BOSTON — The fight against natural gas pipelines in Massachusetts has not subsided in the wake of Kinder Morgan’s suspension of work on its controversial $3.3 billion Northeast Energy Direct project.
More than 150 anti-pipeline protesters gathered outside the State House Tuesday to call for an end to other proposed pipelines in the state, their chants of “No to pipelines” and “Yes to clean energy” drowning out the notes of “America the Beautiful” playing from a Laborers International Union of North America truck that displayed pro-pipeline messages while waiting in traffic nearby.
A pro-pipeline advertising truck drove by the State House Tuesday while anti-pipeline activists chanted on the sidewalk.
In late April, Kinder Morgan said it would suspend spending and construction on a pipeline that would have run through parts of Massachusetts. The company cited inadequate commitments from prospective customers. In July 2015, the company’s board had authorized Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co. to move forward with a big investment in pipeline capacity from Wright, N.Y. to Dracut.
Kathryn Eiseman of the Massachusetts Pipe Line Awareness Network told ralliers that the suspension marked “a milestone and a victory, but not yet a complete victory.”
Eiseman said her group has filed a motion with federal energy regulators seeking full denial of the Northeast Direct project.
“We need a clean break from that,” she said, also speaking against Kinder Morgan’s Connecticut Expansion project that would bring a 3.8-mile pipeline loop to Sandisfield.
Activists vowed to stop Spectra Energy’s West Roxbury Lateral Pipeline project and said they have trained 300 volunteers who are willing to risk arrest by physically halting work at construction sites. Forty-four have been arrested so far, several of whom joined the State House protest, said Marla Marcum of the group Resist the Pipeline.
“It’s important for these people who got in the way with their bodies to still show up here and talk to these folks and ask them to use the power that they have in that building to do what they can to stand up for us,” Marcum said. “But the way that the system is rigged, they can’t actually do everything we need.”
The laborers union truck drove by the rally in multiple loops, bearing signs with messages including “LiUNA! supports pipelines that help secure our energy future” and “Access Northeast means jobs.” A project of Eversource Energy, National Grid, and Spectra, the Access Northeast Pipeline would run through New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
After the demonstration, protesters streamed into the State House, where many attended a Senate Committee on Global Warming and Climate Change hearing on the Northeast Energy Direct Pipeline and the state’s energy future.