Please take 20 seconds out of your day to sign onto this URGENT and important letter!
Rumor has it that with the state capitol empty, at 4pm on a Friday, at the very end of July, an announcement to grant the 401 Water Quality Certificate is going to be made. We still have just under an hour to press PAUSE, at least!
There is simply no way that the NY State Department of Environmental Conservation can credibly certify that NY's stringent Water Quality Standards will be met by this project as it currently sits. Please, help us keep this abomination off our mountaintops and out of our pristine trout streams in the Catskills... then share the link with your own networks! Thanks!
Described as a “greenfield project,” the Constitution Pipeline would convert pristine fields and forests into an industrial corridor. Construction would involve clear-cutting, blasting, and digging a 124-mile-long, 125-foot-wide gash up and down hills, through cold-water trout streams, and across scores of farms and rural communities. Instead of carefully boring under fragile wetlands and streams as requested by DEC, Williams and Cabot would maximize impacts by trenching through them, bury- ing their pipeline just below the surface where it would be extremely vulnerable to scouring, exposure, and rupture. Critical aquatic habitat, which has never been surveyed for species of concern, would be harmed. The project would also fragment forests and wipe out more than 700,000 trees in a region known for devastating floods. Clear-cutting on steep slopes would cause massive erosion and contaminate streams and watersheds, especially during the extreme storms that have become frequent in recent years.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has given conditional approval to this project, but fortunately New York State has the power to stop it. Under section 401 of the federal Clean Water Act, the pipeline cannot be built unless DEC certifies that the state’s strict water quality standards will not be violated. The problem is that there is no way to tear through the sensitive hills, forests, wetlands, and streams where this pipeline is proposed without threatening water quality and degrading aquatic habitat. DEC must therefore deny the 401 Water Quality Certificate.
Thanks for you help in our last ditch effort to Stop the Constitution Pipeline!