Demonstrators gathered to call on legislators to support clean energy sources at the State House Tuesday. (State House News Service photo by Antonio Caban)
BOSTON – The fight against natural gas pipelines in Massachusetts hasn’t subsided in the wake of Kinder Morgan’s suspension of its controversial $3.3 billion Northeast Energy Direct project.
More than 150 anti-pipeline demonstrators gathered outside the State House Tuesday to call for an end to other proposed pipelines in the state, their chants of “No to pipelines” and “Yes to clean energy” drowning out the notes of “America the Beautiful” playing from a Laborers International Union of North America truck that displayed pro-pipeline messages while waiting in traffic nearby.
In late April, Kinder Morgan said it would suspend spending and construction on the pipeline it planned to run through parts of Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire. The company cited inadequate commitments from prospective customers. In July 2015, the company’s directors had authorized the pipeline project to increase capacity for deliveries to the region from Wright, New York. Much of the supply was expected to come from wells using hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, techniques to tap the Marcellus shale formation,
Kathryn Eiseman of the Massachusetts Pipe Line Awareness Network told ralliers that the suspension marked “a milestone and a victory, but not yet a complete victory.”
Eiseman said her group has asked federal energy regulators to flatly deny a permit for the Northeast Direct project.
“We need a clean break from that,” she said, also speaking against Kinder Morgan’s Connecticut Expansion project that would bring a 3.8-mile pipeline loop to Sandisfield.
Activists also vowed to stop Spectra Energy’s West Roxbury Lateral Pipeline project and said they have trained 300 volunteers who are willing to risk arrest by physically halting work at construction sites. Forty-four have been arrested so far, several of whom joined the State House protest, said Marla Marcum of the group Resist the Pipeline.
“It’s important for these people who got in the way with their bodies to still show up here and talk to these folks and ask them to use the power that they have in that building to do what they can to stand up for us,” Marcum said. “But the way that the system is rigged, they can’t actually do everything we need.”
The laborers union truck drove past the rally multiple times, bearing signs with messages including “LiUNA! supports pipelines that help secure our energy future” and “Access Northeast means jobs.” A project of Eversource Energy, National Grid, and Spectra, the Access Northeast Pipeline would run through New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts.
After the demonstration, protesters streamed into the State House, where many attended a Senate Committee on Global Warming and Climate Change hearing, which reviewed the suspended pipeline plan and the state’s energy future.
House lawmakers have spent months working on an omnibus energy bill that is expected to encourage additional offshore wind and hydropower as the state looks to diversify its energy portfolio.
“This is a critical moment for our state’s energy future and we know that we need to stand united, and that’s why we’ve come together today,” said Emily Kirkland, the director of organizing at 350 Mass, an environmental activist group. “Over the next few weeks and months, our legislators will debate an energy bill that could determine our future for decades to come. That bill will either subsidize new pipelines or will promote solar, wind and the clean energy we need.”
Demonstrators said they are concerned that the energy bill could contain language calling for electric ratepayers to subsidize the cost of new gas pipelines through a monthly fee. According to organizers at Mass Power Forward, a coalition of more than 150 groups from across the state, 97 House lawmakers have signed a letter opposing such a provision.
Demonstrators held up a sign spelling out Mass Power Forward’s “energy policy demands,” which also include offshore wind and solar energy, support for communities “with polluting power plants,” and gas leak repairs.
The coalition is calling for the energy bill to require procurement of at least 2,000 megawatts of offshore wind, an elimination of a cap on the amount of solar power that can be sold back to the grid and the restoration of retail compensation rates for low-income and community-shared solar projects.
Its members also support legislation that would fund post-closure activities at nuclear power stations (S 1798) and direct the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency to assess and report on the preparedness plans for a radiological accident at the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth and the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant (H 2167) near the New Hampshire-Massachusetts state line.
Entergy Corp. announced in April that it plans to refuel Pilgrim in 2017 and then cease operations there in 2019. Citing safety concerns, critics have for years been calling for shutting down the plant, a major supplier of carbon-free energy for the region.
Demonstrators gathered to call on legislators to support clean energy sources at the State House Tuesday. (State House News Service photo by Antonio Caban) 
