A Tale of Two Pipelines
Clean Air Council was hard at work in February 2016 helping maple syrup farmers in Northeastern Pennsylvania save their land. The Williams Companies, a multi-billion-dollar fossil fuels pipeline corporation, used all its powers to oust them from their land and cut down their sugarbush. Williams wanted to build the Constitution Pipeline through their land to transport fracked gas from Pennsylvania into New York State. Clean Air Council lawyers saw the company’s argument was built on lies and false deadlines, but the legal system did not care. Williams took in a crew of workers with chainsaws, accompanied by federal marshals armed with assault rifles, and forcibly destroyed the farmers’ livelihood.
That fall, New York State denied Williams a key approval because of the damage the pipeline would have done to its land and waters, and the pipeline was never built Williams fought the denial, and the Council, represented by Earthjustice and in partnership with other organizations, waged a multi-year legal battle to keep the project from going forward. Finally, this February, Williams admitted defeat and declared the Constitution Pipeline dead for good, but the 300 mature maples in the Hollerans’ sugarbush are still destroyed .
The past echoes in 2020. The PennEast Pipeline Company was planning to build a fracked gas pipeline running through Northeast Pennsylvania into Central New Jersey. Before construction even began, New Jersey blocked their portion of the pipeline because of the damage constructing the pipeline would do to the state’s land and waters.
This winter, frustrated in New Jersey, PennEast changed the route of the pipeline and is now trying to build the Pennsylvania segment of the line first, claiming that it will eventually extend into New Jersey. Northeast Pennsylvania doesn’t need another scar across its beautiful farms and mountains. The Council is working hard to ensure that no more families have their livelihoods destroyed for another dead-end fracked gas pipeline.
For more information on the Council’s legal around natural gas infrastructure contact Alex Bomstein at abomstein@cleanair.org or Kathryn Urbanowicz at kurbanowicz@cleanair.org
