PORTSMOUTH, R.I. — More than five years after a frozen valve left thousands of Aquidneck Island residents without natural gas to heat their homes in the depths of winter, state utility regulators approved Rhode Island Energy’s plan to temporarily bolster gas supplies on the three-municipality island.

Last week the state Energy Facility Siting Board voted to allow the utility company’s petition to install portable liquefied natural gas (LNG) vaporization equipment onto a 5-acre parcel on Old Mill Lane to help shore up LNG supplies during peak demand days in the winter.

“There’s just not enough capacity there to keep the gas flowing and heating during the winter,” said Ron Gerwatowski, chair of the EFSB and the state Public Utilities Commission.

In its decision, issued Aug. 22, the board found that the project was needed to “ensure safe and reliable service and adequate capacity to the residents of Aquidneck Island over the next five years,” and that the project’s impact on the emission reduction goals on the Act on Climate law would be minimal. For the board, ensuring reliability of natural gas availability on the island outweighed emissions concerns.

The EFSB’s final decision allows Rhode Island Energy to use the property for portable LNG vaporization equipment for the next five years, requiring the utility company to petition the board if it wishes to continue in the years after. However, the board stopped short of imposing any moratorium on new natural gas hookups to residential homes and businesses, arguing the move would have wider impacts on the residents of Newport and Middletown who didn’t weigh in on the Portsmouth vaporization equipment project.

“We need to signal [a moratorium] is a real thing,” Gerwatowski said. “And we need public comments from the folks who are going to be impacted about this.”

The board also voted to leave the docket open, to continue exploring a moratorium on new hookups in the future, as well as to analyze any potential noise violations coming from the portable equipment if used, and impose mitigation measures as needed.

The approval of the portable vaporization equipment came at the expense of overriding the concerns of the Town Council and the Zoning Board of Review, which argued in advisory opinions that the project would violate the town’s noise ordinances, become an eyesore for nearby residents, and negatively impact the community. In the past, the project was strongly objected to by neighbors and residents of Old Mill Lane, who have accused the utility company — it was National Grid before a Pennsylvania-based corporation bought it and changed the name — of being a loud and troublesome neighbor.

Rhode Island Energy’s property lies on the south side of Old Mill Lane, and is flanked by residential homes east and west of the property, with additional homes directly across the street.

The company will install seasonal equipment on site, including portable vaporizers, portable booster pumps, portable storage tanks, generators, and a mobile office. The site is already surrounded by a 6-foot-high chain-link fence. According to the company’s application, installation of the equipment will begin annually in November, expected to be fully operational by Dec. 1, and taken out of service by the beginning of April. The company will then remove the portable equipment from the site by the end of April.

It’s not the first time the utility company has used the site for portable LNG equipment. National Grid, which owned the utility company and services in Rhode Island prior to its acquisition by PPL Corp., received an emergency waiver from state officials to use portable equipment to bolster supplies of natural gas on the island following the earlier outage, but that waiver expired in 2021.

The project approved by the EFSB will cost $1.5 million annually, not including the refueling costs for the equipment.

The project’s genesis started with a natural gas outage in January 2019. On Jan. 21 of that year, around 6:50 p.m., National Grid shut down a large portion of its natural gas distribution system in Newport and Middletown, cutting off some 7,500 customers from heating their homes on one of the coldest days of the year. The natural gas outage lasted for seven days, and then-Gov. Gina Raimondo declared a state of emergency on Aquidneck Island.

A state investigation into the outage found Aquidneck Island was uniquely vulnerable to critical errors in natural gas supply. The island lies at the tail end of the Algonquin natural gas pipeline that crisscrosses the Northeast. Only a single 6-inch pipe transports natural gas supplies onto Aquidneck Island for use in homes and businesses.

A valve in the Algonquin pipeline in Weymouth, Mass., was found to have malfunctioned, restricting the flow of gas onto Aquidneck Island. Other factors in the outage included increased demand because of the low temperatures in the region, and the failure and shutdown of a gas storage and vaporization facility at Fields Point in Providence, causing a larger spike in demand from the pipeline in the greater Providence area.