Weymouth, MA residents who fought a six-year battle with an energy giant over a controversial gas compressor never had much of a chance, with both the federal and state governments consistently ruling against them
By Mike Stanton Boston Globe Spotlight Fellow
As the new gas pipeline compressor station (in background) is set to start operating this week, citizen activist Alice Arena places an elf on a tree in Kings Cove Park in Weymouth. JOHN TLUMACKI/GLOBE STAFF photos
WEYMOUTH — Alice Arena was sitting at the kitchen table in her Colonial home at the end of September, composing yet another e-mail to government regulators, when her phone erupted with a flurry of calls and texts.
“What’s this? They had another accident?” read one message.
For six years, Arena has battled federal regulators and Governor Charlie Baker’s administration to stop one of North America’s biggest pipeline companies from constructing a natural gas compressor station in her South Shore neighborhood. The 7,700-horsepower compressor would pump gas under high pressure to speed it on its journey north, as far away as Nova Scotia.
What is a compressor station? How does it work?
This has been an epic battle over a crucial piece of the natural gas energy system — featuring a hunger strike, lawsuits, arrests, and big money lobbyists. The battle was especially fierce in Weymouth, both because of its history of pollution and its dense population — and also because Massachusetts has seen the tragedy that can come when natural gas pipelines fail: the Merrimack Valley explosions of 2018.
That hazard — as well as fears of cancer-causing pollutants — has mobilized Arena and her citizens group, one of the longest-running in the state opposing a major energy project.
“They are trying to plant a time bomb in our neighborhood,” one resident warned at a public hearing.
The day after that flurry of texts, a copy of a government order dropped into Arena’s e-mail, bringing her guarded excitement. Federal regulators cited two emergency shutdowns at the station that had occurred in the past few weeks. They ordered an indefinite delay to its planned startup Oct. 1, pending a safety review.
Arena knew better than to get too hopeful — so often her group’s victories had been followed by setbacks. And that would be the case again.
The day before Thanksgiving, after an eight-week review, federal investigators said that the $100 million station could safely begin work, pumping up to 57.5 million cubic feet of gas a day and pressurizing it to 1,440 pounds per square inch through high-strength carbon steel pipes. After running tests over the past week, operators are hoping to start running the compressor this week.
But Arena does not see this as the end. Legal appeals are still pending, and she believes new troubles could surface at the station to cause another shutdown — one her group hopes would become permanent.
She’s not afraid of a fight, and lives by a favorite quote from the early 20th-century progressive organizer Mother Jones — “Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.”
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Even as Arena and her allies gear up to keep fighting, they know they are running out of options.
A Globe investigation of government actions leading up to this point shows the political deck has long been stacked against citizen groups like Arena’s. Community input is often overridden by the interests of pipeline owners and government regulators.
From 1999 to 2017, an independent study found, the federal agency that issues permits for new pipelines had approved 400 projects and declined just two. The commission has also rejected calls to weigh the impact of new pipelines on climate change. And under President Trump, the federal government has sought to speed up approvals for new pipelines.
If federal regulators offered little hope, Arena’s group looked to Governor Baker, who routinely touts his green credentials. His administration had power over the project because state air and water permits were required.
But the citizens group would be disappointed time and time again.
Baker’s spokespeople tell the Globe he authorized extensive state reviews of the project, but that the federal government holds the power to approve new pipelines. Besides, Baker says, bringing new gas into Massachusetts is a key part of his energy agenda, along with wind and hydropower, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from dirtier coal and oil.
Proponents call gas, which supplies half of Massachusetts’ energy needs, the “bridge fuel” to a green future. But state utilities regulators launched an investigation this fall of future demand amid concerns that more pipelines and more gas will bring more methane pollution, a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
Enbridge, the Canadian pipeline giant, built the Weymouth compressor as the linchpin of its $600 million Atlantic Bridge project to transport 133 million cubic feet a day on the company’s Algonquin Pipeline from New Jersey to Massachusetts. Industry officials say the added capacity is necessary to guarantee reliability on cold winter days.
But to Arena, the bridge leads to Canada. The Weymouth compressor will push gas through a pipeline beneath Boston Harbor then north to Enbridge’s Maritimes & Northeast Pipeline that runs through Maine to Nova Scotia. The vast majority of the Atlantic Bridge gas will go to Canada, according to federal records.
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