JLCNY to Cuomo: Authorize Seneca Propane Storage Facility
For years MDN has told you about the proposed Inergy (now Crestwood Midstream) plan to open a badly needed underground propane storage facility along the shore of Seneca Lake in New York–in an already depleted salt mining cavern. In March 2013, 12 virulent anti-drilling protesters were arrested for blocking access to the facility–a facility that hasn’t yet been fitted for propane (see NY Protesters Arrested for Blocking NatGas Storage Facility). We’ve also pointed out New Yorkers pay nosebleed rates for propane because our governor refuses to permit the facility (see Northeast Propane Shortage – Andrew Cuomo Partially to Blame). There is a new effort under way to get some action on the Seneca propane storage facility from the 70,000-member Joint Landowners Coalition of New York…
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One of the Obama administration’s favorite tactics to do illegal end-runs around Congress (remember–Congress writes the laws, the President enforces them) is to have rogue agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency claim sweeping powers under older/existing laws. Like the Clean Air Act. Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court yanked on the EPA’s leash pretty hard and said, “Heal boy, sit down.” The EPA tried to simply rewrite a law passed by Congress in how the agency treats so-called greenhouse gases. The EPA didn’t like what Congress wrote, so they rewrote it. The justices said, “No, you can’t do that,” to the EPA. However, as Justice Antonin Scalia pointed out from the bench, the EPA still got almost all of what it wanted in this decision…
Yesterday two sleazy New York City politicians–Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Assembly Environmental Conservation Committee Chairman Robert Sweeney–announced that, as they have done for the last three years running, they have arm-twisted downstate Democrats to approve an Assembly bill that would continue to ban hydraulic fracturing for (unbelievably) another three years–even though it’s already been banned for six years! Assembly bill A.5424-B was passed mostly along party lines. Donna Lupardo-D, whose district includes potential drilling locations in Broome County, NY, shamefully voted “yes” to pass it (she needs to be tossed at the next election). Not that any of it makes a hill of beans worth of difference. It will never pass the Republican-controlled Senate in NY…