An environmental impact study to determine the viability of port development at Quonset Point/Davisville is long overdue.
The study should have been undertaken when it was first conceived that a major port was under consideration for Quonset. How else can we accurately project the environmental impact that a port would have on Narragansett Bay?
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At controversy is Gov. Lincoln Almond’s proposal to allocate $2.5 million to a federal environmental impact study of a load center/container port at Quonset Point. Environmental groups, like Save the Bay, oppose the study, suggesting it is the beginning of a permitting process for the port, and questioning the study’s narrow focus relating to a load center port.
Save the Bay insists it is not necessarily opposed to a port, although it is difficult to find anything supportive of port development in the rhetoric offered by Save the Bay and other environmental groups over the last few years.
We agree, however, with Save the Bay that is it ill advised to conduct the study with such a narrow focus, but important to have a study of a wide range of port alternatives at Quonset. We believe, however, that possibly Governor Almond could direct the environmental impact study toward this broader focus, or the legislature could approve the study contingent on its taking a broader view.
Rhode Islanders need to understand the environmental and economic impact, and other consequences of any port development at Quonset.
We believe an environmental impact study should be broad enough to consider all potential port proposals, should assess the impact such development would have on recreational, fishing and tourism interests in the bay, and look long-term on what changes might occur in what is Rhode Island’s most valued natural asset.
In concert with any environmental impact study we need to study the economic impact of port development at Quonset. How viable is port development now, considering we had been told for so long that it was important to move the process along because the contracts of major shippers at various ports were expiring around 2000? What are the economic gains of a port, versus the economic losses to recreational, fishing and tourism interests if in fact port development is found to affect those areas in any way?
And we also have to understand the consequences of port development. We’ve heard, for instance, from some pilots that to build a container port will have some adverse impact on the airfield at Quonset.
All of these questions need to be answered as quickly as possible. These studies are long long overdue. We’ve apparently missed out on some opportunities, and perhaps we’ve missed out on enough that port development, even if environmentally sound, has little economic promise. But we learn nothing unless these studies are undertaken by independent sources, completed quickly and thoroughly.
