Millennium decision: the system is broken

Posted 8/21/12

When the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia handed down the Millennium Pipeline Company decision on August 15, the court argued that Millennium had followed the law in the …

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Millennium decision: the system is broken

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When the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia handed down the Millennium Pipeline Company decision on August 15, the court argued that Millennium had followed the law in the siting of its compressor station in the Town of Minisink.

While it may be true that the court, Millennium and the commissioners of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) all may have strictly followed the law, no reasonable person can look at the maps of the two sites that were at the center of the lawsuit, and conclude that the people of Minisink received justice.

One of the central issues of the case was whether the compressor station should have been built in Minisink, in the middle of a residential area, located within half a mile of 200 families, or in a place called the “Wagoner Alternative,” where it would have been surrounded mostly by large tracts of undeveloped land.

The question led to a rare split among FERC commissioners, with two of them saying the compressor station should have been located at the Wagoner Alternative, away from all of those families. The three other commissioners agreed with Millennium, that the station rightly belonged smack dab in the middle of those 200 families.

Millennium argued that the use of the Wagoner site would result in more adverse impacts to the environment than the other site. But we suspect the more compelling reason Millennium favored the Minisink site, is that the Wagoner Alternative would have required the replacement of about 7.5 miles of pipeline, and that would have been expensive.

The two dissenting commissioners expressed the view that the Wagoner Alternative would result in more, longer-term benefits to the environment than the Millennium Site.

In quoting the words of one of the commissioners on the other side of the issue, the court wrote, “even if one truly thought the Wagoner Alternative wrought lesser environmental impacts than the Minisink Project, so long as Minisink was still considered ‘an acceptable site that produces minimal adverse impacts,’ it should still be approved because FERC need not limit its approval to sites with ‘the minimum impact.’”

So that’s it: FERC does not have to accept the site with the minimum environmental impact. The question is, why not? Why should FERC not be required to accept the site with the minimal impact on the environment and also at the same time, why should it not be required to accept the site with minimal impact on people and families?

The answer is simple: for a very long time, and certainly for the last four decades, too many of our laws, legal precedents, rules and regulations have been created favoring the interests of wealthy corporations and individuals over the interests of the rest of us.

In this case, FERC decided to give Millennium what it wanted, and the court concurred, not because it was the right thing to do, but because the rules guiding FERC said the commissioners could save Millennium money if they chose to do so.

In any case, residents near the compressor station have argued that the operation has sparked negative health impacts. The health aspects of the issue were not addressed in the court battle, but anyone who visited any of the many protests and demonstrations in the community and talked to the people there would have to conclude at the very least that the existence of the compressor station has caused great stress among the residents of the community.

Another complaint was that the compressor station would depress the property values of nearby homes. Millennium argued that the design and buffers of the facility should mitigate most of the negative impact on property values.

So that’s how it goes—Millennium says it’s so, FERC agrees, and the court concurs. We have in this country professional real estate appraisers, who could study the matter and determine if and almost exactly how much a natural gas compressor station would impact property values. Such studies should be mandatory for compressor stations and any unwanted uses in residential neighborhoods, and nearby property owners who are negatively impacted should be compensated.

The rules under which FERC operates are just one, small part of a much larger issue: there are countless laws, legal precedents, rules and regulations embedded into the regulatory fabric of our lives that give an undue advantage to wealthy corporations and individuals over the rest of us. It would be nearly impossible for them all to be dealt with individually.

Which is why there is growing support in this country for a constitutional amendment that would say something along the lines of, “money is not speech, corporations are not people,” and should probably add, “corporations are not only responsible to their investors, but also equally responsible to their customers and the communities in which they operate.”

That certainly would not address all the inequalities, but it would be a step in the right direction.

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