Scary about the potential for devastating impact here.

http://www.ajc.com/business/calif-gas-line-rupture-611252.html

Quote:

Interesting. We are working with the Mayor's office for a city-wide event focusing on the pipeline and as of the close of day today we had no such confirmation of the Mayor filing for formal intervenor status. However, until the Mayor actually makes a statement that he is doing so, it is all so much conversation. There is nothing stopping the Mayor from making a statement now about seeking to file formal intervenor status, particularly in light of last night's tragedy in San Bruno.

Until such time as a declaration is released from the Mayor's office confirming what you posted jc_insomniac that your friend said, we must continue the phone calls to the Mayor's office, the council persons and attend the Sept 15th City Council mtg to speak up that not only do we not want such a tragedy here but we can prevent the process by beginning to file formal intervenor status.

I urge all of you who can attend the Sept 15th mtg @ 6PM in City Council chambers, 2nd floor, to call the City Clerk tomorrow to get on the speaker's list. Please call the City Clerk's office at 201-547-5150.

Quote:
And don't forget about the gas leak in Wayne, N.J. the day after the Spectra meeting at Ferris. Don't let them say that the gas line has to go somewhere, it shouldn't go anywhere at all. A new concept has to be worked out the current one should not have gotten off the drawing board.

A friend of mine just posted this on FB:

just got a call from the mayor's office stating that they will be filing for formal intervener status with FERC by the end of the month. Hopefully something good will come of this tragedy in San Bruno.


Quote:

Jersey City, Bayonne mayors react to California gas pipeline explosion

The mayors of Jersey City and Bayonne are denouncing plans to run a natural gas pipeline through their communities following a pipeline explosion in California Thursday night.

Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah T. Healy, who has repeated come out against the proposed pipeline, has asked city Office of Emergency Management Coordinator Greg Kierce to plan a trip to San Bruno, where the explosion occurred.

?While the incident in California is still under investigation, the explosion there claimed several lives, injured many, and leveled dozens of homes,? Healy said in a statement. ?If this type of explosion were to happen in a city our size, we cannot begin to comprehend the level of devastation, destruction and loss of life. It would be catastrophic.?

Bayonne Mayor Mark Smith also reiterated his opposition to Houston-based Spectra Energy?s proposed natural gas pipeline.

?While it is not yet clear what the cause of the explosion was; what is clear is the absolute devastation that ensued,? Smith said in a statement. ?A gas transmission main is simply not appropriate for our densely populated urban neighborhoods.?

Spectra officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

The pipeline in California is owned by Pacific Gas and Electric Co.

Jersey City officials said according to initial reports, the San Bruno pipeline that erupted was a ?Class IV? pipeline, the same thickness of pipe that Spectra has proposed constructing through Jersey City and Bayonne. The San Bruno pipeline that exploded was 24 inches in diameter. Spectra is proposing a 30-inch line in New Jersey.

Kierce said San Bruno is about the size of one neighborhood in Jersey City. He said he has reached out to the California OEM to see if he would have access to the explosion site to get a hands-on assessment.

Spectra has begun the process of applying to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for approval to run its pipeline from an existing line in Linden through Staten Island, under the Kill Van Kull, through Bayonne and Jersey City and under the Hudson River to Manhattan, where it would serve Con Edison.

Jersey City officials and citizen groups are fighting the pipeline application.

?I?d like to go out there just to strengthen our case (against Spectra) because this thing is not good for Jersey City,? Kierce said. ?I understand they have to deliver their forms of gas, but taking it through one of the most densely populated cities with the critical infrastructure we have in place just doesn?t make sense.?

Kierce also noted that water main in California were ruptured in the explosion, according to preliminary reports, making it difficult to fight the fire.

?The issues raised in this incident are ones we have been expressing for months,? he said.

http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/20 ... erfeed&utm_medium=twitter

http://jerseycitynj.gov/

JERSEY CITY ? Mayor Jerramiah T. Healy and other city officials today reiterated concerns about the construction of a natural gas pipeline in Jersey City following Thursday night?s devastating pipeline explosion in a suburb of San Francisco.

?We have repeatedly expressed our concerns about Spectra Energy running a high-pressure natural gas pipeline through our city, and what happened yesterday in San Bruno brings those fears to a new level,? said Mayor Healy. ?While the incident in California is still under investigation, the explosion there claimed several lives, injured many, and leveled dozens of homes. If this type of explosion were to happen in a city our size, we cannot begin to comprehend the level of devastation, destruction and loss of life. It would be catastrophic.?

San Bruno is a city one-sixth of the size of Jersey City, with an approximate population of 40,000 people. Jersey City has a quarter million residents, a figure that more than doubles during the weekday work hours as the city is also an employment hub.

According to initial reports city officials have received, the California natural gas pipeline that erupted was a ?Class IV? pipeline, the same thickness of pipe that Spectra has proposed constructing through Jersey City. The difference, however, is that the pipeline in San Bruno was 24 inches in diameter, while the Jersey City pipeline is proposed to be even larger at 30 inches.

News reports state that even more than 12 hours after the explosion, only 75 percent of the fire in San Bruno had been contained.

?We still don?t know the full extent of the devastation in California, because crews have not been able to get into some areas,? said OEM Coordinator Greg Kierce. ?But preliminary reports indicate that water mains in the area ruptured due to the explosion, severely hampering the firefighting efforts. The issues raised in this incident are ones we have been expressing for months.?

Mayor Healy has asked OEM Coordinator Kierce to organize a delegation of NJ public safety experts to travel to California to examine the devastation and talk to emergency personnel on the ground about this incident.

The aftermath...

from CNN:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/09/10/california.fire/index.html?hpt=C1

The one's I posted above are only natural gas pipelines covering only the past nine and a half months. It does not include a couple of major onshore well explosions that each killed several people. It does not include last week's production platform fire (Mariner Energy) in the Gulf of Mexico. It does not include the BP/Deepwater Horizon well failure. It does not include the Enbridge Energy oil pipeline leak in Michigan. And on and on.

There were 2 more gas explosions this year, not just rigs in the Gulf... One was in Texas and one was in Connecticut...

Quote:

In 2010:

January 6: Chesapeake Energy - Barksdale Air Force Base, Bossier City, LA, 1 dead: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/0 ... ational/main6065577.shtml

Feb. 7: Kleen Energy - Middletown, CT, 5 dead: http://articles.cnn.com/2010-02-07/us ... osion-blast-site?_s=PM:US

March 11, ONEOK Energy - Chandler, OK, no fatalities: http://www.kfor.com/news/local/kfor-n ... line-explosion-fire-story,0,4278799.story

June 7, Enterprise Products - Cleburne, TX. 3 dead, 6 injured: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ ... 6/07/AR2010060703481.html

June 8, DCP Midstream - Lipscomb County, TX, 2 dead: http://articles.cnn.com/2010-06-08/us ... peline-explosion?_s=PM:US NOTE: DCP Midstream is jointly owned by ConocoPhillips and...SPECTRA ENERGY

June 29, Oklahoma Gas & Electric - Pocasset, OK , 3 injured: http://www.news9.com/global/story.asp?s=12727890

July 5, Enterprise Products - Thomson, GA, 1 dead: http://energypipelinenews.blogspot.co ... rt-in-dixie-pipeline.html

July 28, Energy Transfer Partners - Austin County, TX, no fatalities: http://www.myfoxhouston.com/dpp/news/ ... e-explosion-austin-county

Sept. 9, Pacific Gas & Electric - San Bruno, CA, 3 dead: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article ... 9/09/BADP1FBJRS.DTL&tsp=1

Quote:

Jersey City must Demand the Mayor Intervene at FERC!

No matter how many natural gas explosions, how many people killed and injured, homes destroyed, lives ruined, only intervening allows Jersey City to have legal standing in Federal Courts to overturn a FERC ruling. If you want to stop this Spectra Energy natural gas pipeline from coming through Jersey City, here's what you must do:

City Council Meeting - Demand the Mayor Intervene @ FERC


Wednesday, September 15, 2010 - 6:00pm

In order for the city to have any legal standing against the pipeline the Mayor must seek intervenor status -- we must demand that the Mayor intervene at FERC.

Location: City Council Chambers, City Hall, 280 Grove Street, 2nd Floor.

We need people to address the City Council during the public comment section of the meeting.

Please call the City Clerk's office at 201-547-5150. Ask to be put on the public speaker's list for the meeting on September 15.

Can't come?

Call the Mayor and ALL City Council persons, tell them that we Demand the Mayor Intervene @ FERC. Call Mayor Jeremiah Healy's office at 201-547-5200.

? City Council phone numbers and other actions

San Bruno fire chief puts explosion death toll at 6

September 10, 2010 | 4:21 am

Chopper580
The explosion and massive fire that ripped through San Bruno left six dead, the fire chief said Friday morning, and he expected the toll to rise as more homes are searched.

San Bruno Fire Captain Charlie Barringer stood on Glenview Drive a block above Claremont Drive about 2 a.m. and surveyed the damage as firefighters pointed their hoses at the smoldering remains of a half dozen homes.

The power was still out. Spot fires were still burning in yards near the charred remains of station wagons, the air thick and acrid. Many houses remained eerily untouched, SUVs still parked in the driveways, solar-powered garden lights burning, newspapers wrapped in plastic still lying where they were tossed on the grass Thursday morning.

Barringer has been based at the local station for the past three years, one of three firefighters on Engine 52, the first to respond to the explosion.

?I thought a 747 had landed on us,? he said. ?It shook our station right to its foundation.?

Within a minute, he had sounded a four-alarm fire, he said. Soon after, he said firefighters discovered a gas line had exploded, destroying not only homes but the grid of water mains that supplied the local fire hydrants. His crew had no water to fight the fires.

?We were overwhelmed. We had multiple neighborhoods on fire,? he said.

Barringer said the neighborhood has not had problems with gas leaks in recent years. A PG&E crew of several men with hard hats, shovels, an earth mover and two trucks was out at the corner of Claremont and Sneath Lane as he spoke, digging through the concrete, but they referred questions to a spokesman. Neighbors standing across the street claimed a gas line runs nearby, and a slight scent of gas was in the air Friday morning.

Barringer said that when his engine first responded to the explosion, the crew strung together hoses to pump water from two to three miles away. By 2 a.m., they were still using the hoses. Police and coroner?s investigators roamed the darkness with flashlights, snapping photographs, setting up road blocks with flares and saying the area was considered a crime scene.

Kathy Crouse, 61, sat on a corner in the dark with a police scanner, waiting for news. Her house on Sequoia Avenue was not damaged by the explosion, she said, but a friend who lived on Claremont fled just as her house burned, grabbing her car keys as flames singed the shirt on her back. Crouse bought her a new shirt at Kohl?s and the woman went to stay with her daughter nearby.

?She?s so in shock,? Crouse said.

Crouse works at the CVS in town, which like many businesses offered donated food to those displaced by the explosion. When she stopped by late Thursday, she said a neighbor asked her whether his house had survived. She didn?t know, and was unsure what to tell him.

Her son, a carpenter, helped other neighbors build wooden braces to stabilize the fire hoses snaking across the roads.

?All we can do is rebuild and move on,? Johnson said as he stood on Sneath overlooking Claremont, where billows of smoke rose from burned homes.

While Johnson waited, a woman who said she lived at the corner of Glenview and Earle Avenue?the epicenter of the explosion?walked by looking for her son?s girlfriend. Her son was among those badly burned by the explosion, she said?he had been home at the time, walked outside with his girlfriend and was burned. His girlfriend has been missing since.

She walked off into the darkness in the direction of her home, Johnson said.

A state official said Thursday night that 53 homes had been destroyed.

?It?s horrible,? Barringer said. ?It?s real difficult for us. This is like a second neighborhood for me.?

His crew saved about 20 homes on Glenview, he said. They lost five.

Barringer said he had worked strike teams in the Los Angeles area during past fire seasons, and was grateful to see firefighters from surrounding counties pitching in to handle the aftermath of the explosion. He pointed to a shopping plaza on the opposite hill, where officials had set up a command post.

?We?ll be out here probably for at least a week,? he said.

As he spoke, Barringer received a radio message to return to the station to get some rest before returning to the neighborhood at about 5 a.m. Friday morning to begin a house to house search for bodies.

?I?m sure there?s going to be a few more,? he said as he left.

--Molly Hennessy-Fiske

Photo: A firefighting helicopter flies over the massive blaze. Firefighters' efforts were hampered by winds that reportedly reached more than 30 mph. Credit: George Nikitin / Associated Press

HELL ON EARTH: Rescuers (above) brave the flames and fumes as they look for survivors of the gas blast. Meanwhile, an exhausted official surveys the site.
Getty Images

Who needs terrorists when we've got gas companies?

The San Bruno Pipeline that blew overnight was 24 inches is diameter but people are dead and homes are immmolated. Jersey City would expect a MUCH larger blast and fire. San Bruno is tract homes and Jersey City is a tightly populated city.

If this newest blast doesn't stop the building of the Hudson County pipeline, nothing can.

Gotta love the reports that residents had been complaining for weeks about "smellling gas" and PG&E's recommendation was to "stay inside and close your windows."

Can you imagine this happening near any of us in Jersey City, or Bayonne?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_large_e ... Ec2xrAzFkZWFkNTNob21lcw--

The energy companies claim incredible safety records, yet this plus at least 2 oil well incidents in the Gulf, and who else knows what, just in the past summer.

See coverage on:

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/livenow?id ... cmp=twi-kgo-video-7659504

Horrendous.
.

fyi: Gasland will be playing next week at the IFC Center.
http://www.ifccenter.com/films/gasland/

We need to find those that still don't know about the proposed pipeline. It's imperative that we continue to build awareness and keep us focused on the current action ? calling Mayor Healy's office (201-547-5200) and demand that he seek Intervenor standing with FERC.

We need to put the "boots on the ground" and get the word out in the good ol' fashioned way ... posters and flyers and face-to-face conversations!

We've prepared a poster and two different flyers to make getting the message out all the easier. Print and go!

http://nogaspipeline.org/2010-08-30/im-a-fan-on-facebook-now-what

The city should start a lawsuit against the FERC now. Stop the scoping process. Nip it in the bud and make JC off-limits.

Jersey City paying Boston lobbyist $32K to fight natural gas pipeline

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Jersey City will pay a consultant up to $32,500 in hopes of preventing a natural gas pipeline from running underground through parts of the city.

The City Council voted 8-0 yesterday to hire Boston-based lobbyists O'Neill and Associates. At-Large Councilman Mariano Vega was absent.

"It is an area of expertise that we do not have in the city available to us and it is something that is very, very important to Jersey City," Ward A Councilman Michael Sottolano said before supporting the contract.

Houston-based Spectra Energy has begun the federal application process to run a natural gas pipeline from an existing line in Linden through Staten Island, Bayonne and Jersey City, and then into Manhattan.

Bayonne and Jersey City officials have come out against the project.

Jersey City hired O'Neill to help navigate the federal application process. O'Neill will also wage a "federal relations campaign addressing key federal offices," according to the contract.

Resident Catherine Grimm urged council members to work with Bayonne.

"If the pipeline manages to get through Bayonne, they have to get through Jersey City," she said. "But if you join forces, both cities where they have to go through, it might make us stronger against their lobbyists."

Spectra is expected to finalize the proposed route with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission by the end of this year.

MELISSA HAYES

Quote:

In addition to the EPA chiming in, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection also submitted a letter. But, as luck would have it, the FERC.gov site is down and I can't attach the PDF here at this time.

We're planning a blog post on NoGasPipeline.org which will summarize the letters submitted by government agencies, developers, business owners and persons of note. Stay tuned ....

Quote:

First of all, FERC "does not allow" anyone to file for intervenor status until the "pre-filing" period is over which ended Aug 20th.Then Spectra files their formal application the same time that FERC sends out the finished EIS for comments. In the meantime we need to put maximum pressure on JC to be ready to file for intervenor standing. That is the 1st period that city and others may file for intervenor standing. However, we are insisting that pressure of public opinion motivate JC to do just that and already it has had an effect. (see our site as to this morning and Hudson Reporter story this morning.)

JC has a history of using politicos to massage behind-the-scenes what in many cases takes actual legal action to move a situation forward, witness the Embankment. This gives them "plausible deniability" to say, "we did our best", when all is merely conversation without filing for intervenor standing as only federal courts hear appeals of any FERC ruling. All the lobbyists in the world won't help there nor would President Obama as it's only the Federal Courts that can reverse a FERC ruling.

No one is saying we don't need NJ State, County and all agencies and individuals who want to file intervenor standing as well. There is movement behind the scenes I can't speak about, but know that without constant pressure for JC to first seek intervenor standing nothing will happen.

The NJ DEP sold out NJ State parklands for gas transmission, that's "where they are":

http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/10/0804/1744/

...the Statehouse Commission approved a much-contested lease between the DEP and Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company to build a 23-mile natural gas pipeline through two state parks and a wildlife management area in the Highlands, a major source of drinking water for millions of people.

Highlands Lease Gets Approved by State

United States Environmental Protection Agency comment on the Spectra natural gas pipeline:

http://jclist.com/docs/FERCEPACOMMENT.pdf

I don't see why the two are mutually exclusive. I believe we need to wait until Spectra files the application (likely December) to seek intervenor status.

In my opinion, Jersey City cannot do this alone. We need state support from all sources to be successful. Where is the NJ Environmental agency in this?

Dale chimes on the lobbyist news on NoGasPipeline.org:

http://nogaspipeline.org/2010-08-24/m ... ormal-intervenor-standing

Considering the city stands to lose a lot of money long term if the pipeline goes through, the city should do whatever it thinks is appropriate to help the situation.

this is case where I think spending is worth it, if it would really help deter the pipeline.