Within One Week, Plans for Two Major Proposed Natural Gas Pipelines Are Scrapped

It’s been a good week for anti-pipeline activists in the Northeast.

Plans for two proposed natural gas pipelines have been scrapped within the last week — but not for the same reasons.  On Wednesday, energy company Kinder Morgan halted operations on its Northeast Energy Direct pipeline, which would have carried natural gas from northeastern Pennsylvania into Massachusetts.  Kinder Morgan said it wasn’t able to secure the commitments from energy customers it needed to justify building the pipeline, and said that low energy prices made it difficult for natural gas producers to commit to the pipeline.

Then, on Friday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration rejected water quality permits needed to construct the Constitution Pipeline, effectively killing the project, which would have brought natural gas 124 miles from Pennsylvania to New York.  New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation said in its decision to reject the permits that the pipeline would have impacted about 250 streams, “including trout spawning streams, old-growth forest, and undisturbed springs.”

The DEC also said it had gotten reports that landowners had clearcut old-growth forests along the pipeline’s proposed route — something that went against FERC rules for the pipeline.  The agency wrote that the pipeline’s water quality application “fails in a meaningful way to address the significant water resource impacts that could occur from this Project and has failed to provide sufficient information to demonstrate compliance with New York State water quality standards.”

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