Medical Community Calls for Attention to Health Impacts from Proposed Gas Storage

Protesting Inergy at Seneca Lake, 2013

Nineteen doctors, nurses, physician’s assistants and EMTs from Schuyler County NY are concerned that the proposed gas storage facility on Seneca Lake will harm the health of local residents. They are so concerned that they wrote a letter to Governor Andrew Cuomo, DEC commissioner Joe Martens, and other public officials declaring that the potential risks from air and water pollution are “a public health issue.”

Paula Fitzsimmons, a Physician Assistant and signatory to the letter, says the Schuyler County medical community needs to have more public conversation about the potential health impacts of a storage facility. There’s been public discussion about environmental and economic issues, she says, but health issues have been overlooked in the permit review process.

So on Tuesday, March 11, Fitzsimmons will join geologists and public officials for a public forum to address the proposed expansion of gas storage in the salt caverns. The forum, “Seneca in the Balance”, begins at 7 pm (doors open at 6) in the Watkins Glen High School Auditorium, 301 12th Street. Fitzsimmons hopes this forum will spark dialog between health professionals – but one agency that seems to be missing from this very important conversation is the Schuyler County Public Health Department.  
( Note: there will be live stream of the Tuesday forum at: http://seneca-in-the-balance.com/)

In a conversation a couple weeks ago, Fitzsimmons listed three major concerns. First there’s the watershed. While storing gas isn’t the same thing as fracking a well, an accident could have the same health impacts. An accident releasing chemicals into the lake would contaminate the water supply of 100,000 residents.

Second is air quality. The goal of Inergy (now Crestwood Midstream) is to store gas from other areas, so the facility will become an industrialized hub of storage and transportation activity. The result will be more emissions and particulates generated by increased traffic, compressors and flare stacks. Fitzsimmons is concerned about rising asthma rates and increased risks to fetal health.

“We can expect the quality of life to go down for anyone with lung disease,” she says, noting that the environmental impact studies failed to take into account cumulative air impacts from vehicles and equipment. There are other health issues as well, including noise pollution, light pollution, stress related to becoming an industrialized area, and an increased accident rate due to more traffic on the rural roads.

Third is whether the county is able to respond to a large scale catastrophic incident. “This project would allow dangerous and volatile products to be stored under pressure in a cavern with known integrity problems,” says Fitzsimmons. If there were such an incident, it’s the local volunteer agencies that would respond – and they are undertrained and unprepared to respond to such an emergency, she adds.

There’s cause for concern. In 2001 a gas leak from a salt cavern storage facility in Kansas migrated seven miles before exploding in the town of Hutchinson. Two people died, many lost their homes, and firemen battled the flame for days. More recently, the collapse of a wall in a salt cavern just 75 miles north of New Orleans, Louisiana, has caused a massive 26-acre sinkhole. Hundreds of people have evacuated and now there is a threat of gas migrating into the ground beneath their homes.

Given the proximity of Watkins Glen to the proposed gas storage site on Seneca Lake, Fitzsimmons and her colleagues have reason for concern.

Making Peaceful Protest a Crime in NY

On June 28, Jeremy Alderson chained himself to the gate of the Inergy gas storage facility in Watkins Glen, NY. Alderson, who lives in Hector and publishes the “No Frack Almanac, was arrested earlier in the year for a similar protest. But, the veteran protester said, “Nobody voted for this [converting the salt mine to gas storage]. Nobody was consulted about this; it’s just being imposed on us from outside.”

At issue is a plan to store liquified gas in salt caverns beneath Seneca lake – caverns which have been declared structurally unsound and prone to catastrophic accidents. More than 100,000 people depend on Seneca Lake for their drinking water, and an accident would pollute that vital resource.

Local wineries, businesses, and community members have expressed dissent over DEC’s less than stellar review of the potential economic and environmental impacts of Inergy’s proposal to expand the gas storage capacity of the facility from 1.5 to 10.0 billion cubic feet. Local municipal elected officials are deaf to the pleas of constituents who are concerned about the potential effects of the gas storage project. So Alderson, and a few others who have brought their grievances to their electeds, are left with few options.

Alderson chose to chain himself to the gate and undergo a second arrest. But this time, the gas corporation decided to try something new: to prevent Alderson from further protests by filing a restraining order against him.

A “restraining order”, also called an “order of protection” is a legal injunction that requires a party to do, or to refrain from doing, certain things. Such orders are commonly used in cases of domestic violence, harassment, stalking or sexual assault to protect an injured party. However, courts are starting to use restraining orders to muzzle protesters. Peaceful protesters. Non-violent protesters.

Here is Alderson's report of what happened in court yesterday (August 1):

I went to court again today, this time in the Cayuta Town court, where the case regarding my second arrest is now being heard.

Everything was as routine as I expected it to be, with me pleading not guilty and my lawyer, Jerry Kinchy, saying that he would be filing motions prior to trial.  Then, out of the blue, the assistant district attorney made the request that an order of protection be granted, restraining me from appearing at the Inergy site.

Jerry objected that an order of protection can't be issued on behalf of a corporation, but only on behalf of an individual.  The D.A. argued that the order should be issued restraining me from being near Barry Moon, who he said was the manager of the Inergy facility (a different gentleman, identified, I believe, as Inergy's "site manager," testified against me at my first trial, not Mr. Moon).  I should be kept away from the Inergy facility, the DA said, because it is Mr. Moon's place of business, and of course, I shouldn't be allowed to contact him or go near his residence.

I told the judge that I did not know Mr. Moon and would not know if he was standing beside me, which would make compliance with this order difficult. The judge, Robert E. Johnson, said I should stay away from the Inergy facility and wrote out the order.  As a result, I am now barred from being anywhere within 100 feet of the Inergy fence.  I am also barred from "third party contact," meaning that I can't tell anybody to go to the Inergy site for any reason, including for a peaceful protest. The judge made it clear that violating this order would be a misdemeanor and a higher level of seriousness than what I am facing now.

Leaving aside the fact that I am in some danger of accidentally violating this order because I don't know where Mr. Moon's residence is and I still wouldn't know him if I saw him, there are much more serious issues here.  For one thing, I have, effectively, been given a punishment before my case has even been heard, and that sure doesn't seem right.

A restraining order is understandable when issued to an accused batterer, but it's a very different matter indeed when it becomes the mechanism for taking away someone's right to freedom of speech, especially when no evidence was even submitted to the court that my actions had done harm to Mr. Moon or anyone else.  In fact, the law (NY CPL 530.13) states that the court "may for good cause shown" issue such an order, but no cause -- good, bad, or indifferent -- was offered in court today.

My wife keeps wondering aloud whose idea this was and she suspects that it was Inergy's attorney who suggested it to the D.A.  We can't know, of course, but could a Schuyler County D.A. have come up with this novel legal theory on his own without prompting?

Yes, I know that in a day and age when our president claims he has the right to kill American citizens without trial, it's just kind of quaint and old-fashioned to care about the Constitution, but I do care.  And I simply cannot remember anything in the Constitution giving the government authority to forbid free speech if there is a risk that it will upset or inconvenience a corporation.

The part that really bothers me is what this says about America.  Jerry says he will file a motion to have this overturned, but you can't file a motion to overturn tyranny.

Hearing on LPG Storage Facility in Watkins Glen, NY

On Tuesday, September 27 the NY State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) is holding a public hearing on Inergy's application for a LNG storage and distribution facility on the shore of Seneca Lake, just three miles north of Watkins Glen.

The public hearing begins at 7pm in the Watkins Glen High School Auditorium, 301 12th St. Written comments accepted until Monday, October 10. Send your comments to:  David Bimber, Deputy Regional Permit Administrator, NYSDEC, 6274 East Avon-Lima Road, Avon, NY 14414-9516.

Inergy is a limited partnership developed to “acquire midstream energy assets.” They own and operate four natural gas storage facilities in NY and PA, with a combined gas storage capacity of 41 billion cubic feet (Bcf). Inergy also owns gas pipelines in NY and PA with 30 million cubic feet per day (MMcf/d) transportation capacity.

Their strategy, in their own words, is to “continue to develop a platform of interconnected natural gas assets that can be operated as an integrated Northeast storage and transportation hub”.

The Seneca Lake proposal

Inergy has proposed a new underground LPG storage facility for the storage and distribution of propane and butane on a portion of a 576 acre site located on NYS Routes 14 and 14A on the western shore of Seneca Lake. The storage facility will use existing caverns used by US Salt.

The company plans to store 2.10 million barrels (88.20 million gallons) of LPG in the salt caverns seasonally, displacing some of the brine currently filling them. The idea is to withdraw the fuel during the heating season.

During storage operations, the brine displaced by LPG will be stored and contained in a 14-acre double-lined surface impoundment with a capacity of 2.19 million barrels (91.98 million gallons) uphill of the facility.

The facility will connect to the existing TEPPCO LPG interstate pipeline, and will ship LPG by truck via NYS Routes 14/14A and rail via the existing Norfolk & Southern Railroad. The proposed project involves construction of a new rail and truck LPG transfer facility, consisting of a 6 rail siding capable of allowing loading/unloading of 24 rail cars within 12 hours, and a truck loading station capable of loading 4 trucks per hour.

Public concerns:

• Residents are concerned about the large 14-acre brine pit.
• They are concerned about the increased rail and truck traffic in a tourist area.
• They are concerned about safety – and note that Inergy has refused to release details of their planned safety measures until after the permit is granted. One concern is the proximity to Watkins Glen.
• They are concerned about air quality issues from the increased truck traffic and potential impacts of ground level ozone and other pollutants on wine grapes and other agricultural crops.
• They are concerned about the impact of this industrialization on the tourism and wine industry.
• They are concerned about the integrity of the brine pit in terms of “extraordinary” weather.
• They would like Inergy and DEC to disclose the number of years of similarly-sized LNG storage facilities and the number of accidents and explosions, so that an honest evaluation can be made of the possible disaster.

You can read the Environmental Impact Statement for the project at http://www.dec.ny.gov/permits/71619.html. Check out what my colleague, journalist Peter Mantius has to say about the project here.