Spectra Energy, a Houston-based energy conglomerate, wants to build a wholesale natural gas pipeline through sixteen miles of Bayonne and Jersey City. Residents don't want to be the pipeline's neighbor. They see the significant risk that is inherent to moving eight million cubic feet of natural gas each day through one of the most densely-populated tracts of land in the United States.
Government officials agree, including Jersey City Office of Emergency Management director Greg Kierce.
For us, the project is all risk and no benefit.
Spectra, however, stands to make billions using the pipeline to transport natural gas to New York City. This is no mom-and-pop energy concern. Spectra paid $1 billion in dividends in 2009 alone.
So what do you do when no one supports your project, except for the shareholders who will make money off it but don't have to live near it? Make up benefits.
Tuesday night, after spending the last year avoiding any meaningful, unscripted exchanges with members of the public and their representatives, Spectra officials came to the Jersey City Council to make one final pitch for the pipeline.
As with everything else Spectra-related, however, it was weaselly. Spectra officials didn't want to make a presentation at a regular City Council meeting, where they might be subject to rude talk from the troublesome public. So they decided they would make their presentation at a caucus meeting, the public-yet-poorly-attended powwows the council members hold on the Mondays before regular council meetings (because of the holiday it was held Tuesday this week).
If you follow the City Council, caucus meetings are much more interesting to attend than regular meetings because the council members actually have discussions and ask questions and challenge one another. But the public has no right to address the council members during the meeting, as they would during a regular meeting's public comment section.
Spectra officials thought they'd slide in, say their piece and then be able to point out how solicitous they were of the prerogatives of representative government. It didn't work out that way. Dale Hardman and Stephen Musgrave, the two hardworking activists behind NoGasPipeline.org, which has been the vanguard of opposition to Spectra's logrolling, heard about the ruse and announced Spectra's plan. They got some of the people who actually would have to live near the pipeline to come down to City Hall to protest.
Spectra was exposed and city clerk Robert Byrne moved the caucus meeting, usually held in a small board room, to the main council chamber in order to accommodate the unprecedented caucus crowd. But Spectra still had one more card to play.
About six months ago, to counter NoGasPipeline.org, Spectra hired public relations conglomerate MWW Group—it's heartening to see two multinational corporations coming together for a common cause—which promptly launched YesGasPipeline.org, a doppelganger website dedicated to the singular purpose of dismissing the economic externalities of the natural gas business.
Doubling down on the tit-for-tat nature of their public relations campaign, Spectra figured if citizen activists were going to come out Tuesday night, they'd have to bring in some warm bodies themselves.
And so they did. Walking into the council chamber, an overalled union man was there, handing out green t-shirts that said "We Need JOBS NOW!" and homemade pins reading "YESGasPipeline.org". Spectra had snagged the trade unions by saying the project would create jobs—5,200 jobs to be exact. (This is a highly suspect claim, which I will discuss tomorrow.)
Several members of the operating engineers' union were there, and at least one fellow from the Union City teamsters local. I had seen none of them at previous council meetings, and they didn't seem to have a strong grasp of what they were advocating. All they knew was someone was building something, and damn what it is, if they are hiring, the unions were behind it.
At the very least, they each got a free t-shirt. There were more than enough to go around. At the end of the meeting, a half a box of t-shirts sat on a table outside the council chamber. The box still had a shipping label on it—addressed to the Jersey City office of Spectra Energy.
More on the presentation, and the refutation, tomorrow.
D.C.
There were more than enough to go around. At the end of the meeting,
Sewer Line Maintenance
Posted by: Vvs Jon | Thursday, December 01, 2011 at 09:44 AM