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Dominion, DEC Say Pipeline Is Safe
Route of the Dominion gas pipeline south from Ellis Hollow Creek Road.
(Photo: Bill Chaisson)
The Ithaca Times followed up on a protest by Walter Hang of Toxic Targeting by contacting representatives from Dominion Transmission and the New York State Department of Conservation (DEC) for responses. Hang opposes the upgrading of a natural gas pipeline that runs through our region.
On July 29 Hang called a press conference on Ellis Hollow Creek Road near the Borger Station of the Dominion natural gas pipeline. The distribution company is in the process of going through the permitting process to build the “New Market expansion,” so-called, Dominion says, because there is increasing demand for natural gas in the Capital Region, which is served by National Grid. The expansion consists of adding a total 33,000 horsepower of compressor power at three locations along the route of the pipeline, although not the Dryden station, where the proposed work does not require permitting from the New York State Department of Conservation (DEC).
Hang used the Freedom of Information Law to get access to complete records of 114 accidents along the pipeline, including the pre-2000 period when it was owned by Consolidated Natural Gas (CNG). The data accessible to the public is full of redactions; Hang’s report included the full record kept from the DEC database. He made seven accident reports available to the media; two of them described incidents at the Borger Station that occurred in 1991 and 1998.
The 1998 report documented the spilling of 1 gallon of “unknown petroleum” and stated that the cleanup operation did not meet the standards of the Clean Water Act. Hang’s argument is that Section 401 of the act is quite clear that no pipeline may be expanded or upgraded if it has experienced spills that have not been cleaned up to standards stipulated by the Clean Water Act, which means drinking water supplies may not be affected.
The 1991 report states that the cause of the spill was “tank overfill” but lists the amount spilled as 0 gallons. It also states that it is unknown as to whether the cleanup met standards. In comments at the bottom of the report it is noted that the concern is whether PCBs have gotten into the soil surrounding the buried tank (the report is associated with its removal) and contaminated groundwater. The residents of Ellis Hollow Creek Road draw their drinking water from wells supplied by groundwater.
The final comment on the report, added a month after the incident, notes that no PCBs were found upon testing of soil samples from the site.
The reports from other sites along the pipeline described larger spills, but followed the similar pattern of apparently not having met cleanup standards.
“The mandate is that they must absolutely guarantee that there are no problems for groundwater,” said Hang on July 29. His general statement regarding gas pipelines was “anything that can go wrong, does go wrong.”
Dominion Transmission representative Frank Mack said that the gas distribution company’s environmental technicians looked at the DEC database and found that all the spill incident cases were declared to be closed.
“We’ve had some accidents,” Mack said, “some so minor that there’s not even an environmental impact, but if we have a drop spilled, we always call the DEC because the state has more stringent guidelines that the feds do.”
Mack said that from Dominion’s perspective all the incidents that Hang described had been taken care of. “But you should call the DEC to verify this,” he said.
Mack said that Dominion had received certification for the New Market project from FERC on April 28 and that they also have the Section 401 water certification permit from the Army Corps of Engineers. They were still waiting for approval of their air quality permit from the DEC. (Compressor station motors vent to the atmosphere.) “We applied almost two years ago,” he said of the DEC process. “We’ve provided them with everything they need.”
The Virginia-based Dominion representative described the demand for gas in Albany and Schenectady as “huge” and it would be used to heat the homes and businesses of National Grid customers. Further compression of the gas in the pipeline would make possible transmission of greater volumes without adding pipe (there are already two, running parallel).
Kevin Hale, the chief emergency response coordinator for the DEC and a hydrogeologist who has worked for the department for 20 years, admitted that their database was not perfect. When he double-checked on whether or not incidents had met cleanup standards, he was able to find records indicating that they had been, although the public database FOILed by Hang did not indicate it.
The reports themselves appear contradictory on the face of it. The category of the 1998 Borger Station spill was said to be “Possible petroleum release with minimum potential for … drinking water contamination …” Yet the data sheet also indicates the “Resource(s) Affected” to be “groundwater.”
“The initial information rarely proves to be completely accurate,” said Hale. “We get 14,000 phone calls a year, and we do triage to find out what needs a response. Half the time it’s someone complaining about their neighbor.” In the case of the 1998 incident the caller was an employee of the environmental consulting agency who was overseeing the removal of a tank.
As for whether or not cleanups meet standards, when supplied with the DEC spill numbers, Hale said that his records showed that they had met standards.
“Petroleum is biodegradable,” the hydrogeologist said, qualifying this by stipulating that it be in the presence of oxygen. Groundwater is oxygenated. “We essentially ‘lance’ it and Mother Nature takes care of the rest. A year or two after a spill things are back to normal.”
He described products like #2 heating oil and diesel as having little ability to have health and environmental impacts. One of Hang’s reports, however, showed a spill that included benzene. Hale said benzene was more dangerous because it was water-soluble and could therefore cross the cell membrane in organisms.
“Groundwater moves in feet per day,” Hale said. “As long as we’re talking about naturally-occurring hydrocarbons [which includes benzene], by the time they reach 50 feet away from the spill we can’t measure them in groundwater.”
As of Aug. 10 there was no record at the DEC’s Environmental Notice Bulletin of approval for the Dominion permit.
New York power policy, practices at odds
New York's energy system is making a complex, tense, and urgent shift away from fossil fuels toward cleaner, renewable sources of power. That's the official line, anyway. And the shift is supposed to accelerate over the next few years.
A new state policy requires utilities to get half of their electricity from renewables such as wind, solar, and hydropower by 2030. That's supposed to climb to 80 percent by 2050. The point is to reduce the state's carbon emissions and lessen its role in climate change.
And yet two new natural gas power plants are currently under construction, as are some pipeline upgrades. And state regulatory agencies are reviewing several applications for projects that would add to New York's fossil fuel transportation and storage capacity.
But environmentalists and climate activists, as well as some lawmakers and residents of communities affected by the projects are pushing back. They're working as a loose coalition, and their collective goal is to get Governor Andrew Cuomo and his administration to halt the expansion of New York's fossil fuel infrastructure.
"I'm really happy that he's taken a stance on fracking and rejected some major permits for pipelines and processing places," says Katie Fittipaldi of Pittsford. "I think it makes sense for him to kind of continue his commitment in this way."
Fittipaldi is one of more than 1,000 people who signed a letter drafted by Ithaca environmentalist Walter Hang, which asks Cuomo to impose a statewide moratorium on permits and regulatory approvals for any fossil fuel projects. The letter also asks the governor to invest more in large-scale energy efficiency efforts, including insulation, weatherization, and retrofit programs.
Efficiency programs are the most effective and least expensive way to ensure adequate electricity supplies and to swiftly transition away from fossil fuels, Hang says. It's clear that despite big talk about switching to renewables, that the state has made little progress over decades because it keeps allowing fossil fuel infrastructure to be built, he says.
Case in point: Competitive Power Ventures has started construction on a 650 megawatt natural gas plant in Orange County, and Cricket Valley Energy plans to start building its 1,000 megawatt natural gas plant later this year; the plant will be located in Dover, right along the Connecticut border.
Both projects already have their crucial federal and state regulatory approvals, although CPV is still waiting on additional approvals to tie into the Millennium natural gas pipeline and a New York Power Authority electricity transmission line.
Critics say that the gas and the plants aren't needed, though the federal and state utility regulators which approved them concluded otherwise. The real problem is the state's power grid, which needs transmission, technology, and efficiency upgrades, critics say.
"There's not a demonstrable need for this additional energy," says Travis Proulx, a spokesperson for Environmental Advocates of New York.
Dominion Transmission developed its New Market Project to meet the needs of National Grid, which provides electric and natural gas services to homes and businesses in some parts of the state. Demand for power is growing, says Frank Mack, a spokesperson for Dominion.
The proposed New Market Project deals with an existing Dominion pipeline, which enters New York in Steuben County, arcs northeast to the Mohawk Valley, and continues east through Albany. The company wants to build two new compressor stations along the pipeline and expand an existing one. The compressors would boost gas pressure in the pipeline, effectively increasing its capacity.
The state is reviewing the proposal, which some environmental groups see as the most pressing fossil fuel project in the state. On August 3, the state Department of Environmental Conservation extended the public comment period on the project through September 12. (http://www.dec.ny.gov/enb/20160803_not0.html)
Some residents who live close to the project area oppose New Market over concerns about noise and air quality, since the compressor turbines are powered by natural gas, says Lisa Marshall of Ithaca, an organizer with the climate action group Mothers Out Front. She's concerned about those impacts and wants to help residents stop the project.
But she's also concerned about the bigger picture: climate change. New York has set goals for renewable energy use and carbon emission reduction and it needs to follow through, she says. New Market, along with other pipeline and power plant projects, will just enable continued, unfettered use of a fossil fuel, she says.
Similar concerns surround other pipeline projects, such as the Northern Access Project in Erie and Niagara counties. The project includes a new natural gas processing facility, in addition to compressor upgrades and a new pipeline.
Environmental groups and community members have helped halt or delay some fossil fuel projects, such as the Constitution pipeline and an oil train facility in Albany.
"The people of New York don't want to be the gas station for the entire Northeast," Marshall says. "We want significant investment in renewables."
The state's new renewable energy policy received a lot of attention for its provisions to prop up struggling Upstate nuclear power plants. Cuomo and the State Department of Public Service, the agency that drafted the policy, say that the plants provide large amounts of zero-emissions energy and play a crucial role in the state's transition to renewables.
The policy's renewable energy requirements are aggressive. And that opens up questions about how, and whether, the utilities will meet them, since just under a quarter of the state's power currently comes from renewables.
New York has always had a strong renewable resource in hydropower, which has steadily provided about 18 percent of the state's electricity. And renewables on the whole produce more of New York's electricity than they did 15 years ago.
Wind power generates 3 percent of the state's electricity now, compared to its virtually nonexistent contribution in 2000, according to an annual report from the New York Independent Systems Operator, the organization that operates New York's power grid.
Solar's contribution is growing, too, but it still isn't producing substantial amounts of electricity for the grid.
But the amount of electricity produced by natural gas-fired power plants has grown, too. The state got 57 percent of its electricity from the plants last year, compared to 47 percent in 2000.
Natural gas, while cleaner than coal, still emits carbon dioxide when burned. The fuel is also known to leak into the atmosphere during extraction and transportation, and its main component, methane, is a potent greenhouse gas.
Environmentalists and climate activists caution that if the state keeps approving natural gas projects, New York will be stuck with fossil fuels.
"You build a new gas power plant and you're going to be burning gas for the next 40 years," Marshall, of Mothers Out Front, says. "There's absolutely no way you're going to build a brand new power plant and then say, "'Oh yes, let's stop burning gas.'"
Lifton urges New Market pipeline hearing in Ithaca
The former CNG Transmission Station on Ellis Hollow Creek Road, now owned by Dominion. The station has been the site of a petroleum spill of unknown scope, according to new data.
(Photo: NICK REYNOLDS / Staff Photo)
State Assemblywoman Barbara Lifton and an Ithaca environmental activist are calling on the state Department of Environmental Conservation to hold a hearing in Ithaca regarding the proposed Dominion New Market Pipeline expansion.
Last week, the DEC agreed to extend the comment public period from Aug. 5 to Sept. 12 on the air quality discharge permit.
That decision came within days of Walter Hang, of Toxics Targeting Inc., of Ithaca, revealing a series of unremediated petroleum spills dating to the 1990s along the proposed pipeline’s route — including two in the Town of Dryden.
Hang and Lifton, D-Ithaca, want the public comment period to be extended on the water quality certification portion of the permit as well.
Dominion already has approval for its water quality certification for a large-scale pipeline upgrade, according to a Notice of Complete Application issued by the DEC, but the matter is still not finalized, pending review by the Army Corps of Engineers, Hang said.
The New Market Pipeline’s route will utilize the route of a former CNG Transmission pipeline purchased by Dominion and involve the construction of two compression stations to be built and upgrades to another, adding 33,000 horsepower of compression power.
Public hearings may be held in the communities where those three sites — in the towns of Horseheads, Brookman Corners and Sheds — are located, though it is unclear where the hearings will be held. No dates have been announced.
The hearings would be limited to addressing air discharge permit concerns, rather than issues of water quality, which Hang said could derail the project.
In Lifton’s letter, she urged a hearing be held in Ithaca — as the project includes the Borger Compressor Station on Ellis Hollow Creek Road, just outside the Town of Ithaca — and that the comments include water quality as well as air discharge.
Hang said previous spills along the route could prompt the rejection of the proposal, based on its noncompliance with the Clean Water Act. Though investigations on most were closed, at least one spill of an unknown quantity of material in Frankfort was open as late as July 29 after 16 years of not meeting cleanup standards, despite the state investigator’s comments saying contamination on the site still existed.
According to the DEC, historic contamination of the site was discovered by laboratory analysis during voluntary site assessment and not a recent “spill” when it was reported in 2000, after which nearly 2,700 tons of soil was excavated and disposed of.
Though some contamination remained, little more could be done, wrote DEC Media Relations Officer Kevin Frazier in an email to The Ithaca Journal, and the site was put in the inactive file. After seeing media coverage suggesting the site wasn't properly cleaned, DEC Senior Spill Responder Mark Tibbe reviewed the case and determined the spill could be closed.
In a statement, Dominion Transmission said it has no outstanding site remediation or cleanup projects in New York state, as highlighted on the DEC’s publicly available yet heavily redacted Spill Incidents Database Search website. The company said it notifies the DEC within the required time frames and then evaluates and cleans up spills; only after that can the DEC administratively close the spill.
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Frankfort spill argument against pipeline expansion
A spill from the Dominion Transmission natural gas pipeline on Higby Road in Frankfort is one reason some environmental advocates are asking the state to turn down Dominion’s New Market Project, a proposed expansion of the pipeline’s capacity.
A review of New York State Department of Environmental Conservation records uncovered the spill, which was reported in 2000 and led to the excavation of more than 2,600 tons of dirt, said Walter Hang, president of the Ithaca-based Toxics Targeting, an environmental database firm.The case is not marked as closed.
“In your area, one site had almost 3,000 tons of contaminated dirt removed and the DEC investigator remarks said plain as day that there’s still contamination in a ditch … 3,000 tons of contaminated dirt is a very large pollution hazard,” Hang remarked.
That’s why Hang, who uncovered eight other violations he deemed significant along the pipeline, thinks state law obligates the state to turn down Dominion’s application for water quality certification for the expansion.
Dominion wants to add two new compressor stations to the 50-year- old, 200-mile pipeline, in Georgetown and in Veteran, and to expand the existing compressor station in Minden. The pipelines runs from Horseheads to the Capital District. Dominion did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The company states online that the expansion is needed to meet the demand for natural gas by National Grid customers upstate. Inspections, safety features and 24/7 monitoring would keep the pipeline safe, the literature argued.
The project, which Dominion had hoped to start in March, has received approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, but needs air and water quality approvals from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.
DEC announced July 27 that the deadline for public comment on the proposed expansion will be extended from Aug. 1 to Sept. 12 and that it will schedule hearings on the issue.
Otsego 2000, a nonprofit group working to protect the Otsego Lake region, has opposed the Dominion expansion, arguing that it does not use the latest technology to protect the environment and the public, and that increasing flow over old pipes is too big a risk. An expansion of the Brookman Corners compressor station in Minden would pump an extra 100,000 pounds of greenhouse gases into an unusual atmospheric situation at the bottom of two valleys, said Nicole Dillingham, president of the board.
“It’s a very low point so even though they have a smokestack to take the emissions up and disperse them, they will not really disperse. They will cling to the valley,” she said.
