Pipeline Protesters Enlist Trees

Opponents of Spectra Energy’s Algonquin Pipeline expansion project, which has started construction in Rockland and Westchester counties, sent out a press release about a secretive protest action taken at Blue Mountain Preserve in Cortlandt.

Orange ribbons were tied around trees there, near where construction will be clear-cutting along the current pipeline’s right of way.

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Here’s the whole press release sent out by SAPE:

A grove of trees in Westchester County’s Blue Mountain Reservation in the Town of Cortlandt is staging a protest in an effort to save their fellow trees from being cut down along the 1½ mile Spectra Energy AIM pipeline route through the reservation. These trees also represent thousands of other trees to be felled along the entire pipeline route from Ramapo, NJ to Boston, MA. Public parks are everyone’s back yard, yet Spectra Energy Partners, a private corporation, was granted permission to cut down over 1,000 trees to install their 42” diameter, high-volume, high-pressure gas pipeline in the park. Blue Mountain, a 1600-acre county preserve, is a vital haven for wildlife which provides countless benefits to residents of the county. Westchester County, in providing the license to Spectra for its construction in Blue Mountain Reservation, may have illegally circumvented New York State law.

This morning, hundreds of trees near the pipeline donned orange “Do Not Cut” tape in revolt. As Spectra expands its right-of-way to 125 feet, many of these trees may be felled and the surrounding environment will be degraded. Destruction of public parkland, along with the threat posed by the same pipeline’s proximity to the Indian Point nuclear facility in Buchanan, NY, has caused residents and elected officials to call for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to review its decision to permit the project. Although the federal Natural Gas Act requires the agency to issue a decision on appeals within 30 days, FERC can extend the deadline indefinitely by issuing what is called a “tolling order,” as it has in this situation. In some recent cases throughout the country, FERC issued its decision after the pipes were already in the ground with the gas flowing.

The approval process for the Spectra Algonquin Incremental Market project has been fraught with unresolved concerns and irregularities. Authorities have called Spectra’s Environmental Impact Statement woefully incomplete and misleading. Nuclear safety expert, Paul Blanch, through a Freedom of Information Request, obtained documents indicating that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission provided erroneous and incomplete information to FERC, which subsequently approved the pipeline expansion plan. FERC, according to its website, “has no jurisdiction over pipeline safety or security, but actively works with other agencies with safety and security responsibilities”; however, there has never been a thorough, independent risk assessment of this high-pressure, high-volume gas pipeline 105 feet from vital structures at the nuclear facility. The new pipeline crosses the Indian Point property for 2,159 feet.

The grassroots group, Stop the Algonquin Pipeline Expansion (SAPE), learned about the trees’ protest from an anonymous source.

PHOTOS/SAPE