Press Release:
Albany, NY — More than 150 grassroots groups, businesses, faith
communities, and organizations such as Food & Water Watch, Clean Air
Coalition, NRDC, and Sierra Club are requesting that the New York State
Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) extend the public comment period
for National Fuel’s Northern Access 2016 Project. In a letter delivered to the DEC on
Friday, February 17, the groups contend that one month is
insufficient for communities and organizations to study and comment on a
project the size and complexity of the proposed pipeline.
The controversial Northern
Access pipeline would be nearly 100 miles long and cross hundreds of sensitive
streams and wetlands in Western New York, including state-protected trout
streams and an aquifer that provides water for thousands of residents. The
majority of the pipeline’s gas—a half-billion cubic feet per day from
Pennsylvania’s shale fields—would be exported, passing under the Niagara River
into Canada.
The DEC combined comment
hearings for air and water permits, allowing members of the public only three
minutes to provide verbal comments on both. According to Diana Strablow of
the Sierra Club’s Niagara Group, two of the three hearing locations
were too small; many people arrived prepared to comment but left
when they saw overflow crowds and no available seating. “That deprived people
of their right to be heard,” says Strablow.
Though the DEC is also
accepting written comments, concerned residents have been calling and emailing
the agency for weeks, asking for more information, more hearings, and more time
to comment.
Governor Cuomo, in his 2017
State of the State address, said New York “must double down by investing in the
fight against dirty fossil fuels and fracked gas from neighboring states.” But
Northern Access would move more gas into New York, as well as export gas to
Canada.
“National Fuel is in a hurry to
lay pipe,” says Lia Oprea, a landowner on the proposed route whose Erie County
farm is on the National Historic Register. “But this project defies the
governor’s vision for New York. We worry the company is pressuring the DEC into
approving yet another unnecessary pipeline that enriches corporations but
threatens public health and safety.”
In April 2016, the DEC denied a
key water-quality certificate for the Constitution Pipeline, a project that
would have involved fewer stream and wetland crossings than Northern Access but
similarly flawed construction methods. The DEC concluded the
project would have endangered New York water.
Emphasizing that the Northern
Access pipeline could dramatically harm air and water quality, the groups are
asking the DEC to grant an additional 60 days for public comment on the
project. The current deadline for comments is February 24, 2017.
