Not on Outer Brewster

MASSACHUSETTS NEEDS more natural gas. Ideally, it would secure a supply that was big enough to meet increasing demand for the fuel and end the risky practice of sending liquefied natural gas tankers past wooden three-deckers in Boston's inner harbor to the Distrigas storage tanks in Everett. But a proposal to sacrifice one of the Boston harbor islands to serve as an LNG terminal would be a misuse of a National Park area, especially since there is no evidence it would eliminate the need to use the Everett facility.

A Virginia-based company named AES wants the Legislature to strip the state-owned Outer Brewster Island of its protected park status under the Massachusetts Constitution. Doing so requires two-third majorities in both houses. According to the AES plan, the Legislature would invite AES and other firms to bid for the right to develop an LNG terminal and tanks. Lost would be a 20-acre rock that rises 60 feet from the waves and is home to harbor seals and a rich variety of resident and migrating birds, including cormorants, eiders, night herons, ibis, and the country's northernmost breeding population of American oystercatchers.

If a terminal at Outer Brewster were the only alternative to shortages of the fuel that heats 44 percent of all households in Massachusetts and generates half the state's electricity, the advantages of forfeiting the island for this purpose would be clearer. But there are more than a half-dozen proposals for new LNG terminals in the region, from Long Island Sound to Canada's Maritime Provinces. The two Canadian sites, each roughly the size of the Everett terminal, have received government approval. Two companies are proposing ocean-based facilities southeast of Gloucester that would offload -- but not store -- LNG from tankers.

Overall, legislators and the public would be in a better position to weigh such proposals if the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission would provide a regional plan that would examine demand, terminal needs, and pipeline capacity for the Northeast and Maritimes, with recommendations for the best way to match demand and supply. But the FERC's role has been limited to reviewing proposed sites as they come up, leaving it to the market to decide how many, if any, terminals will actually be built.

This could result in a severe shortage of LNG or in overbuilding. A granite gem of ocean wildness could be lost for a facility that's not really needed. At a time when the harbor islands are just finding their place in the region's recreational life, it would be a historic error for the Legislature to carve off a part of the islands park for this use.