Jane Winn, Executive Director of the Berkshire Environmental Action Team (BEAT) came to Log Lunch on January 23 to talk about the proposed Northeast Energy Direct Pipeline (NEDP) by Kinder Morgan in Massachusetts. Kinder Morgan, an energy company, has proposed the NEDP to transport natural gas to Massachusetts and beyond.
This 36-inch diameter pipeline would run through four states in a fifty-foot corridor, starting in Pennsylvania, moving through Right, New York, and coming into Massachusetts to end in Dracut. While the current pipeline’s route crosses Lanesborough and Cheshire, the route is not finalized. Winn alleged that Kinder Morgan has changed the route to antagonize towns against each other, yet Winn and her fellow activists are part the growing grassroots movement arisen in part from towns contrarily forming a coalition against industry,
There are five pipelines scheduled to come through Massachusetts in the next few years, but the NEDP would come online the latest, scheduled for November 2018 at the earliest and is the only one that would not replace or go alongside an existing pipe. Excluding natural gas power plants, this project would be the largest natural gas infrastructure project ever in the state.
Industry officials believe that the pipeline is clean, cheap, reliable, and necessary. However, Winn refutes each of these claims.
First, the pipeline would be a dirty, environmental hazard. Kinder Morgan claims that the pipeline would be collocated with existing high-energy power lines, however, Winn noted that proposed routes would actually raze new tracts of land parallel to these utilities. In addition to the pipeline construction damage, the process of obtaining the natural gas creates massive amounts of non-potable water and lagoons full of the chemical-laden liquid used to frack down into the shale. The methane gas itself is also thirty-four times as powerful of a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide over one hundred years. This project plus the natural gas emitted from the fracking fields would severely set back Massachusetts’s carbon reduction target, more than doubling emissions over the 1990 baseline goal.
Moreover, the pipeline would not be cheap. Even though gas prices are very low, Winn argued that prices could increase in the future. Not only are prices overseas much higher than in the States but demand could increase while the supply falls, two factors that may indicate higher prices when the shale boom subsides.
Finally, the pipeline may not guarantee a reliable supply of natural gas. Securing natural gas over time could become increasingly more difficult as industry most likely has already targeted the easiest and most fruitful locations to drill wells.
Winn noted that present alternatives to this pipeline deem it unnecessary. For example, if the region focused on energy efficiency and conservation, for example, by reducing peak energy use, consumers would need less energy and the increased supply from the pipeline.
The state of the contentious Northeast Energy Direct Pipeline is quite uncertain. Activists like Winn are working across the state to ensure that this project remains only an idea.
For more on the campaign against the NEDP pipeline, please visit the following sites:
http://www.thebeatnews.org/BeatTeam/beat-opposes-proposed-pipeline/,
http://www.nofrackedgasinmass.org.
By Sara Clark ‘15
