July 9th, 2018 — New York State’s Day of Fracked Gas Infamy
“I grant Millennium Pipeline Company, LLC’s (Millennium) July 6, 2018 request, as supplemented on July 9, 2018, to place into service the Valley Lateral Project in Orange County, New York.”
- J. Rich McGuire, Director
Division of Gas-Environment and Engineering
With this one short sentence, J. Rich McGuire, an obscure technocrat within an obscure agency — The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) — just lashed the planet to 40+ years of significant climate wrecking greenhouse gas emissions, and New York State to unprecedented levels of dangerous ground level ozone and various hazardous air pollutants (HAPS).
A short digest of events leading to this unmitigated disaster reveals the duplicity and unsuitability of federal, state and local agencies and actors, as well as ‘big greens’, in defending the public’s interests caught in the path of Marcellus Shale fracked gas determined to dominate the Northeast:
- On August 22, 2017 the Sierra Club won a decision in the ‘Sabal Trail’ pipeline battle whereby the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected FERC’s attempt to downplay climate impacts from this 515-mile pipeline project running the length of Florida.
- With the aforementioned win in hand, the Sierra Club, seemingly in cahoots with The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) lobbed a Hail Mary, playing the same argument forward against the Millennium Eastern System Upgrade project (ESU- a closely related project to the Valley Lateral Project).
- To follow, NYSDEC immediately declined the Valley Lateral Project based on the Sierra Club ESU argument. This cockeyed tactic failed miserably, with FERC quickly overriding New York State, and the Sierra Club never showing more than a passing interest in stopping the ESU project.
- The Cuomo administration, and by extension NYSDEC, remained quiet, as the infamous Joseph Percoco trial came and went during the Winter, 2018. From the corruption charges and successful conviction pertaining to the CPV power plant (the sole ‘shipper’ of the Millennium Valley Lateral Project), the trial proved that serious malfeasance had occurred in the permitting process for the plant.
- April 9th, 2018 local Orange County officials held a press conference ‘asking’ the state to suspend or revoke CPV’s permits in light of both the Percoco trial convictions and CPV’s ongoing ‘testing’ emissions which gave rise to significant air quality impacts, outraging local residents and businesses.
- April, 2018, The Public Accountability Initiative issues a damning report on the lobbying practices surrounding the Cuomo administration, the CPV power plant and Millennium Pipeline.
- May 18, 2018 FERC Commissioner Cheryl A. LaFleur issues a dissenting statement on the ‘New Market’ Dominion project crossing New York State north of the CPV and Millennium projects. Unbelievably, LaFleur argues against the project based on ‘downstream’ GHG emissions caused by the project — almost word-for-word the Sierra Club argument in their successful case against FERC.
Against this tragicomedic backdrop of ineffectual policy wonkery and outright corruption, as of Monday July 9th, 2018, the CPV powerplant was, in effect, given a full lease on 40+ years of runaway climate impacts and localized air quality impacts.
In a twist of climate change irony, New York State in 2018 is witnessing a record-breaking year for ground level ozone — an air quality impact for which fracked gas power plants are particularly well suited to induce and increase dramatically. Shown in the map below are the NYSDEC air monitoring stations (cyan) in proximity to the impending CPV power plant and Millennium compressor station emission locations (red).
The Valley Central monitoring station — located approximately 13.5 miles northeast of the CPV power plant — exclusively samples ozone for the Hudson Valley region. As seen in the chart excerpt below, July 2nd, 2018 significantly exceeded both the EPA standard and the NYSDEC Maximum 8-Hour Average of 0.062 ppm, resulting in an anomalous and ominous data point for the Hudson Valley region.
New York State citizens concerned about the fate of the planet and the direction of energy policy within the state are rightfully alarmed. The Hudson Valley region is a critical bellwether in the challenging fight against fracked gas infrastructure overbuild throughout the Northeast. One looks in every direction — northward towards the Cricket Valley plant, southward towards proposed Meadowlands plant, westward towards the Jessup, PA plant and eastward towards the newly proposed Danskammer peaker project — and its 100% large-scale fracked gas power plants lining up to burn Marcellus Shale gas. The map below shows some of these projects across the country as well as in the Northeast. (Note: map based on incomplete, 2016–17 data; other projects are additionally proposed and in planning phases).
As evidenced by the map, new fracked gas power plants correlate spatially with the major shale plays located across the United States. While this infrastructure overbuild portends runaway climate change at global scales, its once bucolic regions like the Hudson Valley that will bare the brunt of the immediate health effects brought on by the reinforcing dynamics of local gas emissions coupled with prolonged, intensifying heatwaves.
‘Responsible’ agencies, local politicians and ‘Big Greens’ have all utterly failed the public interest in the CPV debacle. The only party that has both the power to stop CPV in its tracks and put its enveloping corruption in the past is none other than Andrew Cuomo, Governor of New York. Given the current political climate, this act of political will is not at all inconceivable.
