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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