Floor Speech: Rep. Gutierrez: Gasoducto pipeline saved by Army Corps of Engineers?
Jul 11, 2012
REP. LUIS V. GUTIERREZ
REMARKS, JULY 11, 2012
Mr. Speaker:
We’ve all seen bad horror movies. The ones where every time you think it’s safe to relax and take a deep breath – the monster is right behind the door!
You know the drill. No matter how hard the teenagers in the basement, or the swimmers at the lake, or the hikers in the woods try to get away – the creature just -- can’t -- be -- stopped.
Well, the people of Puerto Rico are stuck in their very own horror movie. One that just won’t end. And one with a villain that just won’t go away.
Except the villain isn’t a guy wearing a hockey mask or carrying a chainsaw.
The villain is a bunch of government insiders.
And the horror story is about their desire to build a huge gas pipeline. It’s a pipeline that the people don’t want, that experts have said Puerto Rico doesn’t need and that environmentalists have testified will destroy the natural beauty of thousands of acres on the island.
And this might be the scariest part – it’s a pipeline that Puerto Rico doesn’t even have enough natural gas to operate.
The name of the pipeline is gasoducto.
And the horror story started in 2010. About all that has been missing from the script is bad music and vampires.
The story has featured the Puerto Rican people’s tax dollars – as much as 100 million of them -- paid to consultants and lobbyists hired by the government, including close friends and allies of the governor and his ruling party.
It’s featured the government hiring a consulting team of former high-ranking Army Corps of Engineers employees based in Florida. The consultants magically convinced the Army Corps to take review of the project away from the local, San Juan, Puerto Rico office. Where did they move it? Surprise – to Florida, right down the road from the consultants.
It has featured ever-increasing cost estimates of the project, ballooning to nearly one billion dollars.
It has featured huge protests and marches by the Puerto Rican people against the pipeline, and public opinion polls showing three-quarters of Puerto Ricans strongly opposed to the project.
It featured power supply experts who studied the government plan and noticed one important flaw. Just as Casa Pueblo, countless technical experts, environmentalists and scientists and I had insisted to the Army Corps all along, the only current source of natural gas supply available for this project in Puerto Rico was too small for the pipeline to even work.
And – finally (cue the scary music) – it even featured – after tens of millions spent – the governor appointing his own commission to make recommendations about how Puerto Rico can make better use of natural gas to meet its energy needs.
The commission, appointed by the very governor who dreamt up the Gasoducto plan -- made three recommendations. None of them included Gasoducto. Not one.
Actually, they discarded it and called it "unviable."
Finally, the people of Puerto Rico thought, the monster must be dead. Finally, we can stop sending tax dollars to connected government insiders, we can stop worrying about our environment, we can stop wondering where in the world the natural gas for a billion dollar pipeline will actually come from.
But that’s not how horror movies work.
Last week, the governor was quoted in the press as saying Gasoducto is still alive. Why?
Because the Governor claims that the Assistant Secretary of the Army – who oversees the Army Corps of Engineers -- has asked him personally not to withdraw the Gasoducto permit application. Assistant Secretary Darcy wants him to wait a while before the plug is pulled on the life support for this monster.
Personally, I find this hard to believe. I don’t know why the Assistant Secretary of the Army would want to keep a monster alive that is an unneeded, unwanted insider boondoggle that isn’t even wanted by the regime that proposed it.
But I’ve written to find out. Is this true? And if it is, why?
And I expect answers. Just like I expect answers to my ongoing request to the Army about how the Army Corps of Engineers has handled this application and why the review was moved away from Puerto Rico and closer to a bunch of consultants who used to work for the Army Corps.
When it comes to Gasoducto, enough is enough. Like in most bad monster movies, Gasoducto has been almost impossible to believe from the very first scene – a silly, unnecessary waste of time and money... It’s time to roll the credits and declare this monster dead once and for all.
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