New Life for Constitution Pipe – Williams Asks White House for Help

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In April 2016 the New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation (DEC) caved to corrupt political pressure from Andrew Cuomo and denied the Williams Constitution Pipeline a necessary federal 401 stream crossing permit, blocking the project (see NY Gov. Cuomo Refuses to Grant Permits for Constitution Pipeline). At that moment, the DEC stepped off a cliff. It’s been a long, slow process, but we’ve watched them fall ever since. And now, they will soon hit the bottom. They were dead (metaphorically) the moment they issued their denial. It was a foregone conclusion that their illegal action would not stand–that the DEC would eventually be overruled and their role in permitting such projects would be stripped away. But you have to remember those were heady days for the left, when Cuomo was full of himself and the future seemed certain that the hapless Hillary would win the White House and further corrupt federal agencies like the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the agency that oversees projects like the Constitution. But the unthinkable happened. Hillary lost (thank God!). And now Cuomo and his corrupted DEC have no backstop at the federal level. Last week on a conference call to discuss second quarter earnings, Williams CEO Alan Armstrong responded to a question about the long-stalled Constitution Pipeline. He said Williams is working with The White House to get the Constitution project back on track. Reading between the lines, Williams is asking The White House to ask FERC to overrule the NY DEC and grant the stream crossing permits for the project. Armstrong now says he believes it will get built, and will be up and running, sometime in the second quarter of 2019…

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