Infrastructure the untold story

 photo of my good friend  Roland Micklem on his Mt Top Removal campaign last year- he is now working with Save Seneca Lake (see below)

Media coverage abounds on tar sands crude extraction and  hydrofracking of shale gas and oil over the last few years. There has been far less coverage on another aspect of the  unconventional oil and gas plays- that of  issues associated with the 'infrastructure' needed to store and transport all that shale gas and oil and tar sands dilbit. 

Spectacular pipeline spills and lethal railroad accidents have made headlines, and Bill McKibben rallies the troops in Washington DC to protest the Keystone Pipeline. But around the Great Lakes region  the quiet and rapid building of storage and transport facilities for gas and oil goes on with little scientific or engineering study, minimal regulatory oversight, and little media attention.

On the U.S and Canadian shores of Lake Ontario, the drinking water supply for nine million Americans and Canadians, two controversial infrastructure projects have local folks riled up. The U.S. project is a proposed expansion of shale gas storage in a salt cavern on the shores of Seneca Lake, largest and deepest of the eleven Finger Lakes that lie within Lake Ontario's watershed. The plan by a Texas based company called Crestwood is to pump pressurized natural gas produced in Pennsylvania into an old salt mine cavern located in the heart of the New York wine producing region.

Underground storage of natural gas in salt domes has a poor track record. A similar storage facility in 2012 located in Bayou Corne Louisiana caved in creating a still expanding sink hole, while in Kansas in 2001 gas migrated seven miles underground before emerging from abandoned brine wells and exploding.The salt caverns by Seneca Lake of interest to Crestwood include one that experienced a massive cave in back in the 1960s when it was being used to store LPG.

Dr. Sandra Steingraber, nationally known activist, biologist, and college professor wrote in an op ed published on the USA Today website on Oct 21, 2014, “Crestwood has argued that key data about the structural integrity of these old salt caverns is proprietary information. Both FERC and Gov. Andrew Cuomo's Department of Environmental Conservation have complied with this request for secrecy.”

Though little is known about the geological integrity and suitability of the proposed storage area, we do know that salt is already entering Seneca Lake. The lake has chloride levels two to ten times higher than the other nearby finger lakes. We also know there is a connection to underground salt deposits. If a cavern is physically disturbed and or collapses, storage opponents fear their lake and its important recreational fisheries could be permanently damaged. And we know that a certain portion of whatever ends up in Seneca Lake will eventually make its way to Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence.Perhaps the lake trout fishermen could switch to bluefish or flounders.

The other proposed energy transport infrastructure expansion that is drawing protestors is on the north shore of Lake Ontario and falls within the jurisdiction of Canada's National Energy Board which oversees gas and oil pipelines. A company called Enbridge (which has the dubious distinction of being responsible for a million gallon spill of toxic all but impossible to clean up tar sands crude into a tributary of Lake Michigan after its Line 6B split in 2010,) wants to start pumping tar sands crude through a similar 40 year old pipeline that runs along Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River. That line built originally to move less viscous less corrosive imported crude oil westward.

Though Line 9, aka the Black Snake to opponents of its “re-purposing”, has not been newsworthy in the U.S. press, a Chippewa band has managed to get standing in the Canadian Federal Court of Appeal over treaty violation issues and has challenged the Energy Board approval. Enbridge had failed to notify the tribe of the proposed re-purposing of the old line. 

Possibly partly as a response to the tribe's court action the NEB recently told Enbridge  that it needed to install shut off valves at major river crossings and in other environmentally sensitive areas. The company is appealing, saying Line 9 is perfectly safe and already has plenty of shut off valves due to something it calls IVP (Intelligent Valve Placement). It wants to start pumping tar sands crude through the pipe this year if it can get around the legal road blocks erected by the Thames River Chippewas.

The appeal and legal challenge has, for the moment, has delayed the re-purposing of Line 9. It may be all that stands between us here on Lake Ontario and another potential disaster in the form of an impossible to clean up spill.