Local Residents, Healthcare Workers And Politicians Take Position Against Eversource Springfield-Longmeadow Pipeline

Source: Springfield Climate Justice Coalition

Local residents of Springfield and Longmeadow, politicians and their representatives, and healthcare workers and advocates gathered on the steps of Springfield City Hall on Thursday November 4 and voiced their opposition to the construction of a new large, high-pressure pipeline to take gas from a large metering station to be built in residential Longmeadow through an area designated an Environmental Justice Community into downtown Springfield. They were joined by a representative of Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey, who read a statement unequivocally denouncing the plan.

Jossie Valentin, Markey’s State policy advisor and Regional Director for the Massachusetts First Congressional District, stated on behalf of the Senator: “Fossil fuel pipelines are dirty, dangerous, and detrimental to public health and the environment. Building new fossil fuel infrastructure is incompatible with what is scientifically necessary to combat the climate crisis. We don’t need more pipelines just to improve profits for gas companies. We need environmental justice to improve the lives of everyone who lives in Springfield and Longmeadow. We need climate action to improve the health and safety of our future.”

This followed the themes laid out by local residents Verne McArthur of the Springfield Climate Justice Coalition (SCJC), the grassroots organization that successfully fought the building of the biomass plant in East Springfield and organized yesterday’s press conference, and Michele Marantz of Longmeadow’s Pipeline Awareness Group (LPAG). McArthur spoke to the expense for ratepayers, $40 million according to Eversource’s chief of gas distribution Bill Akley in testimony before a Springfield City Council committee hearing. That expense is unnecessary, since Eversource admits there is no need for more gas to serve present Springfield customers. McArthur refuted the utility’s claims for need for “redundancy” or “reliability” since the new pipeline would provide a secondary source for the Memorial Bridge pipeline which has been supplying Springfield for decades, has never been described by Eversource as compromised or at risk of failure. Further, the project would only duplicate part of the delivery system, which could be shut off with problems at the Bliss Street transfer station to which both the new and old pipes would run.

Newly-elected Ward 8 Springfield City Councilor Zaida Govan and Ward 1 School Committee Member Joesiah Gonzalez both spoke of the health dangers and explosion risks inherent in the new infrastructure. Govan spoke of a friend wounded and still disabled from the 2018 Merrimack pipeline explosion and Gonzalez detailed his concerns about the health effects to children in Springfield from ozone produced by methane leaks and nitrous oxide emitted from gas stoves in homes. Springfield was declared the Number 1 Asthma Capital of the Country in 2018 and 2019 by the National Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, due in great part to its polluted air. Mireille Beijani of Community Action Works stressed the pollution impact particularly on the city’s low income communities of color.

Gonzalez’ concerns were reflected by the announcement of a Healthcare Workers’ Letter Against the Eversource Pipeline, whose salient points – the pollution and potential explosions threatening public health locally and the increasing menace of climate change to the lives of hundreds of millions around the world – requests Eversource’s Akley “…to immediately withdraw the pipeline proposal and direct these millions to the emergency task at hand: the conversion to efficient electric heat pump technology powered by clean and renewable energy.” 

Condemning the proposal as unnecessary, wasteful of customers’ dollars, a health and safety risk and contributing to climate change, several residents cited profit-seeking and an attempt to expand the shrinking pool of gas customers as Eversource’s true motives for the pipeline’s construction. At a time when, in order to fight climate change, all scientific authorities and Massachusetts law state that gas use must necessarily dwindle, pipeline construction assures a 9.7% return to Eversource shareholders at gas ratepayers’ expense, a substantial and assured profit. Further, Eversource is now predicting in state filings that it expects the number of Springfield customers to rise, not fall as they should in obedience to the dictates of climate science and public health, and it would appear that the new pipeline is a means of facilitating gas expansion.

Young Naia Tenerowicz of Springfield closed the event with a passionate plea to fight for a survivable, healthy future.