Civil disobedience campaign aims to stop gas storage
At press time, police had arrested nearly 100 protesters in the “We Are Seneca Lake” civil disobedience campaign, which began on October 23. Multiple rallies have drawn hundreds of residents and numerous winery owners, local businesses and health professionals.
Early in December, the We Are Seneca Lake group held a rally to emphasize that, contrary to critics, the protesters come from their local community, though they are happy to get support from “outside” activists. That includes members of the Great March for Climate Action, who, earlier this year, walked 3,000 miles across America, from California to Washington, DC, to inspire action on climate change, in one of the largest coast-to-coast marches in American history.
The December action should “dispel the myth that this movement is an ‘outside’ movement, filled with ‘professional protesters.’ However, we welcome all comers, as we must when dealing with a watershed for over 100,000 people and air that we all breathe. It will take people from all over to protect the environment and to stand up to Crestwood, the true outsider in this threat,” said Schuyler County business owners Phil Davis and Scott Signori.
Paula Fitzsimmons, a physician assistant for 28 years in Schuyler County, said, “I feel passionately about my patients and Seneca Lake and the preponderance of evidence is that the Crestwood project is a public health risk of an unacceptable magnitude. I am not willing to stand by any longer while the air quality deteriorates and the watershed is threatened.”
Protesters have been blocking the Crestwood gas storage facility gates since October 23. Since then, protests have been ongoing, with more arrests each week.
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 salination of the lake, a source of drinking water for 100,000 people.
Crestwood has indicated that it intends to make Seneca Lake the gas storage and transportation hub for the Northeast, as part of the gas industry’s planned expansion of infrastructure across the region.
The We Are Seneca Lake protests are aimed at stopping 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 (DEC) issues conference.
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.
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 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.
More background, including about the broad extent of the opposition from hundreds of wineries and more than a dozen local municipalities, is available on the We Are Seneca Lake website at www.wearesenecalake.com/press-kit/.