Brooklyn, NY – Bushwick residents, community activists, elected officials and allies gathered on November 25, 2019 at Our Wicked Lady event space for the first informational and organizing event to stop the North Brooklyn Fracked Gas Pipeline.
New York State Senator Julia Salazar as well as members of New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams’ staff attended the event and expressed opposition to the project.
Right now, National Grid is expanding a massive fracked gas transmission pipeline in North Brooklyn. This project is not a replacement of leaking pipelines, it is and expansion to charge us, the rate-payers, millions of dollars in rate hikes to fill their shareholders pockets.
Their current segment includes the installation of approximately 6,200 feet of new pipeline along sections of Flushing Avenue, Bushwick Avenue, Moore Street, Manhattan Avenue, and Montrose Avenue.
Their goal is to complete this phase of the project in the Fall of 2020, and then move into Williamsburg and Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
Facts about this project that National Grid does not reveal:
- This is not about “modernizing” our system for heating and cooking. This is about an expansion to charge rate-payers an
increase and grow profits for National Grid’s shareholders. - This is a transmission pipeline. It will not service the affected community where the already trafficked main thoroughfares and already stressed trucking routes for local businesses will be dug up.
- This project holds us back on our renewable energy goals. We should be mandating any gas pipelines should be replaced with shared geothermal loops, and energy efficiency measures in our buildings.
- Gas pipelines are not safe. In 2019, an average of three pipeline incidents each month have resulted in fires, damage to homes or deaths.
- Fracking exacerbates climate change. Methane is 86-101 times worse for atmospheric warming than carbon dioxide. Climate change is destroying Earth’s ability to sustain life.
- The industry coined the term “natural” gas to create the sense that it is clean, but the extraction, transport and burning of this gas destroys the health of our water, land, and air. Additionally, there are high levels of radon in this fracked gas from PA, and detrimental to asthma patients, children, pets.
- A report authored by Suzanne Mattei, former DEC Regional Director notes National Grid does not have gas constraints, this is a manufactured crisis to keep business-as-usual, keep us hooked on fossil fuels, and charge rate-payers for construction well after the lifespan of this pipeline. This makes your constituents pay for the company’s stranded assets.
- This project is disguised as a local upgrade by segmentation, while it is a much larger project leading to an LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) depot, CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) and other fracking infrastructure facilities in Greenpoint. National Grid is requesting 189.5 million ratepayer dollars over the next three years to complete the project.
Our goal is to stop this project and push Governor Cuomo to mandate our Public Service Commission invests our rate-payer dollars in renewable energy and efficiency that is affordable and accessible to all New Yorkers regardless of income or zip code.
© Erik McGregor – erikrivas@hotmail.com – 917-225-8963