Mich. DEQ Rejects Stop Rover Request, Senators Appeal to FERC
Isn’t it interesting how a small-but-mouthy group of anti-fossil fuelers can drive a media narrative? Just two days ago MDN told you about a meeting of 100 (likely far less) anti-fossil fuel protesters in Dexter Township, Michigan, who rallied to protest the impending construction of the Rover Pipeline in that area (see Mich. Rover Protesters Illustrate Irrational Anti-Fossil Fuel Psychosis). Our point in that post was to highlight the sad lack of brainpower in the anti movement. One young speaker said they were there to protest “all extraction industries”–including oil and gas. She is woefully ignorant of just how much her life is tied to extraction industries. At any rate, the small group, and the Big Green groups (with deep pockets) using them as puppets, have had an impact. Earlier this week, an attorney supposedly representing residents from the Silver Lake area (Dexter Township) filed an “URGENT Request for Stop Work Order on wetlands trenching, ET Rover Pipeline” with the Michigan Dept. of Environmental Quality (DEQ). The DEQ politely told him, “No.” And so the small group of antis using Big Green money appealed to their two Democrat U.S. Senators, Gary Peters and Debbie Stabenow, for help. The two Dem Sens promptly sent a bloviating letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), asking for a temporary stop work order in the Silver Lake area…
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West Goshen Township, in Philadelphia suburb of Chester County, has failed yet again to stop Sunoco Logistics’ Mariner East 2 NGL pipeline in its community. Last March MDN told you about the desperate last stand taken by liberal anti-pipeliners in West Goshen (see 
It’s so darned unusual, we felt we had to share the news that in the heart of liberal New England–about 48 miles from New York City–the town of New Canaan, Connecticut has voted to add natural gas service to a 4.7 mile area around town. That means installing (digging and drilling) pipelines to carry the gas. The gas will first be installed at three (three!) schools (gasp!!), a YMCA (oh no!), an eldercare center (the inhumanity), and even (say it ain’t so) gas for “some residents.” Yes dear reader, common sense has broken out in a small pocket of New England, and their local elected leaders, the Board of Selectmen, voted unanimously to bring low cost, clean-burning natural gas into the heart of their community. What will happen next? Perhaps no increase in local property taxes this year? Well, let’s not get crazy…
MDN previously reported about problems experienced last week in Chester County, PA (suburb of Philadelphia) with underground horizontal directional drilling (HDD) by Sunoco Logistics Partners for its Mariner East 2 Pipeline project (see 
Last March MDN told you about the desperate last stand taken by liberal anti-pipeliners in West Goshen Township, in the Philadelphia suburb of Chester County (see 
We have a correction to a previous story. In June MDN brought you the news that the Sabal Trail Transmission pipeline, a $3.2 billion, 515-mile interstate natural gas pipeline in Florida, Georgia and Alabama, had been placed into service, flowing natural gas to Florida electric generating plants (see 
In May, MDN noted a disturbing trend in the Commonwealth of Virginia of entangling law enforcement in the non-criminal issue of surveying for a federally-authorized pipeline project (see 
The lack of a quorum (enough voting members) for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is has gone beyond amusing and angering–it’s now critical. Early in the new Trump presidency we noted the curious behavior of liberal Democrats, who are also virulent anti-drillers, in their hammering of Trump over lack of nominating people to FERC (see 
Sounding eerily like a Borg drone from Star Trek (“YOU WILL COMPLY, RESISTANCE IS FUTILE”), the Ohio EPA (OEPA) has asked Ohio’s Attorney General, Mike DeWine, to force Rover to pay the Ohio EPA $914,000 in so-called fines it has unilaterally levied (with no apparent authority to do so) to punish Rover for a series of accidents while constructing the pipeline. Rover has not agreed to the fines and is challenging the OEPA’s authority to levy them. So the OEPA is asking DeWine to use the full weight and force of his office to force Rover to comply. Rover has had the pedal to the metal since receiving a go-ahead from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) in March to begin construction to build a 711-mile natural gas pipeline from PA, WV and eastern OH through OH into Michigan and eventually into Canada (see 
Last November MDN brought you the delicious news that Pennsylvania would shift $24 million away from a boondoggle program called the PA Alternative Energy Investment Act and into a new program called the Pipeline Investment Program, or PIPE (see 
A young, brainwashed 17-year old woman was one of the headline speakers at a recent anti-Rover Pipeline rally in Michigan–apparently because she’s an Indian (i.e. Native American). However, her heritage really has nothing to do with her opposition to the Rover Pipeline. Her opposition is rooted in what we would call a break with reality–a psychosis. At a rally held in Dexter Township, MI near where Rover is scheduled to be built, the teenager said this to the “about 100” assembled: “‘We’re fighting extraction industries all across the country. It’s not just here. It’s not just Standing Rock,’ said…an Ypsilanti resident, urging other protesters to divest from fossil fuel companies and take their money out of big banks and put it in local banks and credit unions so they’re not supporting the extraction industry.” We hate to burst the young protester’s bubble, but “extraction industries” are the reason she even exists. “Extraction industries” not only provide energy (oil, gas coal), but “extraction industries” mine the metals that make up the innards of her expensive cell phone. “Extraction industries” provide the raw materials to produce plastics, which is in just about everything everyone touches these days–including the clothes on her back and the sneakers on her feet. To call for divestment, and to oppose “extraction industries” is a call to crawl back into a cave and die a very young death. It is, in a word, insane…
