by Thaddeus Flint
Members of the group Stop NY Fracked Gas Pipeline (SNYFGP), which is advocating against a new high pressure gas pipeline planned to run through parts of Columbia County, are done waiting for pipeline officials to schedule a public meeting on the subject in New Lebanon and have gone ahead and scheduled their own.
“We are taking the initiative,” said SNYFGP member Bruce Shenker Tuesday. The meeting will take place at the New Lebanon Town Hall on October 29 at 6:30 pm.
[private]SNYFGP has been trying to get representatives of Kinder Morgan, the owner of Tennessee Gas Pipeline which controls the pipelines already in place, to come and hold a public meeting on the proposed pipeline since early this summer.
“We’ve left messages, sent emails,” said Shenker, “They don’t return our calls.”
Kinder Morgan says the new pipeline is needed to increase gas supplies to New England to offset increasing electricity demand. The company asserts the pipeline is safe.
SNYFGP and other groups question that assertion. They maintain that the gas is contaminated with trace chemicals, possibly carcinogenic, of the fracking procedures used to get the gas out of the ground. The pipeline itself would also carry the gas at a much higher pressure than the pipelines already in the area. An explosion or rupture could be catastrophic. To maintain the high pressure a new compression station would most likely have to be located within the area. The stations can be extremely loud, ugly and have the potential to vent gasses and other chemicals into the area.
Shenker said a recent prefiling application made by Kinder Morgan to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) shows that a “large compression station (on the order of twice the size of the one in Malden Bridge) could be planned for Canaan or New Lebanon.”
“This is what really freaks me out,” said Shenker. “The noise may make people forget the race track noise.”
There is also “what spews out of it,” Shenker said. Should a pipeline or station spew out gas contaminated with fracking chemicals, nobody – with the exception of Kinder Morgan – would know what those chemicals are; fracking companies keep their fracking recipes to themselves.
SNYFGP has tried to get the New Lebanon Town Board to do what many municipalities along the pipeline’s planned path in Massachusetts have already done – pass a resolution saying that the Town opposes it. So far that has not happened. “We are not even close to that,” Town Supervisor Mike Benson said back in August. The Board was waiting for Kinder Morgan to come and provide their side of the story before it makes any decision.
It’s October now and the Board appears to still be waiting (An email to Benson asking for any update on a Kinder Morgan appearance was not returned by press time). Kinder Morgan representatives did stop by one day and speak with Benson in September, but it doesn’t appear that what they said added up to all that much. They did leave a flashy PowerPoint® slide show that outlines the plan, hinting of the possibility of towns along the pipeline reaping profits from the project. It doesn’t say anything about cancer or explosions or obnoxious noises, the points many people would like to know more about.
SNYFGP is tired of waiting. They’ve studied the plans and they don’t like them. They are going forward. A petition at MoveOn.org asking local, state and federal officials to oppose the project currently has 282 signatures. The group’s Stop NY Fracked Gas Pipeline page on Facebook has over 400 likes. At the end of September SNYFGP representatives spoke with U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer’s chief of staff in Albany. They are meeting with U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand next week and Congressman Chris Gibson the week after. Their findings will be presented at the October 29 meeting. Kinder Morgan will be invited.
“But they won’t come,” predicted Shenker. “Why should they? They have nothing good to say.”[/private]