American Dream

An energy boom in Calvert

Southern Maryland could benefit from energy bill provisions that make expansion of its liquid natural gas terminal attractive to investors and a new nuclear reactor a possibility.

By Tom Pelton
Sun Staff

August 21, 2005

Quotes:

COVE POINT - Michael Frederick pedals a bicycle down a mine-shaft-like tunnel that runs deep underneath the Chesapeake Bay. On either side of the artery loom stainless steel pipes coursing with liquid natural gas chilled to 260 degrees below zero, so cold it could crack iron.

At the end of the mile-long passageway, he hops an elevator up into blinding sunlight, where a tanker ship the length of three football fields is moored. Workers in blaze orange jumpsuits guide robotic arms sucking 2.7 billion cubic feet of supercooled Egyptian gas out of the ship's gut - enough to heat 9.2 million homes for a day.

This futuristic scene at the Dominion Cove Point liquid natural gas terminal, where Frederick is manager, is just one example of how the nation's changing energy needs are altering the face of Southern Maryland. As the price of oil and gas surges to record highs, the economy of this once-sleepy landscape of tobacco farms is booming as a center for alternative fuel and focal point of the Bush administration's energy policies.

Cove Point is already the nation's largest liquid natural gas terminal, and the energy bill recently signed by the president contains regulatory changes to make a proposed $850 million expansion attractive to investors.

Just down the shore, the owners of the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant - Maryland's largest power generator, cranking out 20 percent of the state's electricity - are vying to start building the nation's first new reactor since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979. The addition of a third reactor at Calvert Cliffs, using millions of dollars in federal subsidies from the energy bill, would nearly double the plant's output of electricity.

The southern tip of Calvert County is becoming Maryland's energy coast.

Both plants have helped to transform rural Calvert County into the state's fastest-growing jurisdiction, with a population that has almost quadrupled, to about 85,000, since they opened in the 1970s. Major expansions at Calvert Cliffs and Cove Point - the county's No. 1 and No. 2 taxpayers - could spark an even more intense rate of growth.

Together, the two proposed construction projects dangle the prospect of more than $3 billion in new investment for the county, creating more than 3,000 construction jobs, 425 permanent positions and $21 million a year in additional local tax revenues - a more than doubling from these plants.

The county needs the money for its strained roads and schools, local officials say. More importantly, Calvert could become a magnet for high-paying jobs if nuclear power and liquid gas become growth industries, as they were during the energy crisis of the 1970s.

"When there is an energy crisis, it's good for Calvert County," says Linda S. Vassallo, the county's economic development director.

Copyright © 2005, The Baltimore Sun

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[Commentary - it should be noted that both of these facilities, the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Electric Generating Station and the Cove Point LNG terminal - were sited where they are in part because Calvert County was a relatively rural county (though the northern part of the county has been a de-facto suburb of Washington, D.C. for many, many years.)]