The year of the pipeline

Millennium goes online

By FRITZ MAYER

SULLIVAN COUNTY, NY — The Millennium Pipeline, which carries gas through Sullivan County and eight other counties in the state, went online on December 22, delivering product to many customers.

Robert C. Skaggs Jr., president and CEO of NiSource Inc., one of the three energy companies that own Millennium, issued a statement saying, “The successful launch of the Millennium Pipeline marks the beginning of a new era of energy-supply diversity and reliability for New York and the Northeast.”

That, of course, does not apply to the overwhelming majority of residents in Sullivan County because there is no natural gas infrastructure here, even in the largest village, to deliver gas to households.

While the local economy benefited from the influx of gas line workers this past year, who spent a lot of money in places like Kauneonga Lake, there were also a couple of mishaps. For instance, a well was contaminated in Cochecton because of work related to the pipeline. The company quickly remedied the matter and the homeowner was satisfied with the results.

In the case of some local roads in Cochecton, the jury is still out on whether the fix will be satisfactory. Highway superintendent Brian DuBois and other town officials say that overweight rigs hauling equipment over local roads caused quite a bit of damage to the road surfaces. Millennium has said, “If we did it, we’ll fix it,” but it’s not clear that the company and the town will agree on the extent of repairs needed. The answer won’t be known until spring of 2009, when, according to Millennium, crews will be back in the area to make repairs.

On another matter, there is still a bad taste in the mouths of some local officials regarding the tax breaks granted the company by the county Industrial Development Agency (IDA). In 2006, Millennium officials told numerous county officials that the company would not proceed to replace the existing 12-inch Columbia Pipeline with the new 30-inch Millennium Pipeline unless the company received significant tax breaks. The breaks represented millions of dollars in tax revenue for the county over 15 years, and hundreds of thousands to the towns; the pipeline runs through Bethel, Cochecton, Delaware, Forestburgh, Fremont, Highland, Lumberland and Tusten.

In early 2007, Delaware supervisor Jim Scheutzow said, “The IDA kept telling us if the tax breaks were not approved, the project would not go through. You and I know that’s not true. This pipeline was going to be replaced whether they got the tax breaks or not.” That’s exactly what happened in Tioga County. There, the Tioga IDA said no to tax breaks, and the pipeline company forged ahead anyway. Even so, six other counties acted in concert with Sullivan and decided to grant the tax breaks.

Now, with most analysts agreeing that the pipeline will ultimately be used to move gas to market from any gas wells that are drilled in the Marcellus Shale on the New York side of the Upper Delaware River, it seems likely to many that the company would have expanded the line with or without the tax breaks.