The project has been criticized by elected officials at every level. They say the facility is too close to homes in the Dundalk area, especially to the historically black neighborhood of Turners Station, if there were an accident or a terrorist attack on the LNG tankers or facility.
Community leaders and company officials have been sparring about "worst-case scenarios" since the plant was first proposed more than two years ago.
The elected officials and activists also say the project would harm the environment because of sediment that would be stirred up from the dredging needed to be done over a 118-acre area of the Patapsco River near the shipyard. Some of the dredging would have be redone every six years, according to the report.
The company says that the dredging would remove some of the toxic substances left by industrial companies in the area and that the LNG business will generate $13 million annually in state and local taxes.
Some labor leaders support the project, which would be built by unionized construction workers.
Roderick "Rod" Easter, president of the Baltimore Building and Construction Trades Council, estimated that the project would generate four years of full-time work for about 375 workers.
"I feel like this is a positive step in the right direction," Easter said after reviewing the draft report yesterday. "It shows the right things are being done and that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is looking at it as a positive project that could work."
In February, the U.S. Coast Guard found that the company hasn't adequately addressed safety concerns but said the area could "be made suitable" for the LNG tankers with additional security measures.
The Coast Guard would require a combination of armed LNG escorts, patrols from the air and shore and periodic inspections by divers, according to unclassified summaries of the report, known as a water suitability assessment.
Before the final report is issued, the company needs to finalize the details about security and emergency response, in addition to several other technical reports.
The review by the commission and other federal and state agencies will ensure that the Sparrows Point project "either benefits human health and the natural environment or has manageable impacts," Kent Morton, an AES project manager, wrote in a statement yesterday.
