USA: 15 Arrested as Anti-Gas Blockade in Finger Lakes Enters Third Week

Novem­ber 3rd, 2014

Enter­ing the third week, start­ing at 7:00 AM this morn­ing pro­test­ers blocked the gates of Texas-based Crest­wood Midstream’s gas stor­age facil­i­ty on the shore of Seneca Lake. 15 peo­ple were arrest­ed at about 9:00 AM after Crest­wood called the police. Last week, ten pro­test­ers were arrest­ed in acts of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence block­ing the gates, just as the 15 peo­ple did today. Pro­test­ers have held block­ades at the Crest­wood gate since Thurs­day, Octo­ber 23; on Wednes­day, Octo­ber 29, they began block­ing two of the gates to Crest­wood. Notably, the ongo­ing protests also includ­ed a ral­ly with more than 200 peo­ple at the Crest­wood gate on Fri­day, Octo­ber 24^th.

Fri­day, Octo­ber 24^th marked the day that major new con­struc­tion on the gas stor­age facil­i­ty was autho­rized to begin. The ongo­ing acts of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence come after the com­mu­ni­ty pur­sued every pos­si­ble avenue to stop the project and after being thwart­ed by an unac­cept­able process and denial of sci­ence.

The uni­fied action is called ‘WE ARE SENECA LAKE’. More infor­ma­tion and pic­tures of the actions over the pre­vi­ous weeks are avail­able at www.WeAreSenecaLake.com.

The protests are tak­ing place at the gates of the Crest­wood com­pres­sor sta­tion site on the shore of Seneca Lake, the largest of New York’s Fin­ger Lakes. The methane gas stor­age expan­sion project is advanc­ing in the face of broad pub­lic oppo­si­tion and unre­solved ques­tions about geo­log­i­cal insta­bil­i­ties, fault lines, and pos­si­ble salin­iza­tion of the lake, which serves as a source of drink­ing water for 100,000 peo­ple. A Cap­i­tal New York inves­ti­ga­tion recent­ly revealed that Gov­er­nor Cuomo’s DEC excised ref­er­ences to the risks of under­ground gas stor­age from a 2011 fed­er­al report on methane con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of drink­ing water and has allowed key data to remain hid­den.

*Note that the WE ARE SENECA LAKE protest is to stop the expan­sion of methane gas stor­age, a sep­a­rate project from Crestwood’s pro­posed Liq­ue­fied Petro­le­um Gas (LPG) stor­age project, which is on hold pend­ing a Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Con­ser­va­tion Issues Con­fer­ence.

The 15 peo­ple arrest­ed today are: Lyn Ger­ry, John Den­nis, Mari­ah Plum­lee, Bob Hen­rie, Lau­ra Sala­man­dra, Elan Shapiro, Lind­say Clark, Dar­lene Bor­d­well, Jodi Dean, Ruth Young (for­mer Schuyler Coun­ty Leg­is­la­tor), Paul Pas­sa­vant, Stephanie Red­mond, Joanne Cipol­la Den­nis, Martha Fer­g­er, and Ken­neth Fog­a­r­ty.

Ruth Young of Horse­heads, a for­mer mem­ber of the Schuyler Coun­ty Leg­is­la­ture, was among those arrest­ed today, said, “We’re stand­ing on what used to be a part of my leg­isla­tive dis­trict in Schuyler Coun­ty. I am embar­rassed and sad­dened to see what is going on here, I’m sad to see that some of the peo­ple in this dis­trict are actu­al­ly sup­port­ing this endeav­or to store gas in a very unsta­ble salt for­ma­tion.”

John Den­nis, PhD, of Lans­ing, who was arrest­ed today, said, “I’m wor­ried about water qual­i­ty, there are severe salin­i­ty prob­lems already, and I’m almost cer­tain those will get worse because we think the exist­ing prob­lems are caused by gas stor­age start­ed in 1964.”

Mari­ah Plum­lee of Covert, a moth­er of three who was also arrest­ed today, said, “I think it’s real­ly impor­tant to do this, and if every­body did this then we wouldn’t have this prob­lem. We moved here almost ten years ago because we knew it would be a won­der­ful place to raise a fam­i­ly.”

Lyn Ger­ry of Watkins Glen, a radio host in Schuyler Coun­ty, arrest­ed today, said, “Our elect­ed offi­cials have let us down, so we have to take mat­ters into our own hands. I love Seneca Lake, I love this area. I’m not from here orig­i­nal­ly, I’ve trav­eled 3,000 miles to come to this beau­ti­ful place by this beau­ti­ful lake to live, and I’ve come from a place that greed has already destroyed. So I know what a land being destroyed looks like. So now, my back is to the wall and I must defend what I love.”

Note, press are encour­aged to come to the court arraign­ment – for the ten pro­test­ers arrest­ed on Octo­ber 29^th – on Nov. 5th start­ing at 6:00 PM at the Read­ing Town Hall, 3914 Coun­ty Rt. 28, Watkins Glen.

As they have for a long time, the pro­test­ers are con­tin­u­ing to call on Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, U.S. Sen­a­tors Schumer and Gilli­brand, Gov­er­nor Cuo­mo, and Con­gress­man Reed to inter­vene on behalf of the com­mu­ni­ty and halt the dan­ger­ous project.

Recent­ly, the Tomp­kins Coun­ty Leg­is­la­ture approved a res­o­lu­tion that oppos­es gas stor­age on the lakeshore, as well as the Yates Coun­ty Leg­is­la­ture.  In so doing, they joined the Board of Super­vi­sors of both Ontario and Seneca coun­ties, which pre­vi­ous­ly passed motions oppos­ing gas stor­age, along with the Gene­va City Coun­cil and the Watkins Glen Vil­lage Board.

In spite of over­whelm­ing oppo­si­tion, grave geo­log­i­cal and pub­lic health con­cerns, Crest­wood has fed­er­al approval to move for­ward with plans to store high­ly pres­sur­ized, explo­sive gas in aban­doned salt cav­erns on the west side of Seneca Lake. While the New York State Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Con­ser­va­tion (DEC) has tem­porar­i­ly halt­ed plans to stock­pile propane and butane (LPG) in near­by caverns—out of ongo­ing con­cerns for safe­ty, health, and the environment—Crestwood is active­ly con­struct­ing infra­struc­ture for the stor­age of two bil­lion cubic feet of methane (nat­ur­al gas), with the bless­ing of the Fed­er­al Ener­gy Reg­u­la­to­ry Com­mis­sion (FERC).

Back­ground:

Local busi­ness­es and winer­ies are part of broad oppo­si­tion to Texas-based Crestwood-Midstream’s pro­pos­al to use old aban­doned salt cav­erns along Seneca Lake to store mil­lions of bar­rels of liq­uid petro­le­um gas (LPG) and bil­lions of cubic feet of nat­ur­al gas. The pro­pos­al has gen­er­at­ed oppo­si­tion from over 200 busi­ness­es, over 60 winer­ies, 13 munic­i­pal­i­ties (includ­ing neigh­bor­ing Watkins Glen) and thou­sands and thou­sands of res­i­dents in the Fin­ger Lakes region who are con­cerned about the threat it pos­es to pub­lic health and safe­ty, one of the state’s largest sup­plies of drink­ing water, the local econ­o­my, and the area’s grow­ing wine and tourism indus­try.

Res­i­dents, winer­ies and oth­er local busi­ness­es have issued emer­gency calls to Pres­i­dent Oba­ma, U.S. Sen­a­tors Schumer and Gilli­brand, Con­gress­man Reed and Gov­er­nor Cuo­mo to imme­di­ate­ly step in and stop this reck­less project that threat­ens the heart of the Fin­ger Lakes, many people’s health and the drink­ing water source for 100,000 peo­ple.

Addi­tion­al­ly, an inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist with DC Bureau recent­ly uncov­ered oth­er sci­en­tif­ic objec­tions to the project, to which FERC did not give due con­sid­er­a­tion in issu­ing approval. Inde­pen­dent sci­en­tists have warned about the unsta­ble geol­o­gy of the salt cav­erns, includ­ing the fact that a 400,000 ton chunk of rock – rough­ly the size of an air­craft car­ri­er – had giv­en way in the very cav­ern that the com­pa­ny pro­posed to use for gas stor­age.

Fur­ther­more, in August, Dr. Rob Macken­zie, a retired CEO of Cayu­ga Med­ical Cen­ter, a hos­pi­tal about 20 miles east, raised objec­tions. An expe­ri­enced risk ana­lyst, Macken­zie pre­pared a for­mal quan­ti­ta­tive risk analy­sis of the Crest­wood methane gas pro­pos­al. Macken­zie ana­lyzed acci­dent events — major fires, explo­sions, col­laps­es, cat­a­stroph­ic loss of prod­uct, evac­u­a­tions — at salt cav­ern stor­age facil­i­ties in the Unit­ed States dat­ing back to 1972. He con­clud­ed that the risk of an “extreme­ly seri­ous” salt cav­ern event with­in Schuyler Coun­ty over the next 25 years is more than 35%.

Accord­ing to Ener­gy Infor­ma­tion Admin­is­tra­tion data uncov­ered by Macken­zie – report­ed by Peter Man­tius of DC Bureau – gas stor­age facil­i­ties in salt cav­erns in the Unit­ed States have had high rates of prob­lems. Between 1972 and 2012,there have been 18 “seri­ous or extreme­ly seri­ous inci­dents” at U.S. salt cav­ern stor­age facil­i­ties, Macken­zie wrote, cit­ing EIA data. That trans­lates to an inci­dent rate in the US of about 60%.

Macken­zie also found that nine of the 18 salt cav­ern inci­dents involved large fires and/or explo­sions; six involved loss of life or seri­ous injury; eight involved evac­u­a­tions of between 30 and 2,000 res­i­dents; and 13 involved extreme­ly seri­ous prop­er­ty loss­es.

Seneca Lake is eco­nom­i­cal­ly crit­i­cal to the region and New York State. A recent report on the state’s grape and wine indus­try showed that it con­tributes $4.8 bil­lion to the New York State econ­o­my every year, sup­port­ing the equiv­a­lent of 25,000 full-time jobs, pay­ing over $408 mil­lion in tax­es, and gen­er­at­ing over 5.2 mil­lion wine-relat­ed tourism vis­its. The Fin­ger Lakes region, in par­tic­u­lar, has gained increas­ing promi­nence as home to world-class wines, with many winer­ies earn­ing awards in nation­al and inter­na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions. Gov­er­nor Cuo­mo high­light­ed the suc­cess of the indus­try at his 2013 Governor’s Cup Wine Com­pe­ti­tion in Watkins Glen, exact­ly where the gas stor­age facil­i­ty is being pro­posed for loca­tion and this past sum­mer, a Seneca Lake win­ery won the 2014 Governor’s Cup.

The region has become so wide­ly known for its wine­mak­ing that vint­ners from the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty have begun to invest in the area as well.

The Fin­ger Lakes is also con­sid­ered a world-class tourism des­ti­na­tion, with Sher­mans Trav­el nam­ing it the #1 Lake Vaca­tion in the world last year.

In addi­tion to the over-indus­tri­al­iza­tion such a stor­age facil­i­ty would cause, salt cav­ern stor­age is his­tor­i­cal­ly unsafe. It presents the poten­tial for explo­sive acci­dents and water con­t­a­m­i­na­tion along the Fin­ger Lakes. Salt cav­ern stor­age rep­re­sents only a small per­cent­age of gas stor­age facil­i­ties, but is respon­si­ble for the major­i­ty of instances of cat­a­stroph­ic fail­ure. In 2001, gas migrat­ed 7 miles from a salt cav­ern stor­age facil­i­ty in Kansas, came up in aban­doned brine wells and explod­ed, killing two peo­ple, destroy­ing build­ings and evac­u­at­ing res­i­dents. There are many such aban­doned brine wells just three miles from the pro­posed facil­i­ty in down­town Watkins Glen, NY.