On Friday, March 11, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company’s proposed Connecticut Expansion Project.
This approval by FERC doesn’t bode well for FERC’s future denial of Kinder Morgan’s/Tennessee’s Gas Pipeline’s pending application the NED pipeline.
According to a March 12 article in The Greenfield Recorder: “a 3.81-mile-long, 36-inch diameter pipe loop near Sandisfield that would cut across nearly four miles of Otis State Forest, which is protected under Article 97 of the Massachusetts State Constitution. … A legislative bill to release that land for use as a pipeline is pending in the Massachusetts Legislature, where it would have to be approved by a two-thirds vote of the legislative branches.”
Even if the Legislature rejects this pending bill, an environmental precedent is still likely to be established. People must understand that FERC is not in business to judge the environmental merits and negative effects of pipeline applications, but whether or not they correctly followed a “standard operating application procedure” outlined by FERC. In the past, FERC has approved over 99.5 percent of all fracked-gas and oil pipeline applications. Thus, no matter how many legitimate environmental concerns we throw at FERC, as well as the factual truth that more natural gas is not needed by the people of western Mass., FERC is still likely to approve it.
President of the Massachusetts Senate, Stan Rosenberg has recently alerted us all to a harsh truth: “It’s true that no pipeline ever approved by FERC has ever not been built as a result of local or state challenge!” Now that it is clear that FERC is not on our side, the local community will have really think about what strategic steps we can take to stop this pipeline.
JESSE BAILEY
Greenfield