Calpine, the energy corporation that wants to build a geothermal plant on sacred land at Medicine Lake [see Terrain Summer 2000, Winter 2002], is now proposing a liquified natural gas (LNG) storage facility and 2,200-megawatt power plant on the site of a defunct pulp mill on Humboldt Bay.
The plan includes sending two 900-foot supertankers full of the compressed gas through the bay weekly to the storage facility, using some of the gas to generate power, and using waste heat from that process to expand the supercooled LNG and send the rest of it through a pipeline to the Central Valley.
The planned facility would be similar to one proposed by Bechtel for the site of the Mare Island shipyard [see Terrain, Winter 2002], which the city of Vallejo recently rejected.
In addition to the safety concerns over such a project, said Tim McKay of the Northcoast Environmental Center (NEC), “the ecological effects of bringing thousand-foot ships into Humboldt Bay from Indonesia could destroy one of the most pristine estuaries on the West Coast.”
