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by imglorp 2677 days ago
This might be an unpopular idea among the fossil money and investment people, but as a victim and witness to pipeline activity by an unscrupulous corporation, I would suggest that there are a mountain of unstated risks and hidden costs. This example [1] pipeline has state and local criminal and civil legal issues, spills, runoff, poisoned wells, sinkholes, inestimable property value loss, loss of use, an explosion, and all other kinds of malfeasance. This line passes literally within feet of homes and schools, and I don't think we've begun to see the true danger: the stated blast zone is 1000 feet and the "self" evacuation zone is 3 miles [2]. Someone is going to get hurt.

Perhaps the biggest hidden cost has no price tag, which is the damage to democracy in the form of bad precedent that occurs when a big corporation steamrolls local governments, gets itself declared as a public utility, and begins to eminent domain and wreck everything in sight, literally bulldozing through suburbs. These are homes and businesses a dozen feet from the line: [3,4,5,6]. This is not CNG, it's other more explosive fractions. It's a travesty of injustice.

1. https://stateimpact.npr.org/pennsylvania/2018/12/24/spills-s...

2. http://marinereast2.com/index.html

3. https://www.google.com/maps/@40.0571635,-75.6675604,3a,75y,1...

4. https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9789588,-75.5377762,3a,75y,2...

5. https://www.google.com/maps/@40.0390132,-75.6366127,3a,75y,1...

6. https://www.google.com/maps/@39.9874756,-75.5431866,3a,75y,3...

2 comments

Not disagreeing with any of what you said, however I encourage you to consider the alternatives of pipelines. Rail and trucking typically have a significantly higher spill rate.

https://www.iaee.org/en/publications/newsletterdl.aspx?id=46...

That's a great discussion to be had, as well as the costs of burning stuff in general versus alternatives.

What I wanted to emphasize was, (1) we never had that tradeoff discussion at any level of government or community; it was forced on us, (2) there was substantial undisclosed activity that investors are probably not aware of, and (3) the overall shitty behavior by the company will have many long term negative effects on how we do public works.