Major New Pipeline Campaign Now Underway in NYS With Implications That are Truly Mind-Boggling and Inspiring/Extensive Media Coverage Summarized

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If you can, please donate generously to support Toxics Targeting's unique campaign to safeguard New York 100% from shale fracking and pipeline hazards.

Thank you to all our amazing Contributors. Without your help, our incredibly successful work never would have been done.

Holiday Greetings and Best Wishes to Fractivists Near and Far,

I am thrilled to report that Toxics Targeting received extensive media coverage for documenting a total of 114 fires, explosions, spills, ruptures and toxic discharges involving natural gas, crude oil and petroleum product pipelines across New York.

According to the New York Department of Environmental Conservation's (DEC) own data, many of those problems have never been cleaned up to meet state standards.

See: Natural Gas, Crude Oil and Petroleum Product Pipeline Fires, Explosions, Accidents, Ruptures and Spills

Thanks to widespread media coverage, our new coalition letter and your incessant and highly sophisticated phone-banking, Governor Cuomo is facing intense pressure to DENY all pending Section 401 Water Quality Certification applications for proposed natural gas, crude oil and petroleum product pipeline projects.

Walter Hang Interview on Binghamton Now - 12/18/2015

Battle over Pipelines as State Certification Looms

Activists speak on fracking hazards

Environmental Advocates Call on Governor to Deny Pending Oil Projects

'Toxics Targeting' against proposed pipelines

Pipeline Hazards News Conference Binghamton, NY 12/17/15

Take Urgent Action Today

If Governor Cuomo grants requisite Section 401 Water Quality Certifications, pipeline construction could proceed without further delay, so please do not stop until you drop. Go, Go, Go.

Our coalition letter is just shy of 500 signatories. Please beat the bushes to help us gain at least 1,000 signatories. It is extremely important for signatories to include as many groups as well as elected officials as possible.

Anyone can sign. The more the merrier. Ask every Big Green group you know to become a signatory. Do not take "NO" for an answer.

Sign here: New Coalition Letter Requests That Governor Cuomo Deny All Section 401 Water Quality Certification Applications for Natural Gas, Crude Oil and Petroleum Products Infrastructure Projects.

CALL GOVERNOR CUOMO DURING REGULAR BUSINESS HOURS AT 518 474 8390.

Respectfully request that the Governor immediately deny all pending Section 401 Water Quality Certification applications for natural gas, crude oil and petroleum product infrastructure projects, including, but not limited to the proposed Constitution and Northeast Energy Direct pipelines as well as the proposed New Market Project expansion of the existing Dominion pipeline.

Underscore that Governor Cuomo has a duty to deny all pending Section 401 Water Quality Certification applications because his DEC clearly cannot fulfill its legal mandate pursuant to the U. S. Clean Water Act. DEC's own data document the agency's on-going failure to prevent water quality violations at existing pipelines all over New York.

See: Natural Gas, Crude Oil and Petroleum Product Pipeline Fires, Explosions, Accidents, Ruptures and Spills

See: Existing and Proposed Pipelines Map

Major New Campaign With Mind-Boggling Implications Now Successfully Underway

I believe it is important to appreciate that we have successfully launched a major new campaign with huge implications for extracting and consuming natural gas and other fossil fuels in New York, Pennsylvania and the large northeastern region that would be served by the above-referenced proposed pipelines.

I implore everyone to speak with one voice to echo the coherent and powerful strategy to require Governor Cuomo to DENY all pending Section 401 Water Quality Cerfiication applications due to DEC's documented inability to prevent water quality violations at many existing pipelines in NYS.

If this can be achieved, I believe it would be extraordinarily hard, if not impossible, for Governor Cuomo to permit the proposed new pipeline projects to be built.

See: Section 401 Certification

The consequences of that achievement would be truly mind-boggling.

According to Tom Wilbur's recent three-part series for Gannett News, shale fracking is plummeting in Pennsylvania because there is insufficient pipeline capacity to transport fracked natural gas to market.

"The glowing promise of jobs has since dimmed [stet]

When Faux first came to work for him at the height of the gas rush, Guy Parish had 40 workers. Now he is down to 25, and he expects he will be back to four or five as he shifts his business from the needs of gas drilling back to agriculture.

'The rumor mill has it that the work will be back when they get the pipelines in,' Parish said. 'If it doesn’t, I will move on. It was good while it lasted.'”

See: The Promise of Fracking - Pt. 1

"As production surges and prices fall in Pennsylvania, the profitability of drilling hinges on finding ways to get gas to new markets.

Cabot Oil & Gas, a Texas company that drills gas wells in Susquehanna County, has cut its $1 billion capital investment in the region — including jobs — by half, said Cabot spokesman George Stark.

'We are victims of our own success,' Stark said, adding that he expected drilling to pick up again with the laying of new pipelines in New York. 'This isn’t a bust. The pace of infrastructure development has not kept pace with production,' he said."

"The Constitution and Dominion pipelines, both of which would bisect upstate New York with routes through the Southern Tier, would carry fracked gas from Pennsylvania to a distribution hub in Albany. From there, the gas would be shipped to New York City and major northeastern markets."

See: The Promise of Fracking - Pt. 3 - Impact on New York

Conclusion

We have undertaken extremely hard-hitting efforts, possibly just in the nick of time, to document why Governor Cuomo must deny all pending Section 401 Water Quality Certification applications for proposed natural gas, crude oil and petroleum product pipelines and infrastructure projects in New York.

This is an excellent beginning, but a mammoth amount of work must be done to win this fight at the 11th Hour. There is no time to waste. We have many challenges to surmount.

Shale gas extraction in Pennsylvania could skyrocket again if proposed pipeline projects are approved. But if the pipelines can be thwarted, shale fracking in Pennsylvania might be be curtailed for many years to come.

More shortly about what could be achieved in New York if we prevail in the weighty matter at-hand.

You now know precisely what needs to be done. Go to work. Have fun. Please be unstinting in your efforts.

Thank you so much for all your help. I cannot tell you how it is appreciated.

Onward and upward. Ho, Ho, Ho.

Walter
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Thanks so much for writing. I appreciate your thoughts.

Great investigative work as always!!!

Hi, saw you on the news tonight, thanks- we really need to get the troops out now, time is very critical. We are facing a larger compressor station here in Franklin, in addition to the suggestion of a power plant.

Hi Walter - Happy holidays - I have signed and sent the letter.
This will probably the last letter I will send as the Majority Leader and Legislator in the Ulster County Legislature.
I decided not to "run" again for the Legislature. I thank you and applaud you work for the environment and all of us.
Good luck and keep doing great work.
Best, Don

Wow , You da man Walter: You hit another homerun on Bob Joseph today: I hope someone recorded the interview with Bob if WNBF didn't. Glad your in there sluggen for the rest of us.

Excellent! This is what you are known for..grabbing the headlines and never letting go!

Walter,

I have just called the governor's office and spoken to a woman who attempted to cut me off after I requested the governor to deny all existing 401 water quality permits for proposed or expansion of existing natural gas and oil pipelines, but I continued to give her the justification that you laid out -- that the DEC is unable to prevent water quality violations at any of the existing natural gas and oil pipelines, and by extension, all proposed pipelines of those types.

By the way, thanks for including the New Market expansion proposals to the existing Dominion pipeline -- over a year ago I went to the FERC hearing in Georgetown, NY, carpooling with a group of Ithacans, and we were appalled at the tactics used by the FERC staff and the total disregard they had for the health and safety of residents! The FERC guy even admitted -- under impassioned and persistent questioning -- that there had been some explosions at compressor stations, although he preferred to use some language like "blow-off", as if it were a scheduled event. The staffer did not know the last time, or if ever, the existing gas lines had been tested for leaks, or even what the current pressure was in those lines.

In the wake of the _new_ pipeline proposals, this "expansion" proposal has sort of been forgotten by others. It was summarily ok'd by FERC even though many of us sent in questions and protests and there was a series of 4 pipeline or natural gas facility explosions that happened about then -- and this fall I got a CD in the mail from FERC with the submitted comments. Thanks for specifically noting it.

Dave