Letter to the Editor: Outraged by NY DEC OK for Pipeline Project

To the Editor:

Resist Spectra, Stop the Algonquin Pipeline Expansion (SAPE), Safe Energy Rights Group (SEnRG), and Sane Energy Project are outraged that New York State, through the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), approved the 401 Water Quality Certificate (WQC) for the Atlantic Bridge Project to move fracked gas through New York.

The Atlantic Bridge Project, an illegally segmented section of Enbridge/Spectra Energy's massive “Algonquin” Pipeline Expansion, is only four miles long in New York State, but it will have detrimental effects on 21 surface waterbodies, including three protected trout streams and 15 wetlands. The entire project is sited for construction within sensitive watersheds including the New York City watershed, part of the drinking water source for more than eight million residents in the New York City metropolitan area.

The larger issue is that the DEC was required to also include any and all impacts to waterbodies in New York State by the Algonquin Incremental Market (AIM) Pipeline, the first segment of this project, already operating just 105 feet from critical safety infrastructure at the aging and failing Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant,in its Atlantic Bridge determination. While the Federal approval of the AIM Project is currently being challenged in the courts, Spectra/Enbridge is proceeding with the expansion. The DEC is statutorily obligated (New York Environmental Conservation Law § 3-0301) to "take into account the cumulative impact upon all of such resources in making any determination in connection with any license, order, permit, certification or other similar action or promulgating any rule or regulation, standard or criterion," and failed to do so in this case.

When Governor Cuomo banned fracking in New York State it was based on the imperative to protect the public health and welfare of New Yorkers and water resources of the state, including the New York City watershed. It is unconscionable that the state would approve a dangerous, polluting, and climate-change-exacerbating fracked gas transmission pipeline that carries these same threats, plus a significant risk of nuclear disaster to millions of New Yorkers.

Spectra showed throughout the process of building the AIM Project that it would not comply with wetlands and other environmental protections - Resist Spectra submitted hundreds of documents to the DEC documenting these violations. One violation was so egregious - illegally disrupting wetlands to find a lost drill bit on the banks of the Hudson RIver - that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) categorized it as a “significant violation” and sent a letter of sanction to Spectra.

In February 2016, Governor Cuomo commissioned a risk assessment of the dangers related to the co-location of Spectra’s AIM Project and the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant, that still has not been released. Also In 2016, Governor Cuomo and Senators Schumer and Gillibrand called on FERC to halt construction of the AIM Project because of the threat posed to the more than 20 million people in the evacuation radius of the plant. With the January 2017 announcement of the plant’s closure, the results of the risk assessment are more, not less, important. Closing Indian Point will be a multi-year process during which the AIM Project will continue to operate. Even once the plant is decommissioned, more than 40 years of spent radioactive fuel will remain on site in various storage locations, all of which remain within the blast radius of Spectra’s AIM Project and are vulnerable. New Yorkers deserve to know what the risk assessment shows and have those risks mitigated.

In his 2017 State of the State, Governor Cuomo said that NYS “must double down by investing in the fight against dirty fossil fuels and fracked gas from neighboring states” to meet our Clean Energy Standard goals. In light of all this information, the DEC still approved the WQC for a project that will put our water and our communities at risk. That DEC did so after denying the Constitution and Northern Access Pipelines' WQCs, projects shorter than the “Algonquin” Pipeline expansion, makes this approval indefensible.

We will continue to fight for the well-being of the environment and the people of New York, even as those entrusted with that duty neglect to do so.

Courtney Williams

Peekskill Resident and Vice President of Safe Energy Rights Group (SEnRG.org)