Richard DowneyUnatego Area Landowners Association
As the debate continues over the DEC approving natural gas pipelines, the people in Upstate New York are being squeezed out and forced to move.
Last week’s Monticello DEC hearing on a 7.8 mile Millennium Pipeline loop with a compressor station and upgrades drew the usual pro/anti gas development crowd. Lots of opinions were offered but little technical information the DEC could use in decision making.
The antis painted an apocalyptic picture of foul water, unbreathable air, rising seas, and disease. Union workers and others in favor of the project saw jobs and economic development. Most local political leaders spoke of increased tax revenue. They said the Millennium Pipeline has been a good neighbor, living up to its promises and benefiting the community.
An abandoned from in Upstate New York
Let’s cut to the quick. The anti’s want to keep gas in the ground. To achieve this, they’ll do anything from lawsuits to street theater as long as it gets news coverage and political attention. The tactics are successful. The Constitution Pipeline, scheduled for completion two years ago, is still tied up in court. Not one pipe laid in New York. A dozen pipelines throughout the Marcellus region are in various stages of delay.
The purpose of delay is twofold. Delay allows the wealthy backers of renewables to attempt to bring renewable energy outputs up to scale while adding costly burdens to natural gas. By driving up the cost of gas, these elite backers hope to narrow the spread between low-cost gas and high-cost renewables. That’s the REAL pipe dream.
Brookhaven’s solar farm and the wind turbines off Block Island are the only two large scale, commercial renewable entities selling electricity into the grid which are in or near New York. Even with massive subsidies their product averages about five times New York’s wholesale rate. Keep in mind, New York’s electricity is one of the highest in the nation. Parity with gas generated electricity is a long way off.
As for environmental purity, natural gas has lowered CO2 emissions in the USA to twenty five year lows, as gas replaces coal in electric generation. Remarkably, this drop has occurred amidst population growth and economic expansion. Gas has benefited the environment without tripling the cost of household electricity as has occurred in Europe. Yet gas development is the bridge to the future the anti’s wish to burn. LOL on that.
In the meantime, Upstate New York is emptying out. Take a ride around your neighborhood. Count the For Sale signs. At last Thursday’s DEC hearing a young man from Local 17 spoke of high property taxes, the high cost of living, and the lack of jobs in New York. He said, “I’m your future, New York, and I’m leaving.” He was followed by a young mother of three. Her husband travels an hour and half to a carpenter’s job. “We can’t make it,” she said. “We’re putting our house up for sale. A year from now, we’re gone.”
If the DEC was listening, that was the take-away. Upstate New York is dying, bleeding its young families who are moving anywhere . . . except New York. Pipelines create jobs and provide low cost energy to power our industries and heat our homes.
Someday renewables will be ready but for now let reason prevail to build a future for us all.
Richard Downey is a retired New York City schoolteacher and a member of the Unatego Board of Education and the Joint Landowners Coalition of New York.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/16/opinion/stop-a-pipeline-for-fracked-gas.html
So it is safe to assume karenna Gore doesn’t live in upstate NY right? What about Robert f Kennedy jr?
What about Lucy Rockefeller waletsky? Where does she live that fracking became such a concern of hers? Senator avella?
https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=NY
Whats number one in terms of consumption? Coal? Nope. Natural gas. Which of course means that it is somehow delivered to the state. How might that be? Largely through pipelines that run through other states. What recent expansion have there been? Spectra nynj into Manhattan as well as the Rockaway lateral into Brooklyn. Spectra aim I am not knowing delivers to NY State areas specificaly but was also a recent project. What was different about consittuion pipeline besides the number of lawyers in the docket, and specific groups involved? Greenfield project?
Count the increasing for sale signs in my shale county. Every year more signs for sale and our air is not better with 50 gas compressor stations belching their toxins away and our poverty levels are pretty much the same since before fracking…
why don’t you move. do us all a favor
Lol dear snowflake, too bad your fantasies have been debunked repeatedly. Karma is a bitch and yours will be arriving soon.
Vera then move to NY!!! Ha!!
It seems that even our friends Down Under are starting to catch on with the green scam https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/08/06/aussie-liberal-press-notices-the-importance-of-reliable-electricity/ As more and more baby boomers retire and belong to NYS retirement plan, they will be taking their money with them. So the money bucket has another hole in it. Poor folks on public assistance don’t have to worry since they get free stuff. The ultra rich which happen to be many of the anti frackers who hold much disdain towards anyone less wealthy than they are can skate and pay minimal taxes. The middle income folks who have been subsidizing the state will take their tax free pensions out of state and the money bucket drips ever more. Eventually most of NY will just be a two tiered society, harken back to the days of Lords and serfs. The whole system is not sustainable and there will be the usual violence and mayhem. “Soylent Green is People!!”
cuomo’s NY DEC is a puppet criminal enterprise run by the NRDC. It has been ignoring its own charter and the law for 7 years.
the plan is punish upstate rural folk who have the temerity to not vote leftist, and pander to climate cultists. starve out the stupid hayseeds…
Even some of the lefties are not too fond of Andy
Andrew Cuomo Is One of the Most Progressive Governors. (So Why …
http://www.governing.com/…/gov-cuomo-new-york-governor-progressives.html
Governing magazine is hardly a “conservative” publication
Trouble in paradise??
Try this link instead http://www.governing.com/topics/politics/gov-cuomo-new-york-governor-progressives.html
Do you notice that anti-fracking and antifracking infrastructure Zephyr Teachout is one of the “politicos” mentioned in this reporting by the NYtimes ( which at this point I would say has proven it cannot report on natural gas, pipelines and more and also that it will not do its job when asked to as well) and the subject of energy or natural gas is absent? What about the actual article in Politico written by a reporter (or editor) who is MARRIED TO AN ANTIFRACKING ACTIVIST ORGANIZER?
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/06/nyregion/amid-talk-of-a-2020-run-cuomo-must-first-deal-with-2018.html?_r=0
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/06/cuomo-third-term-2018-2020-new-york-241311
The truth is young people are moving out to find jobs and their parents are retiring and following them. Their houses then become second homes for downstate and jersey folks. it keeps the property values stable and helps because they pay the full ride on taxes but they don’t contribute students to schools, members to churches, volunteers to community organizations or regular income to local businesses.
And how fast will these houses be abandoned if the economy tasks. Ask all the second home communities in the Poconos how bad it was in 2008 with all the rat infested abandoned homes. That is not a sustainable model and you can be sure city folks will buy new before living in most of the upstate housing stock.