer on LNG ships and is now responsible for safely piloting large vessels up the Bay.

He cited other problems with the proposal, sponsored by Rep. Douglas W. Gablinske, D-Bristol.

As it is written, Kirby noted, the bill doesn’t define hazardous material, so it could block the shipment of other important cargo.

He said that in 2008, about 180 cargo-ship passages were made under the Mount Hope Bridge and, in the vast majority of those cases, the clearance was significantly less than 25 feet.

He suggested that the law could be challenged on the federal level because it would interfere with interstate commerce.

(Although federal laws trump the state’s, Rhode Island has jurisdiction over local waterway issues, such as dredging, as far as three miles offshore.)

Kirby also questioned earlier testimony of Bristol Town Councilman Halsey C. Herreshoff, a former tanker navigator, who had told the House Committee on Environment and Natural Resources that wave action could make a supertanker pitch more than 5 feet vertically, which could cause a collision.

“A 950-foot ship in protected waters is not likely to pitch to any demonstrable degree whatsoever,” said Kirby.

Gablinske responded by attacking Kirby personally, suggesting that the captain was simply looking to earn more money for piloting more ships.

Kirby tried to respond, but was cut off.

Weaver’s Cove has said in the past that bridge closings during ship passages might be unnecessary, blaming the bridge authority for wanting to stop traffic, as it already does when a liquefied propane gas tanker comes up the Bay.

“I take exception to that,” said Darlington, the authority’s chairman, noting that if traffic were kept flowing, it would be easier for a terrorist to stop at the top of the bridge to drop a weapon onto a ship passing below.

The only other opposition to the Gablinske bill came from Gregory A. Mancini, executive director of BuildRI, who said the LNG terminal would create a lot of jobs for a group with an unemployment rate of around 40 percent.

“You couldn’t be more wrong,” said Rep. Raymond Gallison, D-Bristol, another staunch opponent of the project, who said the jobs would be “a one-shot wonder, if anything.”

Any jobs created would be offset by the harm to the economy caused by the disruption from the LNG tankers, he said. “This is not the project you should be advocating for.”

“Every [construction] job is temporary,” Mancini responded.

“Is it jobs at any cost?” Gablinske asked.

“Of course not,” said Mancini, expressing confidence in the federal energy commission’s ability to assess the project’s safety. “If the federal government permitted it, I would support it.”

KEY POINTSThe LNG Proposal

Location: In Massachusetts waters in Mount Hope Bay

Cost: $700 million to be spent by Weaver’s Cove Energy, a subsidiary of Hess LNG

Purpose: Bring more liquefied natural gas to the region via LNG supertankers

Tanker trips per year: 70

Effect on R.I. boaters: An area two miles ahead of and one mile behind each tanker, and around the offloading platform, would be restricted

Effect on R.I. motorists: The Pell Bridge and Mount Hope Bay Bridge would be shut down as each loaded LNG tanker approached and passed beneath.

Environmental impact: Save The Bay warns that the dredging required would destroy fish habitat; Hess says the disruption would not be significant.

Status: Federal hearings are expected to begin in February.

gemery@projo.com