Boston – RI Future

April 2, 2015April 3, 2015

Multi-state coalition files for pipeline expansion rehearing

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Individuals, grassroots groups and towns from the four states adversely impacted by Spectra Energy’s Algonquin Incremental Market (AIM) natural gas pipeline expansion project have formed a coalition to file a Request for Rehearing after the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved the project on March 3, 2015. The coalition engaged DC attorney, Carolyn Elefant, who filed the request on April 2, 2015, asking FERC to vacate the Certificate.

If FERC rejects the request, the coalition will consider taking legal action.

Suzannah Glidden, a co-founder of Stop the Algonquin Pipeline Expansion (SAPE) in New York said: “Local, state and federal elected officials and citizens along the entire AIM route have repeatedly cited the flawed FERC review. FERC’s approval is not supported by substantial evidence. The Certificate of Approval of the AIM Project should be withdrawn.”

Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh today joined the West Roxbury delegation to announce that the City of Boston has also filed a request for a rehearing with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in regards to the West Roxbury Lateral Gas Pipeline.

After Spectra Energy submitted its application to FERC last year, groups and individuals from New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts filed to become intervenors in the FERC process. This entitles them to file a Request for Rehearing within 30 days after FERC’s issuance of a Certificate of Approval. FERC issued this certificate for the project and failed to adequately consider dangerous health and safety impacts as the pipeline and its infrastructure invade the region. For example, FERC approved siting of the 42-inch diameter, high pressure pipeline next to the Indian Point nuclear facility in a seismic zone in Buchanan, New York, and a new pipeline and Metering & Regulating station next to an active quarry in West Roxbury, Massachusetts.

Alex Beauchamp, Northeast Regional Director of Food & Water Watch, said: “In light of the serious health, safety, and environmental concerns that FERC failed to address before approving this dangerous project, the agency must grant a rehearing. Without studying the threats posed to the Indian Point nuclear facility or the human health risks from airborne contaminants, it is disgraceful that FERC has approved the AIM pipeline.”

Rickie Harvey of West Roxbury Saves Energy, Massachusetts, said: “No meaningful alternatives to a high-pressure lateral scheduled to deliver nearly 30 percent of the proposed gas via the AIM expansion were provided, despite repeated requests from citizens and politicians alike. Because this proposed West Roxbury lateral pipeline traverses a densely settled neighborhood adjacent to an active quarry, a full rehearing is warranted.”

Spectra Energy’s AIM Project, a $1 billion venture, is the first of three projects designed to ship massive quantities of “natural” gas from the Marcellus Shale to New England and onto Canada and proposed LNG export facilities. Lisa Petrie of Fossil Free Rhode Island said: “Dividing projects to minimize their environmental impacts is considered impermissible segmentation and violates the NEPA process, as FANG (Fighting Against Natural Gas) argued convincingly in a recent letter to FERC.

Emily Kirkland of the Better Future Project in Boston said: “As a climate justice organization, we have been fighting the AIM Project every step of the way, both through regulatory avenues like the request for rehearing and through grassroots organizing in communities all along the pipeline route. It’s simply irresponsible to expand the Algonquin Pipeline when we know that our continued addiction to fossil fuels is exacerbating the climate crisis and putting our safety at risk. We should be transitioning as quickly as possible to clean energy, not deepening our dependence on fossil fuels.”

The coalition of residents and groups includes: Better Future Project (MA); Capitalism v. the Climate (CT), Community Watersheds Clean Water Coalition (NY); Town of Cortlandt, NY; Food & Water Watch; Fossil Free Rhode Island; Keep Yorktown Safe; City of Peekskill, NY; Sierra Club Lower Hudson Group; Stop the Algonquin Pipeline Expansion (NY); W. Roxbury Saves Energy (WRSE) and impacted residents of W. Roxbury and Dedham, MA.

March 5, 2014March 5, 2014

Boston Wrong: let Midnight Marathoners ride

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The forces of patronizing ignorance strike again.
Says the Boston Globe:

Public safety officials said they would like to see an end to the Midnight Marathon, an annual unofficial bike ride from Hopkinton to Boston on the Boston Marathon route the night before the race, and have nixed a special commuter rail train to ferry cyclists to the starting line.

But the turnabout is not a direct result of the Marathon bombings at the finish line last year, officials said.

“Because this has grown to be such a big event, it’s something that basically we’re trying to discourage — not from a Marathon bombing security perspective, but from a safety perspective,” said Peter Judge, spokesman for the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency. “It’s an accident waiting to happen.”

“God forbid there is a major issue or accident — there are [responders] who will be dealing with all that through the night who were supposed to be somewhere at 5 in the morning,” Judge said.

At the request of local police, MBTA officials said that they will not provide a train for the cyclists, as they did last year.

Organizers of the Midnight Marathon, which last year drew between 1,000-1,500 participants, said they would continue on without the T, and are already organizing group ride-shared to Hopkinton, Massachusetts, where the Boston Marathon traditionally begins.

April 22, 2013April 22, 2013

Terror in Boston hits close to home in Rhode Island

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gammons — Fenway Park, seven days before the Boston Marathon bombs. (Photo by Bob Plain)

There’s no doubt September 11 was more destructive and horrific and game-changing, but the week of terror that just played out in Boston hit a lot closer to home for me.

The target was not only physically closer but philosophically closer as well. For those who grew up in pre-Providence renaissance Rhode Island, Boston was our big city. I grew up wanting to be “Mayday” Malone pouring beers in Beantown, not Gordon Gecko making millions on Wall Street.

As such, I have been celebrating Marathon Monday since the long-gone days when we thought Rosie Ruiz was the biggest black mark that could ever happen to the world’s greatest road race. That, of course, all changed last Monday, when two homemade bombs probably forever skewed the security-to-civil liberties ratio at American sporting events.

A childhood friend, with whom I have enjoyed many a Patriots’ Day Bloody Mary, pinged me about it just before it hit my social media feeds. Not Boston, I responded. I shrugged it off as confusion with some car bombs that went off in Iraq that same day and ever-so briefly went back to not caring about terrorism. Seconds later it hit my Twitter timeline – my sorry, 21st Century stand-in for a real Walter Cronkite.

Terrorist bombings killed at least 33 people in Iraq on April 15, 2013 and, here in Boston, three. But it’s proximity, not volume, that makes terrorism effective. I very well could have been in Boston that day – in fact, just seven days earlier I was. One friend couldn’t find her sister-in-law who ran in the race, and another knew the Newport woman who was injured in the blasts. That was plenty close enough.

Then, on Friday, it got even closer. The day began with a post I wrote a month earlier going viral as the internet misidentified the man as a suspect. It ended when I learned the dead suspect was married to a woman who lives less than three miles from me. My Facebook feed exploded with kids I grew up with who living in the area, driving into the city or deciding to stay home.

My cousin who lives in Cambridge happened to be crashing at my mom’s house Thursday night. I spent the better part of the day texting with a good friend who lives in nearby Somerville. Another friend has a cousin who is a Cambridge cop, and his dad went to Cambridge Ringe and Latin High School. This was essentially a home game for me, to use a sports analogy.

Like most of America, I woke up to one of the most terrifying news cycles of my life: the suspects had killed again, carjacked an SUV and engaged in a shootout with police – in which they used homemade grenades – and one of them had eluded capture and was on the lamb.

A sort of de facto martial law had been declared to find what initially seemed to be a bad guy version of James Bond. As it turns out, it’s not easy for 9,000 law enforcement officers to locate one bleeding-to-death 19-year-old in the suburbs. I’m not sure which scenario is scarier for America.