MARCH 20, FARMINGVILLE, NY– Brookhaven 2nd District Town Councilwoman Jane Bonner today said the five-member Federal Energy Regulatory Commission “stuck a knife in the backs of the hard-working people who call northern Brookhaven and Suffolk County their home,” when the Commission approved Broadwater Energy’s application for a liquefied natural gas factory to be located in eastern Long Island Sound.

Ms. Bonner said, “This decision is a dark day for Long Island’s environment. Despite an overwhelming number of urgent calls from area residents and elected officials, FERC has fulfilled its own selfish agenda and the agenda of corporate interests approving the ill-conceived Broadwater Energy plan. This news is sad but not surprising.”

Ms. Bonner pointed out Long Island’s last recourse: insisting the new New York Governor, David Paterson, stand tall and do something that his predecessor failed to do – stop this proposal dead in its tracks. Councilwoman Bonner said, “It leaves me speechless to think that while our leadership in Albany stood silent for so long, Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell and Connecticut Attorney General Blumenthal, and virtually every elected official on Long Island, clearly recognized the dangers this plan could have on our way of life and called for its rejection.

In 1996, the people of New York State approved the $1.75 billion “Clean Water, Clean Air Environmental Bond Act.” A large portion of this funding was dedicated to restoring Long Island Sound. Millions of dollars were invested in the Sound so hard-working, commercial fishermen would be able to continue to ply the trade passed down to them from many previous generations; and millions were spent because hundreds of thousands of Long Islanders esteemed the ecological value of this treasured natural resource enough to approve investing their hard-earned tax dollars in its well-being.

Ms. Bonner concluded, “By failing to stop this proposal Governor Paterson, who was a member of the State Senate at the time the bond act passed, would basically nullify the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of taxpayer dollars that were spent to help restore Long Island Sound. The time is now for Governor Paterson to protect the people of Long Island and stop Broadwater.”