A compressor station for the Dominion New Market pipeline project has been proposed in Brookman Corners, NY, and is now before the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) for air permits. This compressor station should be opposed on health, quality of life, environmental and economic grounds. You can help stop this project by filing comments with the DEC. The deadline to file is September 12, 2016, so please mail or email (NewMarketProject@DEC.NY.Gov) your comments soon.

For information on why this project must be stopped, see the testimony by Julie Huntsman to the DEC. You can use these sample documents to help compose your comments: Sample Comments 1, Sample Comments 2, Sample Comments 3 and/or Sample Comments 4.

Here are some additional arguments to consider (personalize your comments and make them your own):

• We have a big problem in NYS and across the country:  Public health is NOT being protected by our current regulatory air monitoring program (which is remote from the polluting sources; based on averages, and does not capture the frequent, episodic spikes that make people sick; and it fails to monitor at all for chemicals that frequently sicken people, such as formaldehyde and benzene – two carcinogens).  FERC claiming that  a project, based on their mathematical modeling,  will be in compliance with National Ambient Air Quality Standards does not begin to recognize what is actually happening and the toxins being emitted at compressor stations.  This is reflected in years of clinical reports of people sickened living near gas wells and compressor stations (same symptoms happen over and over again – headaches, nosebleeds, other respiratory problems, worsening of asthma, nausea, dizziness); reflected in more and more peer reviewed literature, and echoed in resolutions calling for a Health Impact Assessment of gas infrastructure called for by the AMA and the NYS Medical Society.  (The head of NYS DOH, Howard Zucker, MD, concluded his public health review of HVHF activities by stating that he would not want his family living near them.)
•  Approval of polluting gas infrastructure projects, like Dominion New Market – via NYS DEC granting of air facility permits – sets NYS backwards in terms of making progress towards the state’s greenhouse gas emissions reductions goals.  Look at our current conditions:  hottest summer on record and the state is in a drought.  What are we doing?? The state must consider climate impacts of every project and how it affects our progress – or lack thereof – towards meeting state goals to reduce GHG’s.
• DEC has the authority and responsibility to protect the environment and public health.  With business as usual and the status quo (failing to act on the multiple problems we know about regarding compressor stations and failing to act on what DEC claims it believes about climate change constitutes an abdication of their mission and is failing the people of NYS.)  The Natural Gas Act does not exempt the states from all review of gas infrastructure projects:  the states are empowered to apply The Clean Air Act and The Clean Water Act to these projects – they have the legal path to do this and the common sense and moral imperatives to do this.  If the DEC fails to conduct careful environmental reviews of these projects they are failing us – the state, and the country.

For these reasons alone (and there are many other arguments, see the documents above), the air permits for Dominion New Market should be denied.