Boosterism, Shale Gas & Precarious Ecosystems - New Realities Emerge in Orange County, New York
Just 80 miles north of New York City, one of the largest shale gas power plant projects in the nation has emerged at a breathtaking speed and scale. ‘CPV’- a 650 megawatt shale gas-fired power plant would burn 127,200 dekatherms (Dth) per day of Marcellus Shale fracked gas for decades on end, extending New York State’s reliance on fossil fuels at the very juncture it should be dramatically transitioning to clean, renewable energy sources, meeting State Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emission targets. This urgent situation is all the more alarming as NYC’s mayor De Blasio and the Cuomo administration commit city and state to aggressive climate action in light of Trump’s disconcerting withdrawal from the Paris Agreement.
While political drama rages in the foreground, CPV continues apace, only increasing an already precarious energy future tethered to fracked gas decades to come. Some politicians like congressman Sean Patrick Maloney, perpetually tout CPV ‘job benefits’ while Todd Diorio, president of the Laborers Local 17, recently concluded in an open letter to Governor Cuomo:
You [Governor Cuomo] have done many good things for the building trades members but killing of pipelines upstate is beginning to become your legacy and it is hurting the upstate economy and growth.
At this late stage in the CPV project, why are politicians and labor organizers consumed with boosterism for CPV jobs and yet another pipeline? The answer can be found in a fateful document issued to CPV by Millennium Pipeline Company, LLC (Millennium) in 2011, years before CPV broke ground:
This simple, one-paragraph assurance from a pipeline company to a power plant company is the embodiment of the idiom ‘the cart before the horse’, encouraging CPV to proceed to construction PRIOR to the placement of required infrastructure. The unavoidable reality was then as it is now: the CPV power plant is sited nearly 8 miles away from any viable conduit to fracked shale gas. How this impasse is concluded will depend on many moving parts including state agencies like the New York State Department of Conservation (NYSDEC), big money, political and legal strife, and finally a looming corruption trial.
These days short shrift is the go-to political response to the ‘Percoco Corruption Trial’ connected to initial planning and permitting phases prior to construction of the CPV plant. In this scandal, now indictment, soon-to-be trial slated for Fall, 2017, Joseph Percoco, a close aide to Governor Cuomo, allegedly accepted bribes in expectation of curried favors benefiting Competitive Power Ventures & its CPV project. While many interests would certainly wish this debacle quashed, in fact it is the only foreseeable opportunity for the public to gain insight into machinations responsible for such a large project with vexing environmental issues that not only persist, but are becoming manifestly serious.
Perusal of the discovery index made public in late May, 2017 shows that several key agencies with connections to permitting and environmental review are prominent, including the Governor’s office, NYSDEC, New York Power Authority (NYPA), New York State Department of Public Service (NYSDPS), Orange County IDA and the Town of Wawayanda Planning Board. Somewhere in this pending case may be the answers to the public’s pressing concerns regarding the obvious adverse environmental impacts now taking form at the CPV project.
While impending environmental justice impacts of the CPV project have been well documented, ecosystem impacts are indeed becoming manifestly obvious to the public’s passing eye. As the towering scale of this project overwhelms any natural or manmade feature miles in every direction, the public is finally waking up to the fact that this project is monumentally aberrant of its surroundings - a largely rural, intact Mid-Hudson Valley.
Of particular concern are cumulative impacts (power plant + proposed pipeline) on wetlands, farmland, regional hydrology and ecosystems. While boosterism for jobs and economic development competes for dominance over existing interests, the undeniable fact remains that the Mid-Hudson Valley is a significant agricultural economic region completely dependent on ‘Ecological Services’ provided by intact landscapes. Further, the ancillary pipeline project known as the Valley Lateral Connect (VLC) would traverse southeast across prime, productive farmland crossing numerous wetlands and waterways - a questionable ‘preferred alignment’, one which the NYSDEC seems loath to grant the required 401 water quality certification. Finally, the public has repeatedly questioned the siting of this project in a region that slips in and out of attainment status for air quality, especially during summer months. As the project rises, and company officials even boast of 275 foot smoke stacks, its clear to even the most casual passerby that this project is not designed to deliver cleaner air. To follow - a series of maps, media and statistics pertaining to water, land & air now under threat from the burden of a CPV plant coupled to the proposed VLC pipeline.
The CPV Plant - Wetlands Erasure
Since inception of the project, the public has expressed repeated concerns about immediate wetland impacts. While the final project design delivered several ‘manufactured’ enhancements at the project site parcel, its is overwhelmingly evident that the previously intact farm and wetlands is now an massive industrialized land use with severely diminished ecological services on offer.
In the adjacent video a riparian buffer that formerly featured four shagbark hickory trees (Indiana Bat endangered species habitat) and associated vegetation is now an industrial slab.
Flowing northward, Carpenter Creek is now buttressed on both sides by impervious surfaces. Atop the development parcel itself are interspersed holding ponds, enclosures, industrial buildings and tanks - one a 15,000-gallon ammonia tank designed for a 19% concentration capacity. Coincidentally, once a 20% concentration level is achieved, a ‘catastrophic release model’ would be required, but of course none will be forthcoming as CPV diligently maintains its regulatory threshold buffer.
Taken together, industrial fixtures of the CPV plant now fully supplant previous natural features detailed at length in the project’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS), summarized as follows:
Section 14.2.2 Wetlands
As described above, the site contains a number of interconnected wetland areas. The site is relatively low and gently sloping, forming a broad bowl through which two perennial streams flow and conjoin. As a result, a large portion of the site, totaling approximately 70 acres out of the 122 total site acres, contains wetlands (See Figure 2–3). These wetlands occur as forested swamp (western and central parts of the site), Shallow emergent marsh/wet meadow (eastern part), shrub swamp (i.e., successional shrub/sapling areas intermixed with wet meadow) (central and eastern part), linear swales along the adjacent roadways and agricultural fields (western part), and active hayfields that contain hydric soils and dominant wetland vegetative species (northwestern part).
While the DEIS finding does its best to convince the public that no adverse impacts will result with the wholesale erasure of natural habitats and intact ecosystems - indeed discussion ensues offering wetland ‘enhancements’ - the public is fooled not one bit. The pre-construction vs. construction comparison above underscores the public’s rightful, increasing concern that deleterious impacts on a massive scale are now part and parcel of the CPV plant site.
The Valley Lateral Connect - Increasing Risks & Steepening Costs
While CPV was given assurances in 2011 by Millennium that the VLC project would be a ‘slam dunk’ so to speak, reality has proven a much harder game for Millennium. The NYSDEC has repeatedly issued Notice of Incomplete Application letters (NOIA) to Millennium, and the application ‘clock’ is now being determined in court. While Millennium and its various political, economic and labor boosters denigrate NYSDEC for ‘not doing its job’, simply following the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission docket (FERC) shows an agency very engaged indeed. The fact that Millennium is not handed outright its required state permits is not the fault of regulatory agencies; it is the fault of a badly designed project full of adverse environmental impacts. While the project’s farmland impacts have been documented at length coupled with Millennium’s dismal farmland remediation history in the adjacent ‘Black Dirt’ agricultural region, its becoming clear that the most perilous and costly impacts of the proposed project may be to wetlands and waterways.
On June 2, 2017, Millennium filed an amendment to their original project application at FERC whereby two critically important project details were revealed. First, the estimated project cost has swelled from $39,491,902.00 to $57,333,877.00 - an astounding 45% cost increase. This price increase alone should give pause to all parties involved- the applicant, investors, contractors and regulating agencies. Second, these price increases are due largely to underestimation of wetland and waterway crossings that would have to be accomplished across the nearly 8 mile ‘preferred’ project alignment. What is even more astounding is the following statement from the amendment application that underscores the sheer amount of water features that must be circumvented:
The revised estimate assumes trenchless installation of approximately 17,600 feet, or 42.7 percent, of the right-of-way. This three-fold increase in the implementation of trenchless installation methods has resulted in increased costs.
The following map delineates water features within one mile of both the CPV parcel and the VLC ‘preferred’ alignment as it spans nearly 8 miles southwest, destined to connect to Millennium’s main pipeline spanning across New York’s Southern Tier. In addition to the shear volume & number of discrete water features that must be crossed, CPV’s proximity to wetland features is clearly evident. Fully interactive version of the map.
With growing concern over the reliability of even the most sophisticated water crossing techniques, the sheer number of crossings now needed for the VLC project should raise alarm flags very high. The potential adverse repercussions of pipeline boring techniques to circumvent water features are serious and significant- the latest and most dramatic case being the ‘Rover Pipeline’ in Ohio where multiple accidents and spills have occurred in quick succession. On April 27, 500,000 square feet of wetlands were dramatically impacted. An accident of this scale in the watershed crossed by the proposed VLC ‘preferred’ alternative would obviously be devastating for the region.
The Mid-Hudson Valley - Forecasting Air Alerts
Orange County, New York over the past two decades has been a bit of a ‘woobler’ when it comes to National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS). Fluctuating across ‘attainment’ and ‘non-attainment’ from year to year, the specter of cumulative air impacts from the CPV and VLC projects for decades to come is alarming. While the CPV project claims to be a ‘net benefit’ to regional air quality as a result of Emission Reduction Credits (ERCs), those purchased credits are by no means ‘local’. In fact, at least one transaction for the CPV plant ostensibly occurred near Pittsburgh in Westmoreland county, PA.
Situated in the Mid-Hudson Valley, residents near both CPV and the proposed VLC project easily intuit that local terrain can be typified as a ‘valley’, i.e. lower elevations generally than surrounding geography. Indeed this is the case, resulting in a likely ‘soupbowl’ effect as massive emissions from the CPV plant linger nearby facilities especially during hot, summer months when ozone levels have historically spiked in the region. In the following charts and map, its clear that both projects are situated in lower elevations buttressed northwest and southeast by significantly higher elevation ridge, hill and mountainous terrain. Both projects occur at elevations lower than the median elevation in Orange County.
Based on an elevation histogram for all of Orange County, both projects indeed occur in lower elevations, classed together with the predominance of Mid-Hudson Valley terrain (light yellow on the following map).
Despite the assurances of both CPV and Millennium based largely on aggregated modeling & distant offsetting schemes, local residents have every reason to be alarmed by the prospect of significantly worse air quality. Further, as local residents know, their regional economy is significantly dependent on agricultural production which relies on clean air and water. Increasing levels of ozone are correlated to decreasing crop yields, a threat that the adjacent world famous Black Dirt region featuring organic farming, speciality crops and vineyards does not need nor deserve.
The fracked gas infrastructure debacle now faced acutely by Orange County residents rests squarely on private, corporate interests in coordination with political and labor boosters seeking to maximize political and economic agendas. Mounting regulatory woes and growing public outrage are the logical extension of poor infrastructure planning methodologies undermined by longstanding, notorious state corruption. No one should feel sorry for big oil and gas when they find themselves in unfortunate predicaments exacerbated by overly optimistic assumptions, hubris and collusion. Citizens, communities, endangered & vulnerable species- whose very lives rely on intact, healthy ecosystems- stand much more to lose in the rush to tether New York State to an unsustainable fracked gas future.
