by Thaddeus Flint
Kinder Morgan, the energy company hoping to run a high pressure gas pipeline through parts of Rensselaer County including Stephentown, has announced that a parcel of land in the Town of Nassau has been chosen as a specific location for one of nine new compressor stations for the proposed project.
[private] According to Sandy Nathan of the Stop New York Fracked Gas Pipeline (SNYFGP) group, the location is on Mead Road near the old Dewey Loeffel landfill in Nassau. General Electric and other companies dumped tons of toxic chemicals there from 1952 to 1968 and the landfill itself is now a Federal Superfund site. Residents of that area, who have been trying to get their own mini-Love Canal cleaned up for the last 47 years, could now be facing the possibility of an industrial compressor site located right next to their industrial wasteland.
Nathan, however, is adamant that the pipeline and the compressor station are not the “done deal,” that some area residents might believe it is.
“The numbers of people who are adding their voices and becoming involved certainly indicates that many, many people do not share that opinion,” wrote Nathan in an email on June 9. “The industry notices the ‘push back; of communities like ours; we are being effective. And it certainly is in everyone’s interest not to cooperate with Kinder Morgan/Tennessee gas in even the smallest way. We can defeat this assault; we must all do what we can to stand together and refuse to be complacent. “
SNYFGP has had an information table at the Stephentown transfer station on Saturdays since May 30. Two petitions are also available there for residents to sign, one directed to New York State elected representatives and officials and the other is directed to federal representatives.
“We are also asking residents to sign copies of a letter that we will mail to Congressman Chris Gibson and U.S. Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand,” says Nathan. “We are asking our federal representatives to support a moratorium on gas pipelines.”
The SNYFGP information table and petition drive will continue at the transfer station until the end of June. The group will also be conducting letter-writing sessions at the Stephentown Memorial Library on Sunday afternoons and Wednesday evenings.
More information on the pipeline from Kinder Morgan is available at http://www.kindermorgan.com/business/gas_pipelines/east/neenergydirect/
More information on the pipeline from SNYFGP is available at http://stopnypipeline.org/ [/private]