Raising the Curtain on the Spaceport Follies
Something is terribly wrong with the state’s plans to develop a spaceport. No, let us restate that: Many things are terribly wrong with these plans.
As our July issue indicated, the bureaucratic framework within which important decisions are being made concerning policy and money lacks accountability. The Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism operates as a law unto itself, failing to take into account the wishes or needs of the people who would be most severely affected by the operation of a spaceport. There appear to be unwholesome ties between state space czar Thomas B. Hayward and some of the spaceport’s potential users.
As our August issue shows, should the spaceport be developed, even if nothing ever goes wrong, it will alter permanently and for the worse the character of the Ka’u Desert wilderness. Ear-shattering blasts will routinely puncture Ka’u’s rural quiet. Folks in rural Puna, already subjected to the noise and nuisance of an operating geothermal plant, will now have to deal with the added insult of sonic booms.
Should accidents occur – and odds are they will over the 50-year predicted life of the facility- the prospects for mayhem are incalculable. Nor does the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the spaceport, previewed in this issue, begin to describe them.
Preparing For the Worst
When the DEIS describes accident scenarios for spills of toxic chemicals in transit to the spaceport, for example, those spill scenarios fall short of the “worst reasonable case” standard. The plumes depicted at seven strategic points along the route from Hilo to Palima Point indicate generally the areas within which people would have to be evacuated should just one container be emptied. The trucks carrying the most dangerous chemicals, however -nitrogen tetroxide or hydrazines – may have up to 16 55-gallon drums or up to nine 300-gallon cylinders. It is not unreasonable to think that if there is sufficient impact in an accident to cause one container to rupture, it might be sufficient to cause two or more to rupture also.
The wind directions assumed in these spill accident scenarios similarly are far from worst-case but seem instead to be simply normal daytime and night-time wind patterns. Assume for a moment that a spill of one container of nitrogen tetroxide occurs at the intersection of Banyan Drive and Highway 11 on a day when winds are from the south (as happens about 15 percent of the time in Hilo). The daytime plume, depicted on page 1 of our issue, would rotate to almost due north. All of Hilo’s major hotels along Banyan Drive would be engulfed. The exposed population would presumably be far greater than that predicted to be in the light industrial area covered by the plume as depicted in the DEIS.
The DEIS studies state that the spill scenarios are far more dire than would actually happen. The so-called “pool blanketing time” (the time during which volatile chemicals are entering the air) is much longer in these scenarios than would actually be the case, the argument goes. People accompanying the shipment would make sure that the spill would not be on the ground for so long, the authors of these studies say.
Unacceptable Hazards
Given the extremely hazardous nature of some of the chemicals being transported, however, they can be almost instantly disabling to people exposed to even relatively low concentrations. As an example, consider the estimated concentration of nitrogen tetroxide 20 meters downwind of a spill at that same Hilo intersection. People standing in the parking lot of Ken’s Pancake House would be breathing air with concentrations as high as 648 parts per million nitrogen tetroxide. At that level, they’re not going to help in the orderly evacuation of the restaurant; they’ll pass out. Moreover, it’s worth mentioning that that 648 ppm level is not the peak exposure. It is rather a 60-minute average and assumes that workers even closer to the spill will be able to mop up the mess in 15 minutes. If it takes 30 minutes to clean up the 60-minute average exposure will be 1,236 parts per million – or, to put it more bleakly, 1.2 parts per thousand.
Well, the Office of Space Industry might say, you’re not allowing for the response of a highly trained and well equipped squad of emergency personnel who will invariably accompany these shipments.
Fine. Let’s suppose that the truck carrying this load is escorted by a trained team. Taking a page from procedures developed at the Kaua’i Test Facility for dealing with spills of nitrogen tetroxide, here is the prescribed response:
“As the response team approaches the spill, but before reaching any area considered to be hazardous, the members should don the appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE). For minor spills and first response to major spills, PPE will consist of a splash suit, gloves, goggles, boots, and self-contained breathing apparatus. Do NOT enter or remain in a toxic vapor cloud wearing just splash gear. For major spills” – anything more than a pound – “the response team should don ILC Dover SCBA Chemturion suits as soon as other equipment can be brought to the spill location. Note that ILC suits will be required for major spill cleanup operation as well.”
How long does it take to suit up? Five minutes? Ten minutes? At the lethal concentrations of nitrogen tetroxide in which these workers would be engulfed, there’s little point to personal protective equipment. As for the average Joe in the parking lot, in his slippers and shorts, he’s bought the ticket long before the highly trained rescue workers reach him in their ILC Dover SCBA Chemturion suits.
At times, the DEIS feebly argues that citizens accept (tacitly) the risk of chlorine spills, which the DEIS claims poses a comparable hazard.1 Therefore it’s no greater burden to expose them to the risk of transporting hypergolic fuels. Apart from the fact that it is inappropriate for a disclosure document to express such conclusions, the analogy does not hold. First, the use of chlorine has some public benefit, unlike the deadly liquid propellants that would be used at the spaceport. Second, chlorine is not transported in the quantities that are assumed for liquid propellants or oxidizers. The admittedly tacit acceptance by the public of chlorine transport cannot be translated by DBEDT into a statement of the public’s willingness to accept the risk of exposure to far more deadly chemicals whose use brings no measurable benefit.
Socialized Risk, Privatized Gain
The Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism has stated throughout that if no commercial entity is interested in developing a spaceport, then the project will not go forward.
That sounds fair enough. But there’s more to the DBEDT deal than meets the eye. So far, DBEDT, in an effort to attract commercial developers, has promised free infrastructure. In the DEIS, it is proposed that commercial developers be granted special low-interest loans as well. The state is to purchase the land; will it collect rent from the users? It well might not. The DEIS management plan says it would be “appropriate” for the developers to be “exempted from making payments” to the state for the “first few years” of operation. This “will make the project more attractive,” the DEIS states. Of course it will.
What other blandishments might the state dangle before developers’ eyes? Excise tax exemptions? Indemnification against expensive civil lawsuits?
It is no trick to draw business to Hawai’i – or anywhere else, for that matter – if the element of risk is eliminated and profits are assured. But such businesses as are lured by these circumstances are not going to add much to the state’s economy. They’re going to be parasites forever, living off the sweat of the state’s honest, overworked taxpayers.
Getting Real
Still, as nutty as the spaceport notion is, as dangerous as it is, it has the state’s power brokers bedazzled – and not simply those within the Waihe’e administration and DBEDT.
Honolulu Mayor (and gubernatorial candidate) Frank Fasi, speaking to the Hawai’i Island Chamber of Commerce in June, said that the 120,000 residents of the island should not be the ones to decide what is best for the entire state when it comes to a decision on the spaceport.
Even more imperious – though less well publicized – is the comment attributed to Larry Johnson, president of the Bank of Hawai’i. Johnson was quoted in the July 1993 edition of Hawai’i Investors saying, apropos of major economic projects, “Today our leaders have to stand up and say, ‘Hey we must have those things.’ While 75 residents may object to rockets going off in their back yard, Hawai’i can’t return to the way it was in 1934. That’s not the real world.”
So, what’s Johnson’s “real world?” It’s a world where equipment corrodes in the salt air. It’s one where launch pads are paved with molten lava. It’s one where earthquakes push to the limit the structural integrity of tanks holding vast quantities of deadly chemicals, where disturbances from construction and operation chase hawksbill turtles away from the strand where they nest. It is a world where the least human error or equipment failure can mean death or permanent injury for hundreds of people.
The “real world” would have no room in it for the Ka’u Desert Wilderness. The “real world” would have no respect for the rights of people living in an area to determine their own economic fate. The “real world” of Johnson and Fasi is one in which the government is at war with its own people over the terms of their welfare, the terms of their livelihood – indeed, the terms of their very lives.
That’s not the real world. That’s a nightmare.
Et Cetera
The contract of Thomas B. Hayward with DBEDT discussed in the July edition of Environment Hawai`i has been renewed. For his work from April 1, 1993 through March 31, 1994, Hayward will receive $62,500 in 12 equal installments. In addition, he will continue to receive state reimbursement for his travel and expenses on behalf of the state’s space programs – including “servicing of potential clients” of the spaceport, clerical help, promotions, meals and refreshments, and, of course, state excise tax on his contractual income.
Environment Hawai’i thanks the Cooke Foundation for a grant for general operating expenses. We would remind readers that all contributions to Environment Hawai`i are tax-deductible over and above the basic subscription rate.
1 The transportation spill study goes so far as to provide a map depicting the area within which short-term public emergency guideline levels (3 parts per million) would be exceeded should a 150-pound cylinder of chlorine spill at the intersection of Banyan Drive and Highway 11. The plume depicted on the map (Figure 4-75 in Volume VI, Appendix A) is comparable in size to those for other chemicals analyzed. However, the ledged on the map depicting the chlorine plume – indicating a scale of 1 inch equal to 2,000 feet, which is the same scale used in the nitrogen tetroxide map – is erroneous. The scale used on the map depicting the chlorine spill plume is 1 inch to 800 feet. If one translates the areas covered by daytime spills of chlorine and nitrogen tetroxide to the same scale, the result is that some 4 million square feet – about 92 acres – would be covered by intolerably high levels of nitrogen tetroxide; the chlorine plume, by contrast, would engulf about 64,000 square feet (less than an acre and a half). In other words, the area to be evacuated would be 60 times larger for a spill of nitrogen tetroxide than for chlorine, under the same atmospheric conditions.
Volume 4, Number 2 August 1993