Gov. Paterson flunked a key test yes terday, sinking a plan for a critically important natural-gas transmission facility in Long Island Sound.
And some folks thought he was going to be the grown-up in Albany.
Those hopes are fading fast.
Paterson, recall, had warned of looming fiscal and economic perils and insisted that lawmakers “tighten their belts” and not raise taxes. But then he went along with the Legislature’s larded $122 billion budget, hiking taxes and fees by $1.5 billion.
You could cut him slack; he’d been in office only a few weeks, and, anyway, he promised (really, really, cross-his-heart promised) to crack down . . . next year.
But yesterday he buckled again.
He said the state wouldn’t approve the liquefied natural-gas (LNG) terminal, Broadwater, in the Sound.
Eco-absolutists had complained that its immobile barge – which would store and pump the gas from ninemiles off the Long Island shore – would somehow ruin the 1,100-squre-mile waterway.
Even though plenty of commercial ships already traverse those waters – every day.
Even though, from the shore, the terminal would be all but invisible.
Broadwater, said Paterson, “would scar Long Island Sound.”
That’s ridiculous, of course. But even if it were true, so what? There’s simply no other site in the area for an LNG terminal.
And, since existing pipelines are already at capacity, there essentially is no alternative way – short of laying a vast new interstate pipeline network – to get natural gas to New York.
We know Paterson is new to his job. But he’s been in public life for 23 years – and this decision was a no-brainer: If you can’t build a terminal miles offshore, where can you build one?
Or, for that matter, where can you build any utility for natural gas, electricity, water, sewage – or anything?
Nowhere in New York, that’s for sure.
But New Yorkers and others in the region need that natural gas – just as they need electricity, water and sewage lines.
Again, existing pipelines are maxed out. And demand for natural gas is projected to soar – growing some 37 percent in New York alone by 2021.
Indeed, many of those anti-Broadwater activists are themselves looking to natural gas as a replacement for oil, coal and nuclear energy – because they see it as better for the environment.
How’s the gas going to get here?
The biggest irony, of course, is that denying New York a cheap supply of natural gas will only worsen the economy.
Because LNG doesn’t need to be piped long distances, it would be less expensive than other gas, saving businesses some $1.2 billion a year. (The median homeowner would save $300 a year.)
Broadwater offered David Paterson an early chance to demonstrate courageous, enlightened leadership.
Instead, he took the weakling’s way out.
This is not a good sign.