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FERC Extends Pipeline Comment Period
By Andy McKeever, iBerkshires Staff
01:06AM / Friday, September 04, 2015
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Berkshire Regional Planning Commission's Executive Committee was informed about the extension on Thursday.
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Federal regulators have extended the deadline to submit commits regarding the scope of the environmental review for which the Northeast Energy Direct natural gas pipeline will be evaluated.
 
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission extended the deadline for public comments until Oct. 16, giving relief to local organizations and individuals who felt rushed to submit comments. The comments are intended to help direct the federal regulators about what to look at when considering the environmental impacts the pipeline could pose.
 
Kinder Morgan is proposing the $3.3 billion project to transport gas from the Marcellus Shale in Western New York through the Berkshires and off to Maine.
 
The proposed path includes Lanesborough, Cheshire, Dalton, Hinsdale, Windsor, and Peru as well as many other towns in Massachusetts and New York.
 
The deadline was Aug. 31 and FERC officials have been holding a series of hearings across the states through which the 30-inch pipeline will pass. In the Berkshires, the company proposing the line filed some 6,500 pages of environmental impact reports just days before the local hearing in late July. That led numerous groups including a consortium of elected officials to advocate for an extended period to review those reports.
 
"Last week we were breathing a sigh of relief when they announced they would postpone it," Berkshire Regional Planning Commission Executive Director Nathaniel Karns said on Thursday.
 
FERC determined that the comment period would be extended and that a hearing in New Hampshire would be held. On Thursday, the agency committed to the Oct. 16 date.
 
For BRPC, that extension means a lot. As many as five senior staff members have been working on drafting comments to encompass the local region.
 
"We will probably be submitting something pushing 100 pages," Karns said. "The games will begin shortly after that."
 
A week after the comment date is finished, Kinder Morgan is expected to submit its formal application. That will start the formal review period. The project is in the pre-filing phase.
 
"These processes take at least a year," Karns said.
 
The project has not been popular in the Berkshires with an array of groups forming, reorganizing, or turning its attention toward it. Some groups, such as 350 Mass Berkshire, have been organizing protests and pickets, and advocating against the project.
 
Many towns also have passed resolutions opposing the pipeline. 
 
A number of the towns in both the Berkshires and in Rensselaer County, N.Y., have banned together as a working group. That group has hired BCK Law as special counsel to represent the collective in the regulatory battle. 
 
BRPC's executive committee approved a legal agreement on Thursday that sorts out the lines of communication in the representation.
 
"This is a case where there are potentially a dozen voices telling them to do this or do that," Karns said.
 
Kinder Morgan says the pipeline is needed to fill the gaps left by the decommissioning of coal and nuclear plants in the Northeast. Opponents dispute that charge and cite numerous health and environmental issues as reasons to oppose the project.
 
The Northeast Energy Direct project isn't the only proposed pipeline eyed to bring more natural gas through New England but it is the only one planned to cut through the Berkshires.
 
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