hi i'm dave rogers a policy advisor to the rim of the northeast organic farming association this is another episode in a series of discussions about current policy issues of interest to vermont and of importance to vermont  agriculture and food systems today our discussion was prompted by the plans to put in place a gas pipeline from our gas systems is is in the process of getting public approval for an extension of of their gas pipelines and this raises all sorts of questions about affects on climate change our energy future agriculture agricultural lands and so we have a couple of guests here today organizations what your involvement has been with this and kind of work you do any three fifty vermont is a grassroots climate action organization based in burlington we  the plan to reverse that pipeline which currently runs from east to west and and the plan to turn it around run from west to east and run tar sands products from from western canada through it that's what we've been working on but there's a direct connection between that and this natural gas plant that will get into later and so we've been working out and supporting the the organizing around their gas pipelines ok well i run a small farm laughing tree farm in seventy seven acres and in monkton and of course my history has been involved with a lot of alternative energy projects and i think that the best thing that farmers can do is to get where they are producing their own energy so that you're independent of the whole fossil fuel system when you know why i work so hard to go and pay for your fuel when there is plenty of potentials to make your fuel on at the at the house so i was look at it originally from the alternative energy project and when i heard about vermont gas doing this build out i thought my god this is going to just really smash alternative energy big time and i started making calls to people  they know and because i was involved in them from biofuels association and a few years ago when that was formed so i'm calling people up see and what do you think and how are we going to deal with this and course deal with the root went from where it was going to be over down through through farmland and through my own property as well so i was just kind of a call to action you know i was i was calling people saying you know you got to step up and do something all of a sudden it's like wow i guess i'm what is going to step up and do so and so that's the angle that i started looking at it from and you know then course when you realize it's coming through your own property and you know i'm not a certified organic farm but i've been farming organically ever since i've been there you know i've never put any chemicals on my property i make a heck of a good compost pile and you know i'm i'm always looking at everybody else's manure pile it's like wow that would help my firm you know so when you've worked your soil and you're connected to your soil and all of a sudden you have this big project come through your  backyard they want to just rip your land up and put this pipe through it and it's carrying hazardous material in an energy form that's totally against you know the way you feel and you believe it is just such you know an attack on you you think w you gotta do something about it so i've been trying to talk to you know people like andy and no food and anybody i can get to saying you know folks we need to do something about this is a lot bigger than any one person's farm and of course the more you get into it and the more use their check in the details and you know the more stuff that comes up it's like you know every project i've ever dealt with in my life i always look at you know the positives and negatives and the more look at the gas pump project i just see more negatives and a whole lot less positives and you know that would me than my connection to the land you know i look down the pipeline to the other end of it where this gas is coming from you know i think important points that we're going to want to pursue so just just to provide a little baseline information so this project is a proposed a proposal to extend an existing pipeline up in northern  vermont and run an extension i think it's forty some miles from coal chester to middlebury and this is called phase one of the project that's going to be about a one foot diameter pipe correct you put down on that put down about three to five feet underground and the alan shearer for communities and for gas vermont gas systems is to find a route that is feasible and acceptable to the communities so that's called phase one and it's in a rather late stage of of consideration by the public service board here in vermont will talk about that a second and then there's a phase two of the project which will which will sort of kick off this filing where they want to hook to the federal pipeline system over new york side so there's no reference for sure as to whether it's going to be in albany early george or where so that route the development of that route whether or not the projects will go forward  will depend on the public service board here in vermont issuing a certificate of public good but that will not happen unless and until a route has been approved and that's a process that where there's a lot of public input so there are a lot of issues connected with this the route how it affects communities how it affects the land another concern is the source of the gas and he said that he knows this is going to be bringing gas over from the west and so they're just like stripping the land of the forest they take every single bit of vegetation off of it and create these giant open pit mind for fracking on the surface it looks a little bit better as same making terrible devastation and in fact for the for the tar sands process they just revealed a leak that's happening in alberta that nobody knows this exact source of and nobody knows how to stop the oil leak that's happening in that in that same area where they're extracting the frack gas right now so there we have the beginning of the concerns where is this gas coming from how is it being produced and is it responsible decision on the part of vermont  communities and government to allow that gas to come here now can i just say one more well yes that is that is that you know besides the obvious the impact on the land what's the impact on the communities out there is tremendous these are mostly indigenous communities they have i've been hunting and fishing in that land for a long time and you know once you've stripped off all the vegetation and chased out all the wildlife from this this land that they just can't go on anymore and they're totally in violation of the treaties that canada signed with with those tribes but they're just going ahead and doing it anyway there's so much money at stake that they just pushing aside any considerations  extracting this gas and shipping it on climate change and the effects on climate change greenhouse gases and such but can you just talk a little bit about the carbon footprint of this gas in in the world and in vermont and that will lower our our carbon footprint but that's from a very narrow perspective it really is just looking at what happens when you burn this fuel so comparing number two heating oil to the natural gas when you burn it in fact there's about thirty percent less carbon emissions when you burn it but that doesn't look at the whole lifecycle picture of of the extraction transport of storage and everything that leads up to the point where it's actually coming into your into your home or in this room your vehicle or into whatever you're using it for and if you compare it that way fuel well natural gas is really from a life cycle point of view it's really worse than coal because i know the gas company says hey this is this is a responsible approach to our energy future and you're pointing out if you look at the entire view if you add if you do the proper accounting right you'll find out that it's not at all a plus in that regard but what my gas has been able to do is that they say we're a distribution company and it's cleaner at the burner you know so they're they're advertising the good part of it but they don't want to part of the pipeline network the transportation network that extract brings the tar sands oil you know to various places to ship it out and they were the ones that were responsible for the  giant oil spill in kalamazoo michigan three years ago that was an bridge over one gas people think of it as a little local or a month concern but it's got it's really know when you've when you start looking at the corporate network there's it's hard to to pluck one strain without having the whole thing yes look at the nature of our global as like you talk about energy independence and from on here we have one corporation that owns or gas in our electric utilities and the transportation lines and you know now wanting to expand the pipelines how is that independent you know that's total dependency yes you know you can't be any more hooked up than having a pipe an electrical line bringing everything to you and i think it's an interesting observation that a couple years ago the legislature banned fracking in vermont it was an easy decision we don't have any fractal deposits i guess but but at the yeah but  at the same time we feel it's ok to have this wholesale frightening and very irresponsible environmental practices someplace else as long as we get gas at the other end so and we do have some options on gas leaks and gas leases in this state and that do they think it was seventy two or three they came through and checked for gas and already only on the big old bumper trucks came right down route seven doing the seismic tests and they did a lot of leases and down through shoreham and corn on down in that direction and a lot of the farmers signed on to say is oh it's free money you know and at the time they said oh there's gas deposits there but it's not economically feasible to go after it well in the seventy's they were saying the same thing endemic you know i mean they got a lot bigger play there i mean our gas is very spotty but you know there's still the potential eventually if you get to the point where the price of the gas can be enough to make it worthwhile there became feasible to think about the price was high enough just like you were saying the price started getting up high enough and the technology was getting better so you know this this giant deposit of oil along the route communities homeowners who are looking forward to this and and viewing it as a way to get a cheaper fuel for heating their homes and and such and so how do you respond to those those folks who are thinking the way i do i try to educate them and you realize you know they need to kind of you know broaden the way they're thinking about this and do a little bit of research and i try not to preach people to people about what to do if they get on on the web you know check the gas and oil industry check do some research on your own you know don't rely on what everybody else who and you start digging into aegis to find so many facts and you know that bring it up and say well this is not such a good thing you know  this gas pipeline is not really i mean it seems like it's new but this has been a process for almost three years and there was actually there's been like seven different route possibilities down through the state two years ago they had three routes down through show out right down through route seven and i have property there as well and i was again maybe it's time to hook up the gas you know it's clean it's natural you know it's not until you start diggin in you find out you know there's named clean natural for use in those buzz words but it's not when you get into it in terms of price well in terms of price you know the price is low right now because there's an abundance of gas that the vailable without a lot of effort without a lot of transport involved that is to say in north america there's a lot of gas that's currently available but the prices been really volatile and if you follow the pricing over the over the years there's no reason to think that the level of the current price is going to stay the same as soon as that pipeline is in and as soon as people of accept the gas as soon as there's no alternative that that that price is going to go up and you know and there's there's that sort of third bottom line question too it's like what is the price what's the price that we're paying for this gas in terms of in terms of the fracking in terms of the impact on the people where at the other end of the pipeline and what's the of renewable so called renewable energy by two thousand and fifty but you know we're part of a global system we're not in the end we're not isolated from from the rest of the world and if we're destroying the earth over there it's not going to be different over here you know and so we're hooked to the whole pipeline you know you have to look at the money into the other that is tied to globalization you know we're all connected you know so if there is there is a short term there is a potential short term gain i mean there's no denying that you know if you look at your bill this month and you look at your bill the next month twenty fucked up the natural gas for a little while your bill is going to be lower but i mean one of the problems in this country in general is that we do tend to think pretty short term  and and it's time to start thinking longer term about what the impact is going to be both on your pocketbook and on the planet and you don't even have to look that far at the price of a you know it's like right now under four dollars in maine the to use for  atural gas before two thousand and eight it was fourteen dollars and eighty cents per million b t u s i mean that was only a few years ago it was four times of prices it is now so there's no reason to think it's not going to go back to that when you check their websites like you know when we heard it was coming out of western alberta and went to western alberta gas and oil associate and you get on the website course and can is the big producer up there and here's the thing from the c e o saying my goal for two thousand and thirteen is to get the wholesale price of  but closer to home one of the great concerns that's how those that came into the issue is how will this pipeline affect our agricultural lands will the soils be protected from an organic from in terms of certified organic agriculture when there are standards i farmers need to sort of live by and if a pipeline company is coming through your property and digging up the land what effect does that have on the soil and how might that affect your status as a certified producer so you've been that you're focused on that land affects on the land so tell us a little bit about how you see that the problems and the concerns you have about that really on the ground  lot of that is you know just the attitude that they have you know it's like you know not everybody is connected to the land you know some people are and some people are it doesn't make you a good person or a bad person it's just the way you look at things and the gas people just don't seem to have that connection at all you know it's just rocks and dirt you know you guys dig a trench put in a pipe you know throw a little grass seed on and it will be fine but i see this having a lot of effect on the soil you know you're trying specially when you're doing it organically you know you're trying to nurture your soil and give a good soil and have you know grow your soil so your growth to your soil will take care of you and i mean when you do this kind of damage and destruction you're going to set back the soil  years you know i mean we called the extension service and you talk to heather durbin said you know what do you think this is going to do and well you know and we center the weights of the of the equipment that we're going to go across and the amount of impact it was going to have and she says with your clear heavy clay soils it's probably going to set you back ten years yeah easily if it ever recovers so the company is able to if there's a certificate certificate of public good issue  can come in and sort of take the land by eminent domain they're going to have to and with some compensation but do not get in the compensation enough for destroying the soils and there's a corridor that they will have control over not only during the construction but essentially and they'll have the opportunity to come in not just during the construction phase but to do any kind of maintenance if there are leaks if they need to put in a twenty four inch pipe instead of the rivet up put in another one  so i know one concern we've had is ok so if you hold their hand during the construction process and make sure that they're doing it right what's who's to say and what's to say that when they come in in the future that same kind of care and and sort of supervision will be there and how they supervise it do i mean we we had a meeting with from our gas and one of our other neighbors and you know like what's going on how are you dealing with this and we said how are you going to monitor this pipeline to make sure there's not an issue with it they say well we have checked the pressure at the at the main valve and we check into gate valves and if there's a lot you know we go out and see what's going on and we walk the thing we at least once a month and we fly over it and it says well this is a gas you know you're not going to see it guys are kind of i found the ground where you're looking for they said well we're looking for the vegetation to turn yellow and then we hone in on where there's a problem is we know it's there yeah by the time you're vegetation is turned yellow and of course this is her mom you know we got a few months where everything's darman so if there's a leak out there under the snow you know that's going to go undetected and you know the damage it's going to do to your soil you know i mean that's going to wipe it right out you know we're bottomland i've got like forty right by it or through it and just destroy it was just a simple little accident it was just ridiculous that anyone would even think of doing that in this day and age you know i mean this is from out we're supposed to care here you know and  little lamb thing you know i look at the other end of the pipeline and you know if you get well somebody make a big pile of money on your farm out where this comes from well they said it's come from western alberta i didn't realize when you buy land western alberta you buy the topsoil and the government owns a mineral rights so if they find gas on your farm you might get a new access road you know so that they can get there but you get no benefit from it you know you get bad water and you get to the livestock issues and you know i know one of the one of the things we've shared with the gas company and we'll share with the public service board in the future when face to begins and we file as as a party interested party is organic farms are certified and they need to maintain an organic system plan how will you treat the soil how will you address concerns how you maintain those soils and build them you know in a process of continuous improvement and this comes in and just sort of like puts a woman through the land exactly and we've been telling them you are going to have to really step up if these if this pipeline comes across certified organic land or land that may become certified meaning there's a lot of organic land and lay and farmers who wish to become certified in your neck of the woods and then how do you ensure that farmers will be able to comply with the organic system plan and those in the future who have a pipeline to their ground and want to become organic in the in the contracts that the companies develop with landowners how will that process look how will what will the supervision level be like how will we be sure that they will respect the organic system plans and you know task they were responsible for the still in kalamazoo michigan the the oil spill in kalamazoo michigan what happened there was that they had a drop in pressure just like you were saying in their control center of a they registered a drop in pressure in their pipeline so what they did is they increased the pressure from the control center and for seventeen hours pumped through at a higher pressure pumping oil a million gallons of oil out into the count as a river and it was  reason i bring it up is primarily because this is then bridge and we're talking about the same corporation they referred to and bridges response to the situation as akin to the keystone kops it was so incompetent it was so buffoonish it was so not the right thing to do that you know when when pipeline companies when gas companies when oil companies assure us of the safety of their concern for safety i just point to those things you know it's like they don't care about our safety they care about the bottom line their bottom line their profits and they really are not going to assure that safety even if they have they can tell you all about their leak detection systems and you know when they're monitoring it it's just like  let's just push more through it and we'll be putting it underneath the lake champlain i'm playing right now that's perfectly safe here and course one of the big things that causes a problem here is liquid fuel so if you have an oil spill you see it of all the complexities and such but it strikes me that you can have all the it's all the all the plans for response and detection in place but at some point somebody makes a decision whether or not the steps you should be taking now the prudent steps are going to cost you so much money that it's not worth taking those steps right now and so even the level of them even the level of technology of you're going to put in for the leak detection you know it's a profit and loss decision a benefit  benefit decision and you know they they there are technologies that are conceivable to create a leak with pipeline whether it's oil or gas but to define not probable it's not going to be profitable for them you know they tell you to forty a process of human minimal impact you least adverse impact it to who you know from what point of view investors yeah exactly you know and i'm sure they're not their bottom line is more important than my bottom line so so you know what the the connection here to our energy future is i guess we're talking about this earlier i mean we put a pipeline in it has a life of decades and we have made we have poured investment into a fossil fuel energy system and it just seems that it to the extent that we invest in that and put all our eggs in that basket we start to ignore or not have enough investment left over for alternative energy and then energy future that's more responsible in terms of greenhouse gases and climate change what would that let's you it was back to well you know of course even you know even if you accept th faulty premise that gas is better for the environment than oil that's really not true but even if you accept that we're still locking ourselves into a fossil fuel future and not not looking at alternatives not looking at at efficiency not looking at reducing demand not looking at at trying to find low impact renewable energy sources you know once that money is invested once the society as a whole is investing in in in an infrastructure whether it's the keystone x l pipeline in the midwest whether it's you know this energy east pipeline that they're talking about in canada or that or the natural gas pipeline that commitment made that is the decision not just by the company to do that but it's that decision by this is cya to go in that direction yes they're going to go ahead and build a pipeline saying that is a bridge you know there should be a terminations point you know it's like we have was fifteen years to get climate change under control before we're over the tipping point or this should be a build up for five years ten years and you need to factor that in ok we're going to spend eighty million dollars and then rip despite the five years how the finances of that and you should look at that and then say well no maybe it's not so profitable to use it we should point out also that it's not just an investment by international paper by vermont gas in this pipeline it's a public investment need because it's in vermont gas was supposed to give a rebate to customers what was it seventy million dollars and so instead of doing that the public service board said now you can just invest that in your infrastructure so this is a public investment as little private investment and a landowner investment i mean the landowners are getting the burden of this and we're not getting the money out of it yet you know if they had to actually go out and buy the land and pay the taxes you know and take care of it would be a whole different ballgame they would be able to afford to do this so with so many things in our society we have a sort of a false accounting and then system very well just for the full impact and costs if you spread it over time doesn't make sense at all makes sense short term for investor returns rising tide vermont that's been very involved in this organizing around the pipeline and it's been you know supporting clan donors and supporting other people they like to talk about false solutions and this is definitely  hard for people to get their heads around that i mean it's a different kind of personal accounting as well that you have to get comfortable with things you can't see it comes down to really i think count much do you care about people who that by your decisions we're in far and the earth ok or people are struggling you know i mean there's no question that people are struggling they're trying to pay their bills they're trying to balance their accounts they're trying to get through and feed their kids and get get through school i mean you know when somebody offers them a cheaper alternative for in the short term that looks pretty good of course it's hard not to want i don't put up any and people have had so much struggle for so long and we've gone through a heck of an economic downturn you know i mean everybody's looking to cut corners you know and this seemed like a good thing it's clean it's natural it's cheap you know it's like why wouldn't you think that's a good thing it's not until you know a few people start looking at  so as we said at the top the public service board a government body is charged with taking a look at the overall actually buttes of this and deciding whether to go forward and issue a certificate of public good no nate and other or other individuals in the phase one aspect project phase one of this project have intervened in the put with the public service board have filed testimony there's been a lot of back and forth and in september the public service board will have some hearings about all of these technical aspects and so the decision on phase one terms of the route and whether or not they'll be a certificate of public good considering all the things we've been talking about and more  now is going to be november at which time the phase two project will also some sort to bootstrap and get going and they'll be parties that intervene in that process lots of testimony over the next year or more  o that's sort of the status of the approval process so what actions can people take now what it what what is being done you mentioned rising tide i know they have a web page and they have a web page they're trying to  advocacy group is you know bringing up the media local people's concerns and they really need to hear from more people a lot of people that you know this isn't the way to go not good for the humans not good for the dogs so there are there are people who can formally intervene and participate in the public service board process and then public public can always send in common you can send in commissary are to intervene you have to be directly impacted is and they decide whether or not your interests are such that you  was i do dishes to quiet your visual process and and you know that doesn't have a lot of in the i know where we really have i mean we certainly we certainly should be putting comments in and rising tide from on if you go to their website or the stop from on gas website you know you can you can sign a petition you can you can send a postcard you can register your comment and that's a really good thing to do but we also need to be putting pressure on the legislature and on the public service department which is supposed to be representing the public in this process which is different from the public service board and and really get them to do a deeper analysis of the project  submitted testimony recently and you went down a group of us down to a demonstration at the public service department a few weeks ago because it with a big rubber stamp you know because what they seem to be doing is rubber stamping this project and we offered him this rubber stamp and said here you know you might as well have this because that's what you're doing and and you know it was just a graphic demonstration of the fact that they're not doing the analysis that is really necessary to represent the public good in this process and you know they they they filed testimony where basically they said this doesn't have much impact you know and they weren't even doing a life cycle analysis of what what what the impact would be you know so people need to to to certainly connect with with the public service board in terms of comment and there's a there's a meeting that was supposed to be on september eleventh that is now changed in september tenth in middlebury where where will definitely be trying to mobilize a lot of people to come to that meeting  september tenth how can people get more information about that meeting and about the actual year again the rising tide from our website is it is a great source for that stop for mana gas most of it on yours and on three fifty vermont for sure three educated and and to identify a way that they can become engaged here at this stage in this phase one process and then just carry on into phase two with with engagement next with his and i think in the engagement activism is going to do probably more than anything else because the way the two forty eight process is set up it's just ridiculous you know when we first got involved when that scheduling hearing was done on of the members the board said you what you should do if you're seriously thinking about intervening and this is a big deal you know because it's not something to take lightly is you should go to the public service department and look at some of the previous things that have gone through the two forty eight process and get an idea on how it's done and how it works they give you a little you know ten page citizens guidelines on how to do it really the way yes so i called them up and i said so i want to look at some of the previous cases and they said wow i'm not sure what which ones you want to look at so i want to look at the ones where the people went because well you know actually when the process you know you might get zero winners and yeah yeah you might get some attachments to their permit so that you know you get what something that you want but you know what you want when it's like system is set up it basically is set up for the utility to get what they want so we've got challenges in terms of gauging with this in the near term with this pipeline and then longer term political challenges to get the public service department and the legislature in gauged on fixing this process particularly if if if you know the word is that no matter how engaged you are used they're going to lose so that's why i got to and i don't want to end on a cynical not but well thank you both very much for being here i think you know any time it's a continuing story we'll be continuing to to engage with it from in terms of representing our  farmers they need representation and you know we just have a we have an interest in the bigger picture as well and i know you you too will be this will be your life extending into months and years ahead but  watching and we'll be doing more of these chats in the future