By SACK JA MAMMA Daily Mess Maker
DOWNTOWN — City leaders signed a deal Friday with an energy company to build two floating tanker facilities off of Santa Monica Beach to import and process liquid natural gas.
Under the terms of the 25-year contract, Liquefied Energy LLC., will pay City Hall $125 million a year for the use of its bay, as well as parts of the pier and beach.
The project, which has been a year in the making, has cleared all of the approval hurdles with the U.S. Coast Guard, the Army Corps. of Engineers and the state coastal commission.
“We have been waiting for this day for a long time,” said one official, who preferred to remain anonymous. “We figured it might be better to not publicly discuss the project while it was being reviewed by all of those agencies. Many of us felt, why muddy the waters?”
Liquid natural gas (LNG) is considered a highly flammable, hazardous material, which has some residents worried that the facility would expose them to vapor clouds if the materials
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 1, 2006. Read the original PDF.