Connecticut activists target fracked gas expansion
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Dr. Julio A. Muriente Perez (center), co-president of the Movimiento Independista Nacional Hostosianos (MINH) addresses the Socialist Action forum “Puerto Rico Under Attack” at the Carriage Many young Puerto Rican activists from the city came to hear one of the island’s most prominent independence advocates speak on the roots of the debt crisis and the way forward for the beleaguered population. The need for new networks of solidarity was an important theme of the discussion. To the left of Dr. Muriente is Socialist Action speaker Mike Pinho, and to the right, local Connecticut climate justice activists are call ing for a statewide mobilization on Sept 17 at the site of a state government hearing prelimi nary to the issuance of air quality permits to a power plant to be sited on Towantic Hill in the rural town of Oxford.
On that date, a call to action signed by leading pipeline opponents from 350CT, the Connecti cut Sierra Club, New England Food & Water Watch, and the Toxics Action Center says, “we have the opportunity to unite all the climate justice organizations and activists in the state in an impressive mobilization to say NO to an important anchor of the Connecticut fracked gas expansion.” A drive to gather endorsers from environmental and social justice groups is underway.
Competitive Power Ventures (CPV), whose name says it all, has gotten the conditional approval of the Connecticut Siting Council to build a 785 MW dual-fuel combined-cycle electric generating plant in Oxford. This type of generation, which involves a turbine that can burn both natural gas and liquid fuel (oil), is increasingly popular in the industry in some parts of the country because it can boost prof its by 43%, depending on where the plant is located in the various supply chains as well as price fluctuations in fossil fuels.
For the environment, however, there is no benefit. The threat to the climate from plant emissions is only one of the environmental threats posed by the new plant.
The plant would draw a million gallons of water an nually from the Pomeraug River. According to a blog for On the Water by local resident Ron Merly, this wa ter would be used to cool the turbines at the plant. The waste-water from the plant will then be both piped and trucked to the Naugatuck Waste Water Treatment Plant and then be released into the Naugatuck River.
“There is no sufficient data on whether or not the treatment plant can remove the heavy metals and am monia from the contaminated water,” Merly says.
It is methane emissions, though, that are driving state activists to see this plant as one of the important lynchpins of a state energy plan gone off the rails. The governor of Connecticut issued, in April of this year, a joint action plan with the governors of six New Eng land states that centers on building a massive new infrastructure for “natural” gas (http://www.ct.gov/ deep/cwp/view.asp?Q=564676&A=4707). The “natu ral gas” that is being pumped through this expanded system is actually produced by fracking in Pennsylva nia and other states.
Conservative estimates published by Patterson Clark in the Washington Post (April 14, 2014) say that the methane plumes coming off of fracking sites in Penn sylvania comprise up to 17.3% of the gas being forced House Theater in Hartford, Conn., on Aug. 21.
activist and translator Jorge Limeres. out of the earth by the insertion of toxic chemicals. Because methane is at least 34 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2, the burning of gas would possibly be less damaging to the climate than the burning of coal only if the emissions at the fracking site were under 3.2% of the total extracted.
This means, Clark says, that producing fracked gas can affect the climate to a worse degree than the burn ing of coal! The Environmental Defense Fund put out some numbers to quantify the danger. Currently, the gas and oil industry is emitting methane at a rate of 7 million tons a year. This is equivalent, the EDF says, to the climate impact of 160 coal-fired plants running Howard revealed that the Bacharach emissions sen sor used in the study regularly failed. In some condi tions, Howard has reported, the Bacharach sensor provided readings of 1-6% methane in the air when the actual amounts varied from 7-73%!
The new EPA proposal, hugely inadequate before Howard’s revelations, will clearly not be sufficient to stave off the climate impact of the fracked gas expan sion that is underway.
In New England, that expansion from the current situation, in which 40% of power comes from gas, includes not only new power plants, compressor sta tions, and the exponential growth of intrastate pipe lines to businesses and residences but also the per mitting of major 42” high-pressure interstate trans mission line expansions.
These include Spectra Energy’s Algonquin Incre mental Market (AIM) project and Kinder Morgan’s Connecticut Expansion and Northeast Energy Direct projects. The gas traveling through such lines can be under 850 pounds of pressure, meaning that ruptures can be catastrophic.
Educators from 350CT, the Sierra Club, and Food & Water Watch have been traveling throughout Con necticut, speaking at dozens of forums in small towns around the state. Residents have been mobilizing for hearings and open houses held by the Federal Energy Regulatory Agency, the state government, and the en ergy companies, themselves. Local committees have anchored resistance at many points along the pipeline paths. Pickets and press conferences have made the movement visible to growing numbers of people.
The main task ahead is to unite the dozens of town committees, state environmental organizations, and the movements for social justice into a powerful movement that can force the state government to halt the fracked gas expansion and implement an emer gency plan to replace fossil fuel use with sustainable sources of power such as solar and wind.
The mobilization on Sept. 17 will be an important step along the way and build toward regional demon strations at the time of the climate talks in Paris. n