http://socialistaction.org/connecticut-activists-target-fracked-gas/
Connecticut activists target fracked gas
Published September 1, 2015. | By Socialist Action.
Sept. 2015 Fracking
By CHRISTINE MARIE
Connecticut climate justice activists are calling for a statewide
mobilization on Sept 17 at the site of a state government hearing
preliminary 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 Connecticut 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 profits 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 annually from the
Pomeraug River. According to a blog for On the Water by local resident
Ron Merly, this water 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 ammonia 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 England 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 “natural gas”
that is being pumped through this expanded system is actually produced
by fracking in Pennsylvania 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 Pennsylvania comprise up to 17.3% of the gas being forced 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
(https://www.washingtonpost.com/apps/g/page/national/unexpected-loose-gas-from-fracking/950/).
This means, Clark says, that producing fracked gas can affect the
climate to a worse degree than the burning 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 for 20 years.
Since Clark’s helpful summary of the climate impact of fracked gas
emissions a year ago, the EDF has been releasing the results of a
research project designed to further quantify methane emissions. The
astounding results forced the Environmental Protection Agency to propose
new standards that are expected, when finalized, to force the industry
to cut annual methane emissions by 20-40%.
The measurements gathered by one of the EDF studies and being used by
the EPA, however, are likely to be seriously undercounts. On Aug. 4,
Touché Howard, a methane emissions expert who actually helped to develop
the emissions sensor technology, challenged the accuracy of the EDF
study overseen by chemical engineer David Allen
(http://insideclimatenews.org/news/04082015/landmark-paper-underestimated-methane-leaks-gas-production-study-says).
Howard revealed that the Bacharach emissions sensor used in the study
regularly failed. In some conditions, 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 expansion 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
stations, and the exponential growth of intrastate pipelines to
businesses and residences, but also the permitting of major 42”
high-pressure interstate transmission line expansions. These include
Spectra Energy’s Algonquin Incremental 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 Connecticut, 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 energy 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 united 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 put a halt to
the fracked gas expansion and implement an emergency plan to replace
fossil fuel use with sustainable sources of power such as solar and wind.
The mobilization on Sept. 17th will be an important step along the way
and build toward regional demonstrations at the time of the climate
talks in Paris.
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Posted in Environment. | Tagged climate change, Connecticut, fracking,
global warming, Hartford.
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