What, Quintana Worry?

In keeping with the theme of the last few days, we link to The Houston Press story this week by Sarah Fenske about the teeny tiny Brazoria County island village of Quintana, where the hard-drinkin', sunblock-eschewing residents and their elected leaders essentially have sold their soul to the company store -- a huge Liquefied Natural Gas terminal facility linked to President Bush's recently remarried brother Neil.

The village will get a million bucks a year in the deal, and the townsfolk, save for a few, figure they're already surrounded by stuff that could blow them all to kingdom come, so what the hey. Yup.

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The old Quintana "swing bridge" (above) was replaced with a taxpayer-funded $10 million span after plans for the LNG terminal got underway. As we recall, officials touted improved hurricane evacuation as a reason for the pricey bridge. Obviously, the new bridge should help facilitate the mobilization of medical personnel to Quintana in the event the LNG terminal incinerates the fatalistic residents of the sparsely populated isle. That's not a half-empty (as opposed to half-full) view of the situation, just good planning, in our opinion.