Polls commissioned by the company trying to build a liquefied natural gas plant and pipeline in Baltimore County indicate opposition to the project may not be as widespread as the local community leaders want people to believe, officials said.
AES Corp., the Virginia-based energy firm proposing the $400 million facility at the Sparrows Point shipyard, on Wednesday released results of two polls Mason Dixon Polling & Research conducted in August. Sent to members of a state-commissioned task force studying the proposal, the results cast doubt on what AES project engineer Kent Morton called self-serving and unsupported claims that the project is widely opposed by residents.
“We thought this was a good way to reach out to the people who don?t come to meetings or write letters and still have an opinion,” Morton said.
In a survey of 625 registered voters in Edgemere, Dundalk and Curtis Bay, 46 percent of respondents said they opposed the project. But offered a survey of “facts” about the project ? namely, points about the potential benefits of the facility ? support increased to 58 percent.
A statewide poll of the same number of voters indicated 52 percent supported the project before presented with the selected facts, climbing to 67 percent after. About 62 percent of community respondents said they were familiar with the proposal, compared to 30 percent across the state.
The margin of error for both polls is plus or minus 4 percentage points.
But local lawmakers and members of the Dundalk-based LNG Opposition Team called the polling methods potentially misleading. State Sen. Norman Stone, D-District 6, said none of the “facts” mentioned possible risks.
Under the proposal, massive tankers carrying super-chilled liquefied gas would arrive at the shipyard through Baltimore?s harbor, requiring significant dredging in contaminated waters.
Crews at the plant would heat the gas into vapor form, sending it to southern Pennsylvania in an 87-mile pipeline through Harford County.
Activists say they fear the gas could explode, endangering residents within 2.5 miles of the shipyard.
They also say the dredging could disturb toxic sediments and worry the Sparrows Point peninsula is too unstable to support concrete storage tanks.
Stone pointed to a June meeting, when more than 350 residents and lawmakers, including Gov. Robert Ehrlich, crowded into an Edgemere fire station to protest the plant.
“You can see how many are opposed to it,” Stone said. “I am somewhat dubious about these polls. I have some questions.”
