Bipartisan hoopla greets Cuomo's liquefied natural gas nix
Even before all the speeches began, the gathering Thursday inside the Long Beach Recreation Center had the feel of a bipartisan political rally with an upbeat script.
Workers sported their Civil Service Employees Association shirts. Environmental activists held homemade signs and banners. Local officials, appointed and elected, took seats toward the front. Music rocked through the sound system.
A year and a week after he won a second term at the polls, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo appeared before a few hundred cheering celebrants and signed papers exercising his option under federal law to stop the unpopular Port Ambrose Liquefied Natural Gas plan for waters 19 miles off the coast.
The Democratic governor's yearslong public friendship with Republican Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano appeared unharmed by the shadows cast in the county amid prosecutors' probes and perpetual fiscal woes. With "Thank You Cuomo" signs aloft, Mangano served as emcee.
"Today's a great day and I have the honor to welcome our wonderful governor from the great state of New York," Mangano declared.
Cuomo thanked Mangano -- who he said "has done a fantastic job on so many fronts," without specifying which. "It's a pleasure to be back with him. Let's give him a round of applause."
Last year, Cuomo won Nassau, while losing Suffolk, after Mangano cut a campaign commercial for him.
To an observer who remarked afterward that their alliance endures, Mangano said it is "for the good of the people of Nassau County."
From the makeshift rostrum, Assemb. Todd Kaminsky (D-Long Beach) told a troupe of high school students on hand that Cuomo's action provided "a real lesson in leadership" and presented Cuomo with an honorary "Long Beach Polar Bear" sweatshirt.
Taking his turn at the microphone, Sen. Carl Marcellino (R-Syosset) said, "This governor gets it" when it comes to putting a natural gas transfer terminal so close to where people live.
Through a public-relations lens, the decision had to be viewed as a "gimme" for the governor. Given the breadth of community resistance, the only potential cost of killing the Liberty LLC project might have been criticism that Cuomo was obstructing energy production, as fracking fans said when he opposed that practice.
So he came ready to elaborate.
"The 'why' is important," he told his audience, citing the possibility of a terrorist attack on the facility. And given climate change and natural catastrophes such as superstorm Sandy, he said, "an LNG plant with a pipeline, with 10,000 tankers unloading, for me, increases exponentially the concern."
Also, he said it could get in the way of wind-power proposals for the same area, "and there was no thought as to how those plans would coexist."
Cuomo was asked afterward how difficult a decision it was.
"Look, it's something that we studied, and we studied it closely," he said. "Of the fossil fuels, of the energy alternatives, LNG is one of the cleaner fuels, but it's not as clean as renewables" such as wind and solar. As to the safety of infrastructure amid powerful storms, Cuomo added: "I've been around too long, I've heard it too many times, 'Don't worry, nothing can happen.'
"You know, that's when I worry -- because too much has happened."
Nobody in this room in Long Beach was arguing with him. Someone yelled as Cuomo signed the paper: "The pen is mightier than the pipeline."
Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
