Editor’s note: This commentary is by Bethany Barry Menkart of Cornwall. She owns property in Leicester,Cornwall and Brandon, as well as a business, and has been active in the fight against the Addison Natural Gas Project. She is involved with Vermont Citizens for the Public Good, Rising Tide, 350VT, and VPIRG.

Sold out. Vermont has been sold out, by our governor, by our politicians, by the Middlebury Select Board – save the one lone, brave and principled dissenter — by the Addison County Regional Planning Commission, and by the Public Service Board, who decided on Dec. 23 to grant a certificate of public good on Phase I of the Addison County gas pipeline to Vermont Gas Systems, owned by Gaz Metro/Valener/Enbridge.

There were over 2,000 comments submitted to the PSB on the fracked gas pipeline through Addison County, more than on any other issue in Vermont’s history, and yet they chose to issue a CPG to Vermont Gas/Gaz Metro, deliberately ignoring the public’s concerns and wishes.

What happens to earth and water when it’s dug up, dislodged, moved or diverted by huge machines? The organic structure, the nutrients, insects and worms, the different layers, the essential oxygenation, all created over many years, and then violently displaced, with a 10-12-inch metal pipeline, filled with gas, inserted with extreme force, raping the earth, changing the soil, the landscape, our values, our lives, and our future, for profit for a series of Canadian corporations. Where is the public good in this? It’s corporate, not public.

Read more . . .

Two days before Christmas came the news environmental activists and landowners in Addison County were dreading: The Public Service Board approved Vermont Gas’s plan to build a 43-mile, $86.6 million natural gas pipeline from Chittenden County south to Middlebury.

But neither the stamp of approval, nor frigid temperatures and biting wind in downtown Burlington, deterred protestors from turning out for a rally Saturday against that decision. Altogether, around 75 people met up outside One Main Street, waving placards and banners and stamping their feet to keep warm.
The proposed pipeline has fueled opposition throughout Vermont. Environmentalists decry the additional construction of fossil fuel infrastructure instead of renewable energy resources, and they oppose the technology used to obtain the Canadian natural gas. A portion of the gas the pipeline would carry is obtained in Canada using hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as “fracking.”

In 2012, Vermont became the first state in the country to ban fracking. To turn around and transport  fracked gas into the state strikes Sue Morris, of Marshfield, as hypocritical. “Either we want to fight global warming or we don’t,” she said as the rally kicked into gear. “We have to decide.”  

Read more . . .