Advocates, Landowners File Brief in Opposition to Spectra Pipeline Project

For Immediate Release

Contact:  Karina Wilkinson, [email protected]

Attorneys for the Township of Dedham, a dozen landowners, and a coalition of environmental organizations filed an initial brief on July 29 in their appeal of Spectra Energy’s Algonquin Incremental Market (AIM) pipeline expansion project.

The brief outlines the grounds to ask for the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals to review–and ultimately vacate–the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) approval of the project.

“We are pleased that we are finally allowed our day in court to oppose Spectra’s AIM project,” said Karina Wilkinson, local coordinator for Food & Water Watch, one of the groups in the coalition. “We argue that FERC did not properly consider cumulative impacts of the project and Spectra’s two subsequent projects, Atlantic Bridge and Access Northeast, and allowed Spectra to improperly segment the projects so they could avoid the proper environmental review they would have received as one project. And recent news of a conflict of interest involving the company that FERC hired to do the environmental review is extremely troubling.”

In addition to FERC's failure to properly assess cumulative impacts and the conflict of interest in the environmental review, critics also argue there was a reliance on an inadequate Nuclear Regulatory Commission review of the safety of the project.

The coalition of individuals and organizations was originally formed in April 2014 by Food & Water Watch and Stop the Algonquin Pipeline Expansion (SAPE). The coalition also included the Sierra Club, Lower Hudson Group, Better Future Project (MA), Capitalism versus the Climate (CT) and Fossil Free Rhode Island. Two West Roxbury Massachusetts groups, Charles River Spring Valley Association and West Roxbury Saves Energy, later intervened. Riverkeeper, Inc. and Reynolds Hill Inc. (NY) intervened separately, and later joined the coalition.