Press Conference in Albany Regarding Spectra AIM

In February, SAPE asked many of our allies to sign a letter to Governor Cuomo, Commissioner Martens and Commissioner Zucker asking them to conduct a health review prior to issuing permits for the Spectra AIM project (letter attached). Although the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued a conditional certificate approving the project on March 3, 2015, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation permits are currently under review and the project cannot move forward without these permits.

Please join us as we stand with health professionals and allies in impacted communities across New York State, at a press conference on Monday, April 27, 2015 at 11:00 a.m. at the Legislative Office Building, Conference Room 130 in Albany. We will be calling on Governor Cuomo, Commissioner Martens and Commissioner Zucker to support a consistent policy of evaluating health impacts of the full lifecycle of shale gas development.

In December 2014, Governor Cuomo made the decision not to permit High Volume Hydraulic Fracturing in the state. This decision placed particular emphasis on the right and responsibility of the Executive, along with state agencies, to first and foremost safeguard public health and safety. Mounting evidence from a growing number of peer-reviewed scientific studies link gas infrastructure to significant adverse health impacts. These same studies formed, in part, the basis for the conclusion to prohibit High Volume Hydraulic Fracturing (HVHF) in New York State by Commissioner Zucker and Martens. As Commissioner Zucker stated, “The public health impacts from HVHF activities could be significantly broader than just those geographic locations where the activity actually occurs, thus expanding the potential risk to a large population of New Yorkers.”[1]

We are asking the Governor and the state agencies to conduct an independent, transparent, cumulative Health Impact Assessment (HIA) with full public participation, to fully evaluate and address the impacts of the build-out of extensive gas infrastructure in New York State, including, but not limited to, pipelines, compressor stations, gas-fired power plants, metering and regulating stations, pigging stations and gas processing and storage facilities.

New Yorkers from across the state, including representatives from Catskill Mountainkeeper, Center for Sustainable Rural Communities, Community Watersheds Clean Water Coalition, Concerned Health Professionals of New York, Concerned Residents of Carmel & Mahopac, Concerned Residents of Windsor, Earthworks, Grassroots Environmental Education, Physicians for Social Responsibility—New York, Occupy the Pipeline, Protect Orange County, Sane Energy Project, Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter, Stop the Algonquin Pipeline Expansion, Stop the Minisink Compressor Station, Stop the Pipeline (Constitution), We Are Seneca Lake, and others, will attend the press conference because we believe that the cumulative and synergistic impacts of all of these projects on our shared resources—our air, our water, our soil and our food—must be fully evaluated.