Editor’s note: This commentary is by Norton Latourelle, a self-employed artist with a home and gallery along Lake Champlain in Orwell. He is an environmentalist and has been researching and writing on the Addison County pipeline issue for the last 18 months. He has been a member of the group Vermont Citizens for the Public Good since its beginning.
[I]’m sure most of us at some time have had an old saying or song just stick in our minds and play over and over again at a maddening pace. Well, my head recently has been bombarded with the old saying, “Shoot yourself in the foot, shoot yourself in the foot.”
Now the “yourself” I am referring to here is Vermont Gas and it keeps recurring because over the last few months Vermont Gas has repeatedly continued to underestimate the true costs of their pipeline project, all to the dismay of everyone involved, including our once supportive governor.
Of course I was unsure whether or not this idiom was appropriate so I went to the Oxford Dictionary for clarification and it describes the saying this way: “to inadvertently make a situation worse for yourself and to demonstrate gross incompetence.” No wonder for my torturous thoughts; that was exactly what was occurring.
Who will pay for these costs? Is there a limit to the increases? And if they failed to accurately estimate the true costs, have they mistakenly misinterpreted potential savings to new customers as well? Moreover, is natural gas cleaner and better for the environment when we lose 10 percent of it into the atmosphere or when company spokesmen compare it to #6 fuel oil, which International Paper has said it will stop using anyway? And how does it remain cheaper when oil prices tank or when the world’s demand for natural gas increases or bans on fracking begin to go into place?
Should we force it on people and run a transmission pipe a few feet from their houses? Should we take their land by eminent domain for a corporation’s gain? Or better yet, should we run a mile-long pipe under the lake? Are we not already abusing our waterway enough with a couple of power lines planned for its bottom? And what about the plan to clean up the lake? Does the lake become the newest industrial corridor all while we throw money at phosphorus removal and put the blame on our local farmers for its pollution?
To answer that first question, ratepayers in Chittenden and Franklin counties will be paying the bills for Addison and Rutland counties, and the elderly and the poor will be buying our new pipe like Vermont’s AARP suggests. There are no free rides, ever! The money’s claimed saved here in Addison County are simply added to the bills of others. It all makes for a troubled mind.
Couldn’t the introduction of the wide use of compressed natural gas (CNG) be the innovation needed to meet the needs of our 21st century energy challenges? CNG is a relatively new technology and has been used across the country to deliver gas to needy industries that are not near pipelines, or where pipeline construction is problematic. It is being done even with single users as large as International Paper. This cost effective alternative, when compared to the millions and millions to be spent on a future pipe is a “no brainer.” Less money will be spent overall using CNG.
And to lessen any concerns one might have, Vermont Gas is admitting, as they plan Middlebury’s gas island, CNG is incredibly safe. It is the “bridge fuel” we all say we want. CNG will be trucked literally “over the bridge” to International Paper without permanent infrastructure.
Recently I had the opportunity to directly ask the new CEO of Vermont Gas, Don Rendall, a question on the Mark Johnson Show on WDEV radio. (Thank you, Mark.) I asked Mr. Rendall if he could give me the approximate cost per unit of natural gas delivered through a pipe versus the approximate cost per unit of CNG delivered by truck. Now I did this because in last fall’s papers, Vermont Gas said its customers of the CNG gas island in Middlebury would save from 20 percent to 40 percent on their fuel bills. Certainly IP, being their largest customer, would save greatly with CNG. Also last year IP and Vermont Gas had received a “protective order” from the PSB, which would exempt documents in Phase 2 from “public records requests.”
Now it took me a few seconds to get off the phone and get the radio back on, but what I think I heard Mr. Rendall say was that he didn’t have the comparison figures in front of him so he couldn’t give me any information on the unit cost of piping natural gas versus trucking it. I believe that if he is good at his job, then he should know these costs per unit figures. Then he said he would not divulge documents from discussions with IP, because these are business dealings between two private companies. I think these cost figures as they relate to IP would give us all a better understanding (during this time of escalating overruns) of whether or not to proceed with these expensive long-term pipes. If Vermont Gas is essentially acting as a public utility and the argument is “for the public good,” then these figures need to be part of public dialog. The gas island concept could also have the effect of saving millions versus a Phase 1 or Phase 3 pipe, and could lessen the burden placed on Chittenden or Franklin county ratepayers and, as AARP suggests, the poor and elderly.
So much for the transparency Mr. Rendall said he would bring to Vermont Gas’s new image!
Adding to my dilemma further, I was recently away, and I caught an article in the Manchester Union Leader about the proposed pipe across northern Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire. It seems that several years ago all the governors from the New England states got together and decided that in order to meet the demand for future electrical generation, we needed more pipeline capacity to fire new power plants. They first asked the electric companies to finance the new pipes, but they declined. The governors then decided that ratepayers could cover that cost, only the Massachusetts Legislature balked at the idea.
Our local pipeline is nothing in comparison to the overall goal of connecting to the grid. Are we here in Vermont to be used as a corridor to transport gas to the rest of New England? And could, since the Phase 2 pipe is so big, could the IP location be a site for one of those new power plants? (Also keep in mind that once the pipe crosses state lines, it becomes interstate and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission becomes the governing body. Vermont then loses much of its ability to weigh in.)
These are all troubling questions for me. For immediate relief today I’ll be going to the Chambers Dictionary to remedy my broken record obsession. They suggest that the “one foot” idiom is based long ago in a quote from Hamlet. So here goes: “Hoist with his own petard …, Hoist with his own petard … Hoist with …” Yes, not easily repeated. I think it’s working.
