Cornwall and Shoreham voters oppose natural gas pipeline extension

The towns of Cornwall and Shoreham voted against Vermont Gas Systems’ pipeline extension Monday in a nonbinding town meeting ballot – marking definitive local opposition to the second phase of the company’s proposed southern expansion though Addison County, town officials say.

Residents of Cornwall voted 126-16 and Shoreham voted 66-38 against the pipeline. The second phase of the company’s pipeline extension would connect gas lines in Middlebury to the International Paper mill in Ticonderoga, N.Y., passing through the two Vermont towns and under Lake Champlain. The 26-mile extension is estimated to cost $70 million.

The vote will not alter the company’s plans, Vermont Gas’ spokesman Steve Wark said Tuesday.

By selling natural gas to the paper mill, the company will raise about $45 million to cover infrastructure costs necessary to connect the pipeline to Rutland, the project’s third phase, expediting the plan by 15 years, company officials say.

“So the stakes are very high,” Wark said in an interview Tuesday.

He said the company would set up distribution lines to about 160 customers in the towns if they decided they wanted service. (Between the two towns, there are nearly 3,000 residents, according to the 2010 U.S. Census.)

Bruce Hiland, chair of the Cornwall Selectboard, said the town has repeatedly opposed the project.

“Vermont Gas’ current offer entails long-term safety risks, environmental degradation, unstable fuel pricing, and inadequate, decreasing financial compensation,” he said in a statement.

Last year, the Vermont Public Service Board approved the company’s proposal to build a 41-mile, $86 million natural gas pipeline that would connect Colchester to Middlebury. The second phase is pending before the board.

Hiland said Cornwall has hired an attorney to represent it before the Vermont Public Service Board, which will decide whether the project serves the public good.

“This is like going to a gunfight armed with a knife,” Hiland said in an interview, “because you have enormous resources on the other side.” He said Cornwall’s legal budget is $50,000, up from $10,000 the previous year.

Several landowners along the phase one route have so far failed to settle easement agreements with the company; as a result, Vermont Gas has said it will use eminent domain to secure rights to their land.

Randy Martin, a Cornwall resident who lives on a 330-acre farm, withdrew a previous easement agreement with Vermont Gas after intermittent negotiations with the company’s right-of-way land agents.

Martin, who currently uses a wood pellet stove for heat, said the company has not offered him natural gas – an offer he said would reject even if they did.

“Because I don’t believe in the process where this gas is coming from,” he said, referencing the process of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. “By using this gas, I think you are condoning that procedure that is harmful to other citizens of this world.”

Adam Lougee, executive director of the Addison County Regional Planning Commission, said the commission’s Energy Committee voted 4-1 against the second phase of the project.

The planning commission supported phase one of the pipeline expansion. The commission will consider the committee’s recommendation as it decides whether to support phase two of the pipeline extension, Lougee said.

“Generally the commission follows the recommendations of its committees,” he said in an interview Tuesday, “but they are non-binding.”