Pipeline Foes in 4 States Join to Fight Spectra Expansion

Individuals, grassroots groups and towns from New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts have formed a coalition to file a Request for Rehearing in response to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s approval of the first phase of Spectra Energy’s expansion program.

• RELATED: Officials Reschedule Algonquin Pipeline Protest

The coalition of residents and groups includes: Better Future Project (MA); Capitalism v. the Climate (CT), Community Watersheds Clean Water Coalition (NY); Food & Water Watch; Fossil Free Rhode Island; Keep Yorktown Safe; City of Peekskill, NY; Sierra Club Lower Hudson Group; Stop the Algonquin Pipeline Expansion; W. Roxbury Saves Energy (WRSE) and affected residents of W. Roxbury and Dedham, MA.

The coalition engaged DC attorney Carolyn Elefant to file a motion April 2 asking FERC to vacate its order approving the AIM project. If FERC rejects the Request for Rehearing, the parties will evaluate whether to take legal action.

“Local, state and federal elected officials and citizens along the entire AIM route have repeatedly cited the flawed, inadequate FERC review,” Suzannah Glidden, a co-founder of Stop the Algonquin Pipeline Expansion (SAPE), said in a prepared statement. “The Certificate should be withdrawn due to lack of substantial evidence to support its recommendation to proceed with the AIM project.”

After Spectra submitted its application to FERC last year, groups and individuals from New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts filed to become intervenors in the FERC process, SAPE officials said.

Becoming an intervenor entitles a party to file a Request for Rehearing within 30 days after FERC’s issuance of an approval Certificate.

“In light of the serious health, safety, and environmental concerns that FERC failed to address before approving this dangerous project, the agency must grant a rehearing,” Alex Beauchamp, Northeast Regional Director of Food & Water Watch argued. “Without studying the threats posed to the Indian Point Nuclear facility or the human health risks from airborne contaminants, it is disgraceful that FERC has approved the AIM pipeline.”

When FERC issued the Certificate approving the project it failed to adequately consider dangerous health and safety impacts as the pipeline and its infrastructure invade the region, opponents said. For example, FERC approved siting the 42-inch diameter high pressure pipeline next to the Indian Point nuclear facility in a seismic zone in Buchanan, New York and a new pipeline and Metering & Regulating station next to an active quarry in W. Roxbury, Massachusetts.

“No meaningful alternatives to a high-pressure lateral scheduled to deliver nearly 30 percent of the proposed gas via the AIM expansion were provided despite repeated requests from citizens and politicians alike,” said Rickie Harvey of West Roxbury Saves Energy, MA. “Because this proposed West Roxbury Lateral pipeline traverses a densely settled neighborhood adjacent to an active quarry, a full rehearing is warranted.”

The Spectra AIM project, a $1 billion plan, is the first of three Spectra pipeline expansion projects to ship massive quantities of “natural” gas from the Marcellus Shale to New England to Canada where it is likely to be exported overseas, members of the coalition said.

”As a climate justice organization, we have been fighting the AIM project every step of the way, both through regulatory avenues like the request for rehearing and through grassroots organizing in communities all along the pipeline route,” Emily Kirkland of the Better Future Project in Boston said. “It’s simply irresponsible to expand the Algonquin Pipeline when we know that our continued addiction to fossil fuels is exacerbating the climate crisis and putting our safety at risk. We should be transitioning as quickly as possible to clean energy, not deepening our dependence on fossil fuels.”

Editor’s note: The town of Cortlandt, NY is filing its own Request for Rehearing. It was included in the list of joint filers in the original version of this report.