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.

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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“

MVP & ACP will disrupt public & private lands

Challenges opposing Mountain Valley Pipeline mounting

From an Article by Peggy Mackenzie, Mountain Messenger, November 6, 2015

On October 23rd, Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC (MVP) filed its permit application with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for authorization to build a massive 301-mile interstate natural gas transmission pipeline from the fracking fields of West Virginia over the mountains and into Virginia.

An article in the State Journal offered a battery of positive benefits the pipeline would provide the state, including an estimated $811 million that would be spent in West Virginia on labor, equipment, materials and services.

An example from that article is a quote from Steve Roberts, president of the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce, in which he states, “Over the long-term, the Mountain Valley Pipeline project will not only generate significant tax revenues for counties to fund local schools, roads and other important priorities of county government; but it will also serve as a magnet for manufacturers and other economic development opportunities for our various West Virginia communities along the route.”

That quote is a stark contrast to the intense opposition voiced among local, state and regional organizations representing tens of thousands of people, including landowners whose property or communities would be affected, forest and wildlife conservationists, land preservationists, outdoor recreationists, climate activists and others.

“The MVP is not a sign of progress, but is instead a step backward,” contends the Roanoke Times in an August article.

Anti-pipeline organization groups in Virginia and West Virginia are more aggressively fighting the flawed and exaggerated information published from MVP sponsored reports about the need for the pipeline in their filings to FERC.

As previously reported in the Mountain Messenger (October 31, 2015), 30 organizations in West Virginia and Virginia filed a letter to FERC to evaluate the true need for each of the four major pipelines currently proposed for the Blue Ridge and Central Appalachian region.

In their 50-page filing, the environmental groups describe in detail how the companies presented flawed and exaggerated information about the need for the pipeline, while ignoring the impacts to the environment, landowners, communities and the general public, as well as the economic and environmental benefits of cleaner sources of energy that development of the pipeline would displace. In particular, the project would: fragment the heart of the largest remaining wild landscape in the eastern U.S.; cut through farms that have been held in families for generations, severing people’s attachment to their home places; lower property values in the vicinity of the pipeline and gas drilling areas; exacerbate health and environmental threats in communities near the fracking operations; and further commit the nation to long-term dependence on climate-altering fossil fuels.

Additionally, a new study released in early October by Key-Log Economics, sponsored by 16 citizen grassroots and community organization groups, casts strong doubts on the claims made by MVP for economic benefits of the pipeline in Virginia and West Virginia. The report shows that previous studies, sponsored by MVP, largely ignore the public and external costs attending the construction, operation and presence of the MVP.

“To date, MVP LLC offers only vague assurances that the proposed MVP would impose no, or only minor, costs on agriculture, recreation, and other economic activities. It also claims that there would be no impact on property values, and that increases in community service costs would be minor and would occur only during the construction phase.”

One such study, published by FTI Consulting, described the purported economic benefits of the MVP, but ignored costs, including loss of landscape productivity, diminished property values, diminished economic development opportunities and reduced desirability of the pipeline-affected region as a destination of choice for businesses and residents. Other impacts ignored include increased community services costs due to damage to roads and bridges and greater need for emergency services.

The Key-Log Economics report concludes that FTI study’s “nearly exclusive focus on benefits means, at a minimum, that the jury is still out on whether the MVP is good or bad, at least economically, for the citizens and communities it will affect in West Virginia and Virginia.”

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net