In the fight against Vermont Gas’ proposed Addison County natural gas expansion, it’s largely been landowners piping up with concerns about the project, which would run a natural gas transmission line south through Vergennes and Middlebury — and potentially on to Ticonderoga, N.Y. Until now.

A rally last night at Champlain Valley Union High School illustrated that property owners aren’t the only ones balking at the pipeline extension. A growing grassroots coalition of environmentalists and workers’ rights advocates, singing solidarity songs and brandishing banners, gathered in front of the high school to make their objections known prior to the start of a Public Service Board public hearing on the project.

Chief among their concerns is the environmental impact of extending a pipeline that carries fossil fuel deeper into Vermont. In particular, the protestors are unhappy that the pipeline would carry a portion of gas obtained in Canada using hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as “fracking” — Vermont Gas concedes that this is the case. Vermont lawmakers last year passed a law making the Green Mountain State the first in the country to ban fracking. It’s a technique oil and gas companies love, because it opens up vast reserves of shale gas previously too costly or difficult to extract. Environmentalists have long raised the alarm, however, pointing to problems with groundwater contamination, waste water disposal and even earthquakes in places where fracking is underway.

“I am concerned about the hypocrisy of Vermont to on the one hand ban fracking and on the other use gas from somebody else’s devastated landscape,” said Rebecca Foster, a Charlotte resident who turned out for the rally and PSB hearing.

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Kathryn Flagg was a Seven Days staff writer from 2012 through 2015. She completed a fellowship in environmental journalism at Middlebury College, and her work has also appeared in the Addison County Independent, Wyoming Public Radio and Orion Magazine.

6 replies on “Environmentalists Rally to Landowners’ Defense in Vermont Gas Pipeline Fight”

  2. Yes, it is a no-brainer. This project shouold go through. Natural gas is better than oil and/or coal- or oil-fired electricity, which is what’s being used now.
    Most of the landowners who are saying “no” to this pipeline would also say “no” to a wind farm or solar farm or biomass plant in or anywhere near their neighborhood ot town. Just look at what happened in Charlotte when a company sought PSB approval to put a solar farm in an open field. All the neighbors went ballistic, even though it wasn’t their land.

  3. We need renewable energy and the precious types in Charlotte need to get over themselves. But fracking threatens aquifers and water is going to be scarce and its more important than gas. We are in the mess we are in because business people have run everything into the ground as various types of pollution. A great lifestyle change is coming ready or not. Fracking is insane and destroys water. We cannot drink gas, we can change our lifestyles. Capitalism has allowed business to wreck our waters, the air and the soils and foist the costs off onto the taxpayers. I am sick of it and sick of subsidies to fossil fuel companies to destroy the earth when they already have obscene profits. Earth comes before greed.

  4. Actually, as one of the landowners against this pipeline… if someone wanted to site a solar or wind generator on my property and would compensate me fairly, I would have no problem at all. I am all for renewable energy.

  5. If we want running water, we have to keep buildings heated one way or another. Instead of fighting this pipeline, why don’t these activists spearhead some steps to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels?

  6. This is just good old fashioned NIMBYism. NIMBYism is the ultimate act selfishness and anti-communitarianism.

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