Town conservation commissions can play a limited role in reviewing plans for a pipeline project that would pass through eight Franklin County towns, according to the statewide organization of those boards.
“FERC is in charge,” Eugene Benson, Massachusetts Association of Conservation Commissions executive director, told members of the Franklin Regional Council of Governments’ Pipeline Advisory Committee recently. “At the end of the day, FERC can do pretty much what it wants” despite the National Environmental Policy Act review that’s now under way.
Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co. has proposed a Northeast Energy Direct project that would pass through Ashfield, Conway, Deerfield, Shelburne, Montague, Erving, Northfield, Warwick and the Hampshire County town of Plainfield.
The federal regulatory agency has said it doesn’t have to choose an alternative with less of an environmental impact, but can balance costs and economic benefits in making a determination.
State and local laws are preempted by federal oversight under the Natural Gas Act, Benson said, although federal Clean Water, Clean Air and Endangered Species acts as well as other federal requirements can be excluded from the preemption, along with lands purchased with money from the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund.
But conservation commissions, charged with protecting wetlands, managing storm water, and runoff and sediment control can issue orders to the pipeline developer requiring restoration of affected resource areas, the town representatives were told.
Scott Jackson, an MACC vice president from Whately, told the board that the association plans to conduct training sessions for conservation panels in affected towns if FERC issues a certificate for the TGP project to explain what the limits of their role would be and how to maximize their authority in mitigating erosion and controlling sediment flow into waterways. There are also opportunities for the commissions to oversee restoration or mitigation of features important to wetlands and resource areas, he said.
“When a pipeline goes through an area, they disrupt the area so that you have no idea what it looked like beforehand,” said Jackson, who also chairs the conservation commission in Whately, which is not along the proposed project route. “You’re likely to lose a lot of the characteristics that were important for wildlife habitat, but also roughness in floodplains is really important for flood control, and there are other functions that you might be able to restore if there’s a fairly detailed restoration plan that’s required ahead of time.”
It’s very important for commissions to prepare a detailed inventory of characteristics of wetland resource areas along the pipeline route, or to develop a restoration plan for afterward, or a mitigation plan to prevent damage to areas that can’t be restored, he added.
It’s also key, Jackson said, to call on FERC, during the current environmental review process, to require the company to go to local conservation commissions for permits under the state Wetlands Protection Act.
“Getting good terms in the (FERC) certificate is going to be essential if the pipeline is approved,” he said. “Without that, the commissions have no role to play … You can’t affect whether the pipeline goes through, you can’t affect where the pipeline goes through and you can’t affect the timing of when it goes through, but there’s a lot of how the pipeline goes through that you can affect.”
The Wetlands Protection Act has performance standards that allow a lot of leeway for protection and mitigation, he said.
Benson said the association commented to FERC on “the lack of good environmental analysis” by the company in its pre-application process.