If the Constitution Pipeline becomes anything like the Iroquois Pipeline, we’re in for a wild ride. But when it comes to our energy policy, I’m used to wild rides.
Meeting up with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. at the Constitution Pipeline Rally in Albany, NY.
I vividly recall getting up early in the morning during the winter to go to high school at the height of the energy crisis during the 1970s in my Upstate New York hometown. In addition to price
controls and gasoline rationing, a national speed limit was imposed, and daylight saving time was adopted year-round during 1974- 1975.
I hated daylight savings time in the winter. As a high school sophomore, I stood at the bus stop in the pitch black, stepping into the snow bank so that cars didn’t hit me. Our driver would turn the overhead light off after the half-awake kids climbed into the bus to ride to the high school. We were nearly the last stop before the bus would make his final delivery run. There was rarely any seats available. So we would stand (there were so straps), clasp the seat top bar, and learn to land surf in the dark as the bus twisted, turned, and barreled towards the high school, hitting every red light and stopping—fully—at every stop sign.
If there was no seat top to clasp onto, we would place our butt crack between the bar that ran up the side of the seat and over it an effort to stabilize ourselves. You would do anything and everything not to fall on your face and taste the rock salt on the floor. You also didn’t want to fall into the lap of an upperclassman or on to the girl you had a crush on, or spill your books and papers into the aisles. Basically, you didn’t want to look like an idiot or you’d hear about it all day and then face an even more hostile audience the next morning.
Our first class began promptly before dawn and we all looked and acted like unearthed moles. My eye color turned fluorescent during that fifty minutes math class and I must have looked like a zombie. My teacher called my parents towards the end of the year and suggested that I skip the Regents test because I didn’t know what I was doing and I was going to fail. Huh? I knew exactly what I was doing (booked a 93 on the Regents), but I just didn’t want to do it like a miner in a cave. Back then, we didn’t have the option of getting a Starbucks vanilla-skinny-frappa-lappa-chino to jolt us into reality.
The sun didn’t begin to rise until our second class. As the sun broke the horizon outside the classroom window (on those mornings where there was sun), I would think to myself about how much this all sucked. It was no wonder why in a few short years I would head south to attend college.
I’d follow the news back then, mostly trying to figure out when they might end the madness. All I heard about was that we needed to have energy independence, how we need to put our country in a position so that we were not dependent on foreign oil. Domestic companies were not allowed to export oil overseas.
Now that all sounded good to me and I have heard the same energy independence line over some forty years now. But in December of 2015, our energy policy abruptly changed without much fanfare. President Obama signed into effect legislation to allow for the export of our oil. Like it or not, fracking brought us into the realm of energy independence, but evidently that wasn’t good enough. For some reason, we feel the need to sell our good fortune on the international market. Inevitably, it appears there will be a frack fest going forward to sell every drop we have beyond our borders until we’re dependent on foreign oil again. We seem intent on jeopardizing our environment in the process. It also seems my sacrifices for energy independence in the form of nightmare bus rides was all for naught.
History often repeats itself and it seems we often fail to learn from it. I think fracking will end up being like that pill we took years ago because they said it would help, only to find out years later that it was actually killing us. There will be lawyer advertisements on television for fracking victims and funds set up to compensate all of the injured, whether from cancer or earthquakes. Many of the fracking companies will go bankrupt and won’t have insurance. We will all ask ourselves about what we were thinking when we thought we could inject unknown and unregulated chemicals into the ground (to frack or as wastewater) and believe that nothing bad could ever happen? We will ask ourselves, why did we ever choose oil over our water supply?
People from all walks of life are showing concern today over the federal government’s use of our land. Whether it’s the occupation of a national park in Oregon or the clear cutting of maple trees for the Constitution Pipeline in Pennsylvania, people are having second thoughts about the role of the federal government with respect to our shared natural resources.
I’m concerned about the topic as well. Yesterday, I attended a rally against the construction of the Constitution Pipeline in New York State. I listened to and met with speakers, including Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., pictured with me above. He spoke passionately on the topic and with great insight.
The Constitution Pipeline is a joint venture between Williams Pipeline Companies and Cabot Oil & Gas that would run approximately 124 miles from Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania to Schoharie County, New York. The pipe would be thirty inches in diameter and transport fracked natural gas (about the equivalent of 4.68 million gallons of oil per day) from the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania to New York State.
Environmental groups have been against it. They fear the pipeline would threaten public health and open the door to toxic emissions and water pollution, not to mention the possibility of explosions. They argue the project would impact 277 waterways, 1,000 acres of forest and farmland and 700,000 trees.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has already approved the pipeline and the proponents are counting on using eminent domain to take the land it needs for the pipeline. But promoters need New York State approval from Governor Cuomo’s administration of the water-quality certificate before it can proceed with the actual construction. A decision is expected by the end of this month.
Certainly there will be economic benefits to New York in the form of jobs and local access to natural gas as a result of the pipeline, but are we subverting our environment for the needs of our country and New York or is much of this natural gas going to be exported to other countries for the benefit of corporate profits? How will we really know what goes on in the pipeline? It’s not crystal clear in my mind and, if it’s not clear, I don’t think it’s a good idea to install another pipeline to transverse our precious environment at great risk to our waterways and to the people in its path.
Back in 1996, the Iroquois Pipeline Operating Co. and four of its top officers plead guilty to violating the U.S. Clean Water Act during construction of its 375 mile natural gas pipeline from Ontario to Long Island in 1991-92. After a four year federal investigation, a settlement agreement was reached that required the company to pay $22 million in criminal fines and civil penalties to restore wetlands and streams in Upstate New York damaged during construction. What kind of assurances do we have that something similar won’t happen again?
When it comes to the Constitution Pipeline, I feel like we’re we’re all half-awake and being loaded on a pitch black school bus, forced to stand in the aisle without any support while it careens down the road, hoping and praying it all works out, but knowing at some point it won’t.
Tom Swyers is an attorney, judge, and the award-winning author of Saving Babe Ruth, a novel about corruption in youth sports. His upcoming legal thriller, The Killdeer Connection, is about a lawyer who must battle the fracking industry before it kills him and his family. Keep up to date by joining his readers’ group by clicking this link.