Cove Point’s Cross-Calvert Pipeline Soon To Be Full of Gas

Of all the hurdles Dominion Resources, the Virginia-based energy company, has had to surmount since reactivating the gas docks off Cove Point in Calvert County, none has risen higher than adding a new pipeline to bring the LNG from the Chesapeake and 47 miles across Calvert, then under the Patuxent River to Loudon, Virginia, where utilities tap into it for their customers.

The big hurdle wasn’t several hundred Calvert citizens, many vocally unwilling to host the pipeline on their property. It was a host of another kind, Washington Gas Light Company, whose pipeline Dominion uses to deliver natural gas to customers in the District, Maryland and Virginia.

That hurdle popped up in July, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia agreed that the natural gas Dominion was already piping caused leaks in Washington Gas lines in Prince George’s County. To give Washington Gas time for repairs, the court sent the issue back to the government overseer of such projects, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

This month, Dominion cleared that hurdle. The federal regulators made it easy, saying go ahead on the pipeline — with limited deliveries to the Washington Gas system.

With the go-ahead, Dominion Cove Point’s peak capacity will grow from one to 1.8 billion cubic feet by December. That means that instead of 120 ships per year, 220 ships could arrive full of gas from Trinidad, Nigeria, Algiers, Egypt and Norway to unload at the Cove Point docks.

The pipeline is expected to be finished and working by December.

–Sandra Olivetti Martin

Penguin Love Not For Everybody

In Calvert County, four women went before the Board of County Commissioners to request that the children’s book And Tango Makes Three be removed from Calvert libraries. The award-winning 2005 book tells the true story of Roy and Silo, two male Chinstrap penguins in New York’s Central Park Zoo who fostered an egg — together. The outraged mothers contend the book is about “two gay penguins” and is inappropriate for children. Beth Bubser of Dunkirk told the Board of Commissioners the “book undermines parental authority. It’s targeting children in a sneaky way.”

The Calvert County Library Board of Trustees is considering the mothers’ request but has not yet reached a decision.

This is not the first time Roy and Silo’s story has ruffled feathers. Requests to have the book removed from schools and libraries have been made in Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Iowa, Wisconsin, Indiana and Illinois. And Tango Makes Three tops the American Library Association’s “most challenged book” lists for 2006 and 2007.

Interest piqued, Bay Weekly wondered do penguins of a different feather really flock together. We asked Dyan deNapoli (aka The Penguin Lady) about the likelihood of homosexuality in penguins:

“Homosexual behavior is common in many species, but with penguins we don’t really know. In a large wild colony of penguins, you can’t tell them apart, so we don’t know if pairs are same sex. In an aquarium, we know who is male and who is female, and it is not uncommon to see penguins of same sex forming bonds with each other.”

Unlike some breeds of penguins, Chinstrap penguins don’t mate for life. Roy learned this the hard way when Silo left him for Scrappy, a single California female from Sea World.

–Margaret Tearman