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Both Sides of Constitution Pipeline Debate Seek Action Before Deadline
BINGHAMTON, N.Y. -
Proponents of the Constitution Pipeline are calling on New York State to give it's final approval to the project before it's too late.
New York must grant what's called a 401 water certification before construction can begin in the state. The state has until the end of the month to grant the certification. The roughly 124-mile pipeline begins in Susquehanna County in Pennsylvania and runs through the Southern Tier into Schoharie County. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission - or FERC - approved the project in December of 2014.
"Right now I have over 200 people who are out of work waiting to go back to work. This project actually would employ about 200 of my laborers. This project would mean full employment if we could get it underway," said David Marsh, Business Manager of Laborers' Local 785.
"There are over 300,000 miles of interstate pipeline running across the country delivering the energy we need. This pipeline will deliver over 750,000 decatherms a day, enough energy to heat over 3 million homes. Obviously in the Southern Tier and across New York state we see that growing demand for energy," said Mike Atchie, Manager of Public Outreach at Williams Companies.
If New York doesn't grant the certification FERC could have the authority to move the project forward. The company wants to begin construction this summer to have service ready in the second half of 2017.
Not everyone is in favor of the pipeline project. One critic says a recent report by State Comptroller Tom Dinapoli and his own research show the state has been lax in oversight of pipelines and cleanup when things have gone wrong. He says the state can't grant the 401 water certification unless it can guarantee the pipeline project will not harm water quality, something he says is not possible.
"All the existing transmission pipelines have had problems including at least 114 fires, explosions, toxic discharges, massive ruptures that have caused water quality hazards that were never cleaned up," said Walter Hang, President of Toxics Targeting.
Hang has sent letters to the five remaining major-party Presidential candidates asking them to clarify their position on the pipeline. He feels it could be an issue during the April 19th primary if the race tightens before then.
Clinton, Sanders face off on fracking; Cruz bashes Kasich: 2016 Presidential Buzz
Hillary Clinton campaigns at a rally in Syracuse last week. (Ellen M. Blalock | eblalock@syracuse.com)
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are facing off over a hot-button issue in New York politics: fracking, according to the New York Times. Pressure from Sanders has been pushing Clinton steadily left on the issue, but she continues to face criticism. Climate change and opposition to fracking are especially important issues to the Democratic base in New York, which votes later this month. Clinton, who represented the state in the U.S. Senate, is looking for a big win. Activists are ready, the Times said. "We now have literally thousands of fractivists who are battle-tested, who understand the politics of these issues," Walter Hang, an activist in Ithaca, told the paper. "And they have zero inclination to give away their vote without firm commitments."
Ted Cruz wants John Kasich out of the race, according to the New York Times. He has been ramping up his calls for Kasich to drop out. Cruz is favored to win today's Wisconsin primary, which could provide him some momentum against Donald Trump. Cruz has been airing attacking ads against Kasich's record as governor of Ohio and has said he doesn't believe Kasich can win. Kasich called Cruz a smear artist.
A new poll found that Americans are deeply dissatisfied with the state of affairs in the country and anxious about the future, according to CNN. The Quinnipiac University poll, out today, found majorities described themselves as "under attack" and agreeing with the sentiment that "public officials don't care much about what people like me think." Those feelings were especially strong among supporters of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, CNN said. Voters also expressed feelings of economic uncertainty and said they want a leader who is "willing to do or say anything" to solve the nation's problems.
Trump is staring down a loss in Wisconsin, according to Politico. He had a bad week, with numerous controversial statements dominating the conversation, and his rival Ted Cruz is in firm control. More than 40 delegates are at stake in the state, which has a "winner-take-most" system. That means the statewide winner will pick up a big chunk of the total. Still, Trump is far ahead of his rivals in New York, the next state to vote. The primary here will award 95 delegates.
‘Fractivists’ Increase Pressure on Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in New York
A nasty row that erupted between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders over oil and gas industry donors last week is catapulting the issue of climate change into the race for the Democratic presidential nomination as it moves to New York, where an army of activists upstate is driven by opposition to drilling.
Mrs. Clinton has moved steadily left on the issue, under pressure from Mr. Sanders and his progressive allies, but she continues to come under assault, posing new challenges for her as the race moves to more liberal Northeastern states.
Last week, her mask of composure slipped when she angrily replied to a Greenpeace activist in Purchase, N.Y., “I am so sick of the Sanders campaign lying about me.”
Climate change is a powerful issue for voters in the Democratic base almost everywhere. But it has especially inspired grass-roots progressives in upstate New York, who fought — and won — a yearslong battle against fracking for natural gas.
Even after Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo banned fracking statewide in 2014, many activists — who call themselves fractivists — remain on the front lines of climate fights, and many are skeptical about Mrs. Clinton because of views she held in the Obama administration and earlier, as a New York senator from 2001 to 2008.
Concerned about her prospects upstate, she plans a heavy schedule of campaigning in the region before the April 19 primary, realizing she can no longer count on voters there as confidently as when she earned their support in her two Senate races, when she focused largely on economic issues.
“We now have literally thousands of fractivists who are battle-tested, who understand the politics of these issues,” said Walter Hang, an activist in Ithaca, N.Y. “And they have zero inclination to give away their vote without firm commitments.”
Both the Clinton and Sanders campaigns are said to have studied the progressive Democratic primary challenge to Mr. Cuomo two years ago by Zephyr Teachout, an unknown law professor who won a surprising 33 percent by challenging Mr. Cuomo from the left, partly by highlighting her staunch opposition to fracking.
Ms. Teachout carried counties on the Pennsylvania border and in the Finger Lakes region, where grass-roots anti-fracking groups mobilized voters.
The fracking battle is over, but the activism remains. Mrs. Clinton’s supporters are frustrated that climate activists are skeptical after she rolled out an ambitious renewable energy plan last year, more aggressive than Mr. Obama’s Clean Power Plan.
On Sunday, Mrs. Clinton defended her record on climate issues in Congress and as secretary of state, and said the Sanders campaign’s claims had been debunked. “I feel sorry sometimes for the young people who, you know, believe this,” she said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “They don’t do their own research.”
Since the start of the campaign, Mrs. Clinton has moved strikingly to the left on climate issues, including opposing the Keystone XL pipeline, offshore drilling and, indeed, most forms of fracking, a drilling technique also known as hydraulic fracturing.
In a debate last month in Flint, Mich., she said she would severely regulate fracking.
“By the time we get through all of my conditions,” she said, “I do not think there will be many places in America where fracking will continue to take place.”
But Mr. Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, had a snappy retort: “My answer is a lot shorter. No, I do not support fracking.”
The absolutism of Mr. Sanders’s position on this and other climate issues — as well as the fact that Mrs. Clinton arrived at her views under pressure from the left — has made many activists mistrustful of her and supportive of Mr. Sanders.
Alarmed by reports of potentially catastrophic polar ice melting and other disruptions, many environmentalists believe only a rapid transition to renewable energy is acceptable.
“We’re in the middle of a climate emergency, and have to keep all the fossil fuels in the ground,” said Sandra Steingraber, a scholar in residence at Ithaca College and an activist who supports Mr. Sanders. “Hillary Clinton has definitely shifted her positions. Whether she shifts them again should she become the Democratic candidate in a general election and softens them, that’s the question I hear people wondering about.”
As secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton pioneered a program to promote fracking around the world, as a way to encourage the use of cleaner-burning natural gas and to reduce Russia’s political leverage from its huge gas resources.
Fracking involves pumping water and chemicals deep in the ground under high pressure to blast rock and release gas or oil. The technology unleashed a United States energy boom beginning a decade ago, including the conversion of many coal-fired power plants to cheaper — and cleaner — gas.
Natural gas provides 33 percent of the nation’s electricity, up from 18 percent in 2005, according to the United States Energy Information Administration.
Mr. Obama has championed natural gas as crucial to his Clean Power Plan, seeking to cut by a third greenhouse emissions used to generate electricity by 2030.
Many energy analysts say that an outright ban on fracking, before wind and solar power are feasible at scale, will drive the country back to coal.
“Why not use a relatively clean fuel that’s low cost until it’s not needed,” said Alan Krupnick, a senior fellow at Resources for the Future, a nonpartisan research group in Washington.
He said Mr. Sanders’s call for an outright fracking ban, and Mrs. Clinton’s support for regulations so tough drilling would largely cease, were both unrealistic because most fracking is regulated by states, not Washington.
Mrs. Clinton’s step back from fracking is just one of several reversals on energy and environmental issues she has made since coming under pressure from progressives. Her decision to oppose the Keystone XL pipeline came in September, after she had avoided the issue repeatedly over the summer.
Her position on offshore drilling has also evolved. As secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton was asked to comment on an Interior Department proposal to expand offshore drilling in the Arctic Ocean and in the Gulf of Mexico. In a January 2012 letter, provided to The New York Times by the Republican National Committee, she wrote to the interior secretary, Ken Salazar, that the State Department had no comments to offer on the plan.
Now, as a presidential candidate, she has been a vocal opponent of offshore drilling. Last year, after the Obama administration moved forward with plans on new drilling in the Arctic and off the southeastern Atlantic coast, Mrs. Clinton came out against the plans, a move that was seen as an effort to court the progressive wing of her party.
The spat between the two campaigns over donations from the oil and gas industry, which quickly overheated last week, came as polls have tightened in New York, which Mrs. Clinton once led by a large margin.
On Friday, Mr. Sanders demanded that Mrs. Clinton apologize for accusing his campaign of lying by saying she took large sums from fossil fuel donors.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the Clinton campaign has received about $308,000 from individuals who work for oil and gas companies, less than 1 percent of her total donations.
The Sanders campaign points to a Greenpeace analysis claiming that in addition, oil and gas lobbyists directed more than $4.5 million to her campaign and to a “super PAC” supporting her.
But the lobbyists represent numerous industries, not just oil and gas, and the suggestion of a quid pro quo is shaky: Mrs. Clinton has pledged to end subsidies to the fossil fuel industry to pay for her ambitious climate plan.
Although fracking and other climate issues may sway primary voters in New York, they seem less likely to in the next delegate-rich state to vote, Pennsylvania, which has a large fracking industry developed under former Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat. Last month in Ohio, which has also benefited from the energy boom, Mrs. Clinton easily defeated Mr. Sanders
Republican candidates have promised to make Democrats’ tough stands against fossil fuels an issue in November. Donald J. Trump has said he can win New York as the Republican nominee because of the economic cost of the fracking ban, which he opposes. Last month he said that thanks to fracking, people across the border in Pennsylvania drove around in Cadillacs.
Audit says N.Y. pipeline oversight is lax
With the federal government relying on state regulators as "the first line of defense" in ensuring the safety of natural gas pipelines, New York's Department of Public Service must provide better oversight of the 91,181 miles of transmission infrastructure, an audit has determined.
The audit from the office of state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli found that from 1995 through 2014, New York had 194 pipeline "incidents," resulting in 23 fatalities, 123 injuries and $77 million in property damage.
The audit concluded that the Department of Public Service, the staff arm of the Public Service Commission, relies on information it gets from pipeline operators when it makes field visits, but does not verify that information.
The state regulators have also not set up a process for identifying instances where operators fail to notify them of incidents as required, the audit said.
In a third criticism, the auditors wrote that that Department of Public Service "does not perform analyses of all available data to better identify potential high-risk areas."
The report called attention to the March 2014 gas explosion that rocked the East Harlem neighborhood of New York City, killing eight people and injuring 70 more. The audit said federal investigators subsequently determined that the state DPS "had not adequately utilities to ensure operators who were fusing pipelines were properly qualified."
Since the Comptroller's audit, the state regulators have revised its plan to ensure its evaluations of pipeline operators at intervals that do not exceed five years and will include reviews of training, testing and on-site field evaluations, the report said.
While the new audit pointed out that the regulators have conducted all inspections required and followed up on violations, it suggested that it could do a better job incorporating data from outside sources "to better predict high risk areas in an effort to prevent incidents."
A Public Service Commission spokesman, James Denn, said the audit confirms the department has been fulfilling all requirements.
"We are proud of the fact that New York’s gas safety regulations are among the most stringent and best in the nation," Denn said. "With monitoring efforts even more stringent than federal requirements, we have a ‘best-in-class’ safety program in this critical industry."
Denn added: "This months-long state audit found us fundamentally in compliance with our oversight of the utilities’ maintaining public safety."
Walter Hang, an anti-fracking activist and founder of the Ithaca research firm Toxics Targeting, said the comptroller's report should be seen as further evidence that state agencies are not prepared to allow further expansion of gas infrastructure, such as the proposed Constitution Pipeline and Northeast Energy Direct pipeline projects.
"This echoes what thousands of citizens are telling Gov. Andrew Cuomo: to deny the Section 401 Water Quality Certificate" now being sought by the Constitution Pipeline planners, Hang said.
Both the Constitution Pipeline and NED would cut through Delaware and Schoharie counties, running just east of Interstate 88.
An advocate for the gas drilling industry, Marcellus Drilling News, slammed the comptroller's audit, contending the report was biased and lacked context by failing to delve into the number of railroad incidents and bridge accidents that have taken place during the time frame examined for pipeline incidents.
"When you stack up pipelines against any other form of transportation, pipelines are the safest mode of transport — by far," Marcellus Drilling News said on its web site.
Should Cuomo Halt Constitution Pipeline?
BINGHAMTON, N.Y. -
On the heels of a state Comptroller report that says New York has fallen short in it's oversight of pipelines, one person is asking Governor Cuomo halt the Constitution Pipeline project.
Walter Hang of Toxics Targeting wants Cuomo to deny what's called a 401 Water Quality Certification. He says this denial would grind the project to a halt. He worries that if Cuomo doesn't deny the certification by the end of April the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which has already approved the project, will grant the certification itself.
"Even the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission admits there are going to be unavoidable pollution hazards. And the record is New York State does not require them to be cleaned up," said Walter Hang, President of Toxics Targeting.
In a statement a spokesman for the pipeline project says pipe will be monitored 24 hours a day, 7 days a week with remotely operated shut-off valves. The project will also feature thicker steel pipe than required by industry regulation and more frequent inspections than required by law.