Weaver's Cove Energy says it will supply its LNG terminal proposed for Fall River with smaller vessels that it says can pass through the Brightman Street Bridge.

01:00 AM EST on Saturday, February 11, 2006

BY C. EUGENE EMERY JR.
Journal Staff Writer

FALL RIVER -- For months, opponents of the liquefied-natural-gas terminal proposed for this city had thought they had killed the project by passing a federal law that preserved the Brightman Street Bridge, the sometimes-cranky drawbridge that connects Fall River and Somerset via Route 6. It is too small to accommodate LNG supertankers.

But now the developers of the controversial LNG facility say they have found a way to make the project viable again: use smaller tankers.

Officials of Weaver's Cove Energy have told the Coast Guard and the Army Corps of Engineers they now plan to transport LNG up Narragansett Bay and the Taunton River on far smaller vessels, a move that would more than double the number of tanker visits.

Critics said the revised plan would not resolve the dangers posed by a potential terrorist attack on the highly flammable fuel and would, in some cases, make the cost and inconvenience worse.

"It's a tremendous escalation of security costs, as if it wasn't going to be expensive enough," Fall River Mayor Edward M. Lambert Jr. said. With 120 projected unloadings instead of 50, "you're increasing that almost 2 1/2 times."

In addition, the new plan would lead to a comparable increase in the number of times that the five bridges along the pathway -- the Pell and Mount Hope bridges in Rhode Island, and the Braga, Brightman and a new Brightman Street Bridge now under construction -- might have to be closed for safety reasons.

Whether the devastation caused by an accident would be less if there were an accident involving the new tankers -- which would carry 55,000 cubic meters of LNG instead of 145,000 -- could not be learned yesterday.

But Lambert said the new plan was such a radical departure from the Weaver's Cove proposal approved last year by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that he would ask the agency to scrap its authorization and make Weaver's Cove apply for a new one.

"This is clearly a different project," he said. "We think they are going to be required to do this process over."

While smaller tankers may sound safer than their 145-foot-wide big brothers, the new plan raises other issues.

Lambert argued yesterday that the existing Brightman Street Bridge was too narrow to accommodate even the smaller tankers, which are 82 feet wide or 16 feet narrower than the opening of the bridge.

"They're leaving eight feet on either side," the mayor said. Because LNG tankers ride high in the water, they are more susceptible to being sent off course by winds and tide. Thus, "eight feet on either side is ridiculous to contemplate," Lambert said.

He said opponents would seek new state bridge regulations to tighten clearance requirements for ships.

Lambert said he had doubts about the seriousness of Weaver's Cove's new proposal, which calls for using larger supertankers if the old Brightman Street span ever comes down.

"This may be a way to keep their shareholders investing in this project until they come up with an alternative" for the bridge, Lambert said. But if they're serious, this "requires them to go back to the drawing board."

The company has insisted in the past that it would be too costly to ship the LNG using smaller tankers.

Weaver's Cove's new plan would still require extensive dredging, prohibit tankers from coming up the river if the winds were too strong, and require the ships to make an unusual maneuver because the openings of the two Brightman Street bridges, which are 1,100 feet apart, would not be properly aligned.

gemery@projo.com / (401) 277-7442