(Submitted by United Communities for Protecting our Water and Elevating Rights)
United Communities for Protecting our Water and Elevating Rights (UC4POWER) filed a “Request for Rehearing/Reconsideration and Motion for Stay” on September 25 with FERC. Included with the filing was Dr. Andrew Kear’s NEW report, Bureaucratic Seismicity: Finding Fault with the Nexus Pipeline Maumee River Crossing expressly written for the groups refute of FERC’s Nexus Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity. Toledo Attorney Terry J. Lodge filed the request on behalf of UC4POWER.
The group wants residents of Bowling Green, Waterville, and the16 communities served by BG’s water system to know that no matter how much BG Mayor Edwards insists that agency oversight will protect the BG Regional Water Intake/Treatment Facility, their drinking water supply remains far from being safe. Dr. Kear’s report explains in depth and detail why this continues to be the case, even after the permits have been issued which supposedly protect public health and safety and the environment.
Since FERC helped Nexus define their risks associated with the pipeline project, the deck has been stacked against communities like Bowling Green which want to protect their own interests and public health and safety. Meanwhile, the “facts,” which agencies like Ohio EPA use while monitoring pipeline construction, have been skewed or falsely defined by Nexus/FERC to favor the project’s rushed timeline. Dr. Kear’s report states, “In an egregious example of bureaucratic seismicity, FERC and Nexus have accomplished in less than 1 year what the earth’s crust has failed to do during the past 100 million years – move the Bowling Green Fault System.”
Furthermore Dr. Kear states, “Rather than move the pipeline, FERC and Nexus have chosen to move the Bowling Green Fault System in order to obfuscate the threat and minimize the potentially catastrophic magnitude of damages caused by constructing a pipeline beside the Bowling Green Municipal Water Plant, transecting the BG Fault System, and under the Maumee River.
How can proper monitoring be conducted while the truth remains hidden in the BG Fault?
That is exactly the reason why we should be concerned – very concerned.
Lisa Kochheiser, member of both UC4POWER and the Bowling Green Charter Amendment group, BG Climate Protectors addresses that concern. “I believe we have a duty to bring the facts to public attention. But I am not going to hold my breath while waiting to see if FERC stops Nexus pipeline as a result of UC4POWER’s request. That is not likely to happen. However the problem remains – how do we protect our communities. Local, state, and federal legislators and regulatory agencies don’t have the authority to get in the way of oil and gas interests. Pipeline projects don’t want anything in their way including human beings. And democracy has become too expensive for corporate-led politics. Right now before our very eyes the creators of Ohio HB 463 are erasing our right to check and balance on our government. BG Climate Protectors understand this problem and recognize the necessity for using the BG Charter Amendment to elevate the rights of BG residents above the false rights of unwanted corporate projects to bring harm into our community. We have a responsibility to expose corporate-led political abuse of the system when it puts human beings and environment health at risk.”
Posted by: Jan Larson McLaughlin on September 26, 2017.
