No LPG Storage Under Seneca Lake, Watkins Glen, NY

Crestwood backs out of natural gas storage plan — Withdrawal does not include liquid propane storage

From an Article by David L. Shaw, Finger Lakes Times, May 11, 2017

READING — Arlington Storage Company, a subsidiary of Crestwood Midstream, has abandoned its plan to expand natural gas storage in unlined salt caverns on the west shore of Seneca Lake in Schuyler County.

The dropping of the plan was including in Arlington’s bi-weekly environmental compliance report filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in Washington.

“Despite its best efforts, Arlington Storage Company has not been successful in securing long-term contractual commitments from customers that would support completion of the Gallery 2 Expansion Project,” the company said in its statement with FERC.

“While demand for high deliverability natural gas storage services remains robust in New York, bids for firm storage capacity which Arlington has received from time to time are not adequate to support the investment required to bring the project to completion,” it stated.

“Accordingly, Arlington has discontinued efforts to complete the Gallery 2 Expansion Project.”

The news was well received by opponents of the project, such as Gas Free Seneca. “This is a victory for the people of the region who have fought for years to protect Seneca Lake and the Finger Lakes from industrialized gas storage,” said Yvonne Taylor, vice president of Gas Free Seneca.

“This ill-conceived plan has cast a shadow on the region’s burgeoning tourism industry from the start and today we celebrate our victory against Goliath,” Taylor said in a press release.

Deborah Goldberg, an attorney with Earthjustice, has been representing Gas Free Seneca in its fight.

She said she will ask FERC to rescind its 2014 project approval. “The admitted failure to secure customers establishes that there is no need for Arlington to expand,” Goldberg said.

Joseph Campbell, president of Gas Free Seneca, said Crestwood ”should see the writing on the wall” and withdraw its pending application to store liquid propane in salt caverns as well as the natural gas storage plan.

Crestwood owns a 576-acre site on Route 14 a few miles north of Watkins Glen.

In August 2010, FERC authorized Arlington to acquire a depleted natural gas production field in Reading and develop it for operation as the Seneca Lake Storage Project.

The facility is connected to two interstate gas pipelines.

On May 15, 2014, FERC gave Arlington the go-ahead to expand the project by connecting two interconnected salt caverns previously used for LPG storage, increasing the facility’s capacity from 1.45 to 2 billion cubic feet.

That order require the expansion to be constructed and put in service by May 15, 2016.

In January 2016, Arlington requested a two-year extension. They told FERC it has not proceeded because the state Department of Environmental Conservation had not acted on its application for an underground storage permit. When filing for an extension, Arlington officials noted the DEC cannot issue the permit until it has received a report from the state geologist.

The state had no one in that position at the time.

Gas Free Seneca appealed the May 16, 2016 decision by FERC to allow the two year extension.

New York State rejects another pipeline

National Fuel’s pipeline project would have crossed more than 190 creeks and streams up through Allegany, Cattaraugus, Erie and Niagara counties, according to the specifications

From an Article by T.J. Pignataro, Buffalo NY News, April 8, 2017

The state Department of Environmental Conservation has rejected National Fuel’s plans for a 97-mile pipeline to carry natural gas from northwestern Pennsylvania to Elma.

The DEC determined there was too big a threat to water quality and wildlife to grant National Fuel the water quality certificate required to construct the Northern Access Pipeline.

“After an in-depth review of the proposed Northern Access Pipeline project and following three public hearings and the consideration of over 5,700 comments, DEC has denied the permit due to the project’s failure to avoid adverse impacts to wetlands, streams and fish and other wildlife habitat,” the DEC announced.

“We are confident that this decision supports our state’s strict water quality standards that all New Yorkers depend on,” the DEC statement added.

A series of public meetings was held on the proposal in February to gauge feelings about the project. Environmental groups and residents raised concern about threats the pipeline posed to water quality, including its planned crossing of Cattaraugus Creek, which is the sole source drinking water aquifer for residents in a 325-square-mile area.

Part of the project would have involved developing a compressor station in the Town of Pendleton along with additional pipeline connections in Niagara County. And, a third part of the project would have included upgrading a compressor station in the Town of Elma.

In all, the pipeline project would have crossed more than 190 creeks and streams in Allegany, Cattaraugus, Erie and Niagara counties.

DEC officials determined National Fuel’s plans did not “avoid or adequately mitigate” impacts that could harm water quality and associated resources.

“Crossing multiple streams and freshwater wetlands within a watershed or basin, including degrading riparian buffers, causes a negative cumulative effect on water quality to that watershed or basin,” the DEC reasoned in its denial.

“If allowed to proceed, the project would materially interfere with or jeopardize the biological integrity and best usages of affected water bodies and wetlands,” the statement added.

[[It is the second large-scale project designed to transport natural gas from wells employing hydraulic fracturing in Pennsylvania that was shot down by the DEC in just less than a year. Last April, the DEC denied a water quality permit to the Constitution Pipeline. Planned by another gas company, the pipeline was to run through the Southern Tier counties of Broome, Chenango, Otsego, Delaware and Schoharie. An appeal in the case is still pending.]]

Opponents of the project celebrated the news Saturday. “This is a huge victory for all of us,” said Kim Lemieux, an organizer of the Pendleton Action Team fighting the project. “I can’t tell you how good I’m going to sleep tonight.”

Another Pendleton resident and a leader of the action team, Paula Hargreaves, said the DEC’s findings confirmed what her organization had been saying all along. “This was going to be so devastating,” Hargreaves said. “For them to agree with us? It’s absolutely brilliant.”

Hargreaves called the DEC’s findings a victory in a single “battle” and said the organization intends to remain vigilant in anticipation of the gas company resubmitting their plans.

National Fuel officials declined to comment until Monday, when the utility will release a statement.

Read the DEC’s full Notice of Denial here

NY State Capitol on Jan. 13, 2016

Banning Fracking Isn’t Enough: How We Fight to Stop Pipelines, Compressor Stations and Gas Plants

Prepared Speech by Sandra Steingraber, EcoWatch.com, January 15, 2016

[Note: Hundreds of climate activists and renewable energy advocates gathered for a State of the Climate rally and march outside of Gov. Cuomo’s State of the State address in Albany. Here are the prepared remarks from Sandra Steingraber’s speech. Shortly after, from the top of a stairway in the Capitol building, fracking infrastructure opponents unscrolled a 40-foot petition, bearing 1,000 signatures, that urgently calls on the governor to oppose the storage of dangerous, explosive LPG (propane and butane) in abandoned salt caverns under the shores of Seneca Lake. Like methane, propane and butane are the products of fracking. Along with the petition scroll, the group also delivered more than 500 letters to Gov. Cuomo’s office.]

Hi, everyone. My name is Sandra Steingraber, and I bring warm greetings from the banks of Seneca Lake in New York’s wine country. That’s my home.

One year ago, we all came together at Governor Cuomo’s 2015 State of the State address as New Yorkers Against Fracking to celebrate our singular, hard-won victory—the bold decision of our governor to leave in the ground, uncombusted, an immense amount of fossil fuel in the form of vaporous methane trapped in our state’s bedrock.

We worked, united, for years, night and day, to win a state-wide ban on fracking, and together, we made history. That methane is staying in the ground.

This year, we return to Albany wearing many different hats that represent many different campaigns. Some of us are fighting to push open the door to renewable energy. Others are fighting to slam shut the door on various fracking infrastructure projects that are menacing our health and safety as well as our climate: the Constitution Pipeline; the Northeast Direct Pipeline; the Algonquin Incremental Market Pipeline; the Cayuga Power Plant; the Greenidge Power Plant; the CPV-Valley Power Plant; the Dominion New Market Project; the Chemung County landfill expansion; and compressor stations by the dozens.

It all matters. It’s all important. It’s all necessary.

As we disperse from a single statewide fight against fracking to a multitude of local infrastructure fights, our activism diversifies and becomes more community focused. This trend represents a return to our activist roots. During the fracking wars, before the tribes united into a statewide coalition, we were also fighting on many local fronts and in many town halls. It’s how we began.

In this return to the local, we bring with us three precious things from our statewide fight. First, we bring scientific knowledge. We can now all cite chapter and verse on the global warming potential of natural gas vis-à-vis carbon dioxide over various time frames, for example. And that knowledge emboldens us.

Second, we have newfound political skills that empower us. And third, we have trusted friends from all over the state who encourage us. We know now how to stick together, reinforce each other’s work, and generate synergy. Together, we are greater than the sum of our parts.

But most critically, no matter how widely distributed our individual battles are, we still share a common goal. We want an end to New York’s ruinous dependency on fracked gas, along with all of the hateful, harmful infrastructure that comes with it.

We seek to replace every burner tip—from power plants to basement furnaces—with energy systems that look up—to the sun and the wind—instead of down at the graveyards of Devonian fossils.

Governor Cuomo, we want you to tell the world that New York is so done with keeping the lights on by building more crematoria for the burning of more prehistoric plants and animals, whose extraction from the ground and transportation to the flame destroys our climate, our water and our health.

An end to fossil fuels is our united goal.

And it’s a goal shared by people all over the world. I met many of them in Paris last month at the U.N. climate talks where climate activists were collectively referred to as “civil society.” Its members include indigenous people from South America and the Pacific Islands, grandmothers from Ireland, the knitting nanas of Australia. All together, they pressured negotiators into adopting a strong treaty based on good science.

Nevertheless, the ability to enact it, to “make it so,” depends on all of us.

Our vision for New York is that our state should serve as a shining, transformational example to the rest of the world for how to create a vigorous economy with 100 percent renewable energy.

To help make it so, here’s what we are doing back home at Seneca Lake. We are engaged in a David and Goliath struggle. The Goliath is a Houston-based gas company called Crestwood that wants to store fracked gases in the abandoned salt caverns along the lakeshore. Seneca Lake serves as a source of drinking water for 100,000 people. This lake is so deep that it also operates as a thermostat for the whole region, creating a microclimate ideally suited to the growing of wine grapes.

The David is We Are Seneca Lake, which is made up of local members of civil society—teachers, nurses, winemakers, mothers, grandfathers, farmers, business owners, veterans—who blockade in Goliath’s driveway.

If there is no other way, we will stand in the way. Our ongoing blockade has continued for 16 months and resulted in 460 arrests. Six of these arrests happened just this Monday, involving New Yorkers from five different counties.

Always peaceful and respectful, We are Seneca Lake protesters are the girl scouts of civil disobedience, but our resolve is unrelenting. We know that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which approves all these natural gas infrastructure projects, is largely unresponsive to all other forms of citizen opposition.

When there are other ways, We Are Seneca Lake also engages in lawful activism to redress grievance. Crestwood proposes to store in the Seneca salt caverns not just methane but also LPG. That decision rests with Governor Cuomo’s Department of Environmental Conservation and has not yet been made.

So, today, together with our partner, Gas Free Seneca, we will be delivering to the Governor’s office over 500 letters and a petition with over 1,000 signatures. These represent only the most recent batch of petition and letter deliveries we’ve made this year.

We’d like to partner with all of you. We know that Seneca Lake sits upstream from the multitude of pipelines and gas plants and compressor stations that you are fighting. If our salt caverns are filled with gas, Seneca Lake will be filling those pipelines.

Hence, we invite you to join us. Join us for a petition and letter delivery to the governor’s office. Join us on the shoreline of our beautiful home. We are all Seneca Lake.

#   #   #   #   #   #

Update on the natural gas emergency at the Porter Ranch Gas Storage Field in southern California:  ”Utility Understated Levels of Cancer-Causing Chemical from Gas Leak“

Helen Slottje Wins Goldman Prize: $175,000

Central New York State: anti-fracking activist wins world’s largest environmental prize

From an Article by Scott Waldman, Albany Capital Report, April 28, 2014

ALBANY—The world’s largest environmental prize has been awarded to an Ithaca-based lawyer who has helped organize fracking bans in dozens of New York communities. For winning the Goldman Prize, the lawyer, Helen Slottje, will receive $175,000 award and an unprecedented level of international attention.

Slottje, a despised figure among gas industry officials, has helped enact fracking bans in 172 communities across New York in the last five years. Even if the state’s five-year moratorium on hydraulic hydrofracking were to be lifted tomorrow, Slottje’s work could cause a major issue for energy companies here.

In an interview, Slottje said she’ll use the prestige and money that comes with the award to raise global awareness of her campaign. “Fracking is a symptom of a much larger problem in our society, an oligarchy, a complete separation of people making decision and those whose lives they affect,” she said.

Slottje, 46, also plans to take the California bar exam, since anti-fracking activists have gained ground in that state, in preparation for taking on a greater role there. A ban this week in Beverly Hills clearly borrowed directly from Slottje’s work, even though she was not contacted for that case.

And she says she’ll put more of her legal work online so that communities can use her local control argument in their own legal battles.

Slottje waded into the fracking battle almost by accident. She and her husband David, with whom she does much of her work, were corporate lawyers when they moved from Boston to Ithaca. She attended a community meeting where activists described the risks of fracking and was so shocked by the images and by the proliferation of leases across New York that she turned it into a call to arms. She was soon traveling the state, to town halls and demonstrations, to volunteer her legal services.

Her opponents say she has turned community members against each other, and that she has encouraged outsiders to exercise influence on small towns across New York that need jobs and tax revenue. Slottje said she’s done the opposite, by giving communities more of a say than multi-billion dollar energy companies. ”We’re going to do whatever we think is going to help the voice of the people,” she said.

In June, the legality of all of the local fracking bans in New York will essentially be tested when two of the earliest ones are defended in the state’s highest court.

The two cases—one in Dryden, outside of Ithaca, and the other in Ostego County’s Middlefield—are now before the state Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court. Oral arguments have been scheduled for June and a decision could come later this year. The outcome of those cases will likely have significant implications for moratoriums enacted throughout New York because they deal with the right of towns to override state law. Oral arguments are scheduled for June and a decision is expected in the fall.

The fracking opposition in Dryden received funding from the Park Foundation, which has given millions to support anti-fracking efforts. Opponents dropped a prominent legal case for a ban in Binghamton after the newly elected mayor expressed his support for expansion of the energy industry, a shift from the former mayor, who welcomed a ban.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has not indicated when or whether the state will lift the nearly six-year moratorium on high-volume hydraulic hydrofracking, or whether the state will even provide any indications on the matter before Election Day.

Click here to see the video.

Responsible Associated Landowners of New York State

Bill Feldman of Andes Works! describes the Responsible Associated Landowners of New York State, or REALNYS, as “a site by and for like-minded landowners who are against slick water, high volume hydrofracturing (fracking) of our lands to extract shale gas and oil.”

Feldman and fellow REALNYS board member Leigh Melander, also of Andes Works!, have put together a video to educate fellow landowners on the tactics of the gas industry so that citizens can make informed decisions about their land and engage in shaping public policy.

REALNYS is an ad hoc, grassroots group of community volunteer landowners from all over the state who have no agenda other than to protect their land and future from the damages of fracking.

Feldman hopes that REALNYS will be a place for people to do something positive for their communities and take a stand against the bullying of the gas industry. Already, more than 1,565 members have signed up to protect their more than 32,000 acres of land.

Visit EcoWatch’s FRACKING page for more related news on this topic.

Sarah Laskow of Capital -  New York published the following article on August 9th after finding a few people in the Southern Tier of New York State that see fracking as positive on balance in spite of many environmental issues.  These people apparently have not yet experienced Marcellus drilling and fracking in its full blown aspects.

Bob Lyon’s ecolodge is going up in New York’s Southern Tier, on top of one of the thickest, most potentially lucrative sections of the Marcellus Shale, which is possibly the single largest source of newly accessible natural gas in the country.

His family owns almost 300 undeveloped acres in Tioga County—a private nature preserve. Every morning, he sees a bald eagle fishing in one of his ponds, with her two eaglets. Twice a week, two pairs of mating bob cats pass through.

The gas company that drilled the well on top of Lyon’s hill wanted to start fracking—extracting natural gas using a controversial drilling technique without which the gas would be unreachable—until the New York Department of Environmental Conservation put a moratorium on the practice.

With the ban in place, the company capped the well and retreated. From the porch, there’s no evidence the industry was there at all. Since then, Lyon’s been released from the original gas lease on the land. But if the gas company were to come back, to open the possibility of a new lease, he would sign it.

Under New York law a company could harvest the gas underneath his property, anyway, from a well drilled elsewhere, paying him royalties for the bounty extracted. But Lyon, 50, a dentist, a philanthropist, the owner of a small construction company whose family has lived in this area as long as any white people have, would also sign the lease because he’s all for natural gas drilling.

Lyon considers himself an environmentalist. He moved out here to the country full-time because he wanted to live in the middle of nowhere. He has an agreement with the state that keeps him from mowing his lawns in mid-July so that fawns and the chicks of wild turkeys have safe places to nestle into the tall grass. He cares deeply about the quality of the water on this piece of land: He’s seen pintails, blue- and green-winged teals, hooded mergansers, common mergansers, and once, three weeks last sweltering summer, a great white heron who had no business being this far north.

“They wouldn’t be here unless the water was crystal-clear perfect,” Lyon said. He knows there are risks to fracking, and that accidents have happened in other states, and that the gas industry, like any industry, has a financial incentive to take shortcuts.  ”If anyone stands to lose a gigantic amount, it would be me and my wife,” he said. “We invested our life savings in this property.”

But he sees benefits to drilling, too, including the relative environmental benefit of a fuel source that produces less carbon pollution than other fossil fuels. He thinks the gas industry has had enough time and made enough mistakes that it can operate with a measure of common sense now. He’s pleased that the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation took the time to look closely at fracking and at the best way to regulate the industry. Now he thinks it’s time for them to get out of the way.

Three years ago, big environmental groups like the Sierra Club and Greenpeace were arguing for natural gas development without any of the caveats they bring up today. Opposition came primarily from small grassroots organizations that were at least as concerned with local environmental impacts as with the global-scale carbon impact on which national groups were focused.

Many of the locally focused grassroots opponents want to ban fracking altogether, and in response, the national environmental groups have grown more cautious in their support of natural gas. The tentative, unusual alliance between environmentalists and the natural gas industry has fallen apart, and the debate in Washington has reverted to more typical form, with Republicans arguing that government regulation is stifling business opportunity and Democrats arguing that government-imposed restrictions are the only thing stopping the profit-hungry industry from doing irreparable damage to the environment.

It’s still possible to find people in the environmental movement who think fracking for natural gas should go forward, with the right regulations. It’s also possible to find Democratic politicians, including President Obama, who agree with them.

If there is such a thing as safe fracking, New York arguably has the best chance of any state of pulling it off. Governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration has proceeded more slowly than other state governments with such large and potentially productive sections of shale within their jurisdictions. This summer, the administration floated the idea, via a front-page article in The New York Times, of opening up five counties in the Southern Tier for fracking, if local governments approve the drilling. A real fracking plan will reportedly be out by Labor Day.)

I met Bob Lyon because I went looking for people in the Southern Tier who actually believed in what Obama and Cuomo seem to be promising. I wasn’t sure these people even existed: the position that Obama and other politicians have staked out feels like a mushy political ground between the greener Democrats worried about unforeseeable environmental consequences of fracking and anti-regulation Republicans who think Americans deserve quick access to any fossil fuels found in the ground.

But I found at least a handful of people living in the five counties where fracking could go forward—an organic dairy farmer, a retired international businessman, a family that gets its electricity from solar panels— who cared deeply about the fate of their land, water and air, who didn’t trust the gas industry to protect those resources, and who thought that New York should let fracking go ahead.

These people aren’t necessarily representative of views in the area. All of them identified as environmentalists. All of them owned land and stood to benefit financially from gas leases, although all of them said money wasn’t a motivating factor for them. All of them belonged or had belonged to landowners’ coalitions, some of which are friendlier with the gas industry than others. There are plenty of people in the Southern Tier who don’t share their perspective—drilling opponents convinced that fracking will ruin the place they’ve build their homes and drilling supporters who aren’t particularly concerned about the environment.

One way of looking at the politicians and people who think safe fracking is possible: They’re caught up in the Great American Fantasy—my lawyer’s better than your lawyer. Write the right regulations or draw up a stronger lease and any potential issues will disappear (or result in substantial financial remuneration).

But the pro-drilling environmentalists I talked to were thoughtful about the risk of fracking and also mindful of the rewards. Some of them thought it was important for the state to closely monitor and regulate fracking. Others thought the best protection against environmental risk was a strong lease with protections built in. All of them also acknowledged that the process isn’t perfect, that accidents happen, that they’re betting a valued asset—their land—on their conviction that fracking can be done right.

“People have blown it out of proportion,” said Christy Everitt. “There was methane in the water before.” Everitt, 50, lives outside of Vestal, New York, in Broome County. Her husband grew up here, and she grew up just across the border, in Pennsylvania. They bought this property in 1995, and they plan on living here for the rest of their lives.

They built their house on top of a hill, facing south to suck up passive solar energy, and down below three substantial solar panels tilt toward the sky. They grow vegetables in a small garden, compost their food scraps, and are raising chickens. When it’s hot out, they don’t depend on air conditioning: They retreat to the cooler basement or, as on the day I came by, sit outside on a bench beneath a tree, where a breeze often floats by.

This land had been available for a while when Everitt and her husband had the chance to purchase it. There was already a power line on the property and a gas pipeline, features that aren’t exactly popular with potential landowners. But to her mind, those are the things required to live with billions of people on the planet.

“Do I really want it in my backyard? Not really,” she said. “But I don’t want to use it and have no responsibility for it coming into my hands.” That’s one reason she supports drilling. People like solar, but they don’t really know what’s involved, she said—how many big, unsightly panels it takes to create enough electricity to power even one house. They fight wind turbines, too, just because they’re ugly.

“Most of the people who oppose gas, they don’t have their facts quite straight,” she said. “I don’t want anything to happen to this community or to my property.”

 By Sarah Laskow, Capital — New York, August 9, 2012