By Alice M. Evans
On Saturday, October 24, hundreds of Vermont citizens assembled at the State House and marched through Montpelier’s downtown and then returned to the State House lawn where many set up tents for a weekend watch. The object was to show continuing solidarity with landowners in Chittenden and Addison Counties whose residences and farms are threatened with seizure by Vermont Gas, a subsidiary of Canadian Gaz Metro. Vermont Gas declares it will employ the eminent domain process unless these Vermonters succumb to its unrelenting efforts to pressure them to sell, in order to expand a pipeline that would bring fracked gas into the state for private profit.
The production of natural gas by means of fracturing earth plates deep below the ground by injecting high volumes of water mixed with toxic chemicals is causally linked to pollution of drinking water and a huge increase in earthquakes. With sufficient reason, Vermont already has outlawed fracking within the state; why would we permit transit across our state of this noxious product?
The state’s Public Service Board (PSB), which granted Vermont Gas a permit in 2013 to construct a first phase of its desired line from Colchester to Rutland, already has fined Vermont Gas for flaws in project oversight and, since February, has been reconsidering this project which twice has returned to the public service board with vastly increased estimates for this work. The most recent price estimate of $154 million is almost twice the originally approved budget.
While Vermont Gas apparently intended to pass along all its cost increases to ratepayers, a deal to cap the amount Vermont Gas may recover from users recently was reached with Governor Shumlin. A memorandum of understanding limits ratepayer increases to “just” $134M of the $154M cost overrun ... but only if Vermont Gas incurs no additional costs because of protest activities and/or legal actions! (Besides landowners, AARP and environmental groups have joined in opposing Vermont Gas’s plans.) This gubernatorial intervention undercuts the PSB deliberative process and thereby reduces opportunities for the public to participate in the latter’s decision. Meanwhile, as knowledge of this unwarranted project spreads, more and more activists are joining in an increasing range of oppositional tactics. It’s past time to shut down this pipeline. Please contact the public service board and tell them Vermont says “No!” to this dirty, hazardous fossil fuel project.
Evans lives in Waitsfield.
