Two Arrested in Gas Pipeline Protest, USA

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Sep­tem­ber 17th, 2014

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Sep­tem­ber 17th, 2014

Two men were arrest­ed on Sep­tem­ber 16 after chain­ing them­selves to pipe being laid for Ver­mont Gas’ fracked gas pipeline.  The action took place a day before the Ver­mont Pub­lic Ser­vice Board begins a process which could result in the revok­ing of the per­mits required for Ver­mont Gas to con­tin­ue con­struc­tion.

Con­struc­tion was halt­ed around 3:45, and did not resume for the rest of the day. The two men were charged and released.

“Ver­mont Gas lied,” said Will Ben­ning­ton, a spokesper­son for Ris­ing Tide Ver­mont. “They’ve lied about the cli­mate and envi­ron­men­tal impacts of the project, they’ve lied to landown­ers and bro­ken promis­es, and now they’ve lied about the cost of this project.  The Pub­lic Ser­vice Board, and ulti­mate­ly Gov­er­nor Shum­lin, have no rea­son to believe Ver­mont Gas is act­ing in the pub­lic good.”

In July, Ver­mont Gas announced a 40 per­cent increase in the cost of con­struc­tion for Phase 1 of the fracked gas pipeline.  The com­pa­ny hopes to pass this cost on to ratepay­ers, increas­ing the price of gas at a time when many Ver­mon­ters are already strug­gling to heat their homes.

Demon­stra­tors oppose the pipeline because it will lock Ver­mont com­mu­ni­ties into decades more of dirty fos­sil fuel use, at a time when a rapid tran­si­tion away from fos­sil fuels and extreme ener­gy use is need­ed.  They are also con­cerned with impacts to local landown­ers and the lack of trans­paren­cy sur­round­ing the per­mit­ting process.

The Pub­lic Ser­vice Board is host­ing a hear­ing tomor­row in Mont­pe­lier to decide whether or not to re-open the company’s Cer­tifi­cate of Pub­lic Good.

“This isn’t the begin­ning, and this isn’t the end,” Ben­ning­ton said. “We are going to con­tin­ue to do every­thing we can to stop this pipeline.  It is moral­ly rep­re­hen­si­ble to be build­ing new fos­sil fuel infra­struc­ture in this day and age, espe­cial­ly in a state that has already banned frack­ing.”
Local copo­rate video cov­er­age here and here