‘We’re going to fight this’
Brookfielders oppose plan to expand natural gas compressor station near middle school
BROOKFIELD — Opposition is mounting in town to stop the planned expansion of a natural gas compressor station located near homes and just 1,900 feet from Whisconier Middle School.
“My family and I live literally a mileand-a-half from this station. … I live down the road from Whisconier Road,” said state Sen. Stephen Harding, RBrookfield. “So I’m 100 percent against this. I’m one of the neighbors that will be impacted.”
Two steel pipelines enter and exit the compressor station: The Algonquin pipepline, which was built in 2008, comes in from the southwest, and the Iroquois pipeline, which was built in 2009, comes down from the north. The point at which they meet is a compressor station on an 80-acre property at 78 High Meadow Lane. The compressor station is owned by Iroquois Gas Transmission System.
While no new pipeline is proposed as part of this project, Iroquois wants to more than double the capacity of the compressor station — to receive an additional 125 million cubic feet per day of natural gas, according to an operating permit filed with the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.
Aside from Brookfield, the company is planning to install cooling equipment to its existing plant in Milford and add compression and cooling equipment at existing stations in Dover and Athens, N.Y., according to the company, which declined to comment and directed Hearst Connecticut Media to its website
“There’s an expansion of infrastructure on site, in the station, as well as an expansion of the capacity (of natural gas) going through the pipeline,” Harding said.
The project, called ExC (Expansion By Compression), “wants to ship more gas through the pipelines in New York City. And in order to do that, they’re going to expand the capacity of the compressor stations along the pipeline route,” said Nick Katkevich, Northeast field organizer of the Sierra Club, a nonprofit environmental organization.
Katkevich continued: “Compressor stations burn gas in order to create pressure to push the gas along the pipeline. They’re only expanding the compressor stations along the pipeline route.”
All new facilities will be constructed entirely within Iroquois’ existing compressor station properties, the company’s website states.
Iroquois Gas estimates the cost of the project in all towns to be $272 million, according to its website.
“It’s a real injustice to the town of Brookfield that every day you send your kids to this middle school and you might just assume it’s safe. But reality would show that there’s a pretty giant hazard in close proximity of these kids. It’s really concerning.” Brookfield resident Dan Myers
Iroquois is waiting on permits in Connecticut and New York before proceeding with the project, from a permitting standpoint. In Milford, the Planning and Zoning Board approved a coastal area management site plan for its part of the project in February 2020.
“It is actually one big project but each site has independent construction and is hinged on the same set of permits — state and federal,” said Brookfield resident Dan Myers, the chief executive officer and cofounder of Flair, a climate tech startup business. Myers is leading an effort to stop the project from going forward.
Additionally, the Sierra Club, a nonprofit environmental organization, is also working with local residents to oppose the proposed expansion. The opponents have created a campaign to spread awareness, called “Stop the Toxic Compressor Station Expansions in Connecticut.”
When the compressor station was first proposed, residents objected, saying it would be a risk to their health and safety and also posed risks to staff and students at Whisconier school. They’re making that same argument now, as they await a decision from DEEP on a draft permit for the Brookfield project only, Katkevich said.
“When we make a tentative determination to approve or deny, the public will have an opportunity to comment and request a hearing,” said Will Healey, a director of communications at DEEP.
If DEEP moves forward with the permit application, the next step would be for DEEP to issue a draft permit.
“Realistically, if the governor and DEEP understand the true impacts of this project, they can reject the permit,” Katkevich said.
The Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission, which regulates the interstate transmission of natural gas, oil and electricity, approved the initial application for the proposed expansion in 2020, despite objections from the Environmental Protection Agency.
Once the draft permit is received, the next step would be publishing the draft permit in the local newspaper.
“There’ll be this process where you can submit public comment on the draft permit. We can ask for a public hearing, which we will do. It sets in motion this process of a second layer of vetting for the permit. At that point, DEEP can still reject it,” he said.
Construction would only began if DEEP approves the draft permit. At that point, FERC would issue an authorization for construction. Once construction is complete, FERC would issue an additional permit for operation.
“We are asking DEEP to conduct at least one year of air monitoring in Brookfield before publishing the draft permit, so that the real impacts of the compressor station can be understood,” Katkevich said.
The agency that services the compressor stations in New York is the Department of Environmental Conservation.
“The air permits associated with these are coming from two different state agencies,” Myers said. “So, from an intervention standpoint, on the federal side, we have common ground, but on the state side, those are the pending permits right now, before the federal side will authorize any additional activity.”
Local objections
The Iroquois pipeline comes from Canada and terminates on Long Island, and the Algonquin pipeline starts in New Jersey and ends in Massachusetts. The natural gas compressor stations, such as the one in Brookfield, are used to maintain the flow of natural gas through the pipeline network.
The proposed expansion won’t affect any cultural resources, public recreation areas, “important” wildlife habitat, and will have minimal impacts to wetlands, according to Iroquois’ website.
Additionally, the project is anticipated to provide additional tax revenue to each of the towns it involves — including $1.8 million to Brookfield, the Iroquois website said.
However, the project isn’t designed to serve anyone in the local area; it serves customers in New York, the Iroquois website said. The natural gas is used to heat homes.
“No one in the greater Danbury area … utilizes any of the gas that’s flowing in this pipeline. We’re just being used as an infrastructure to get it down to Long Island from Canada,” Harding said. “My constituents and my fellow neighbors don’t benefit from this at all, yet we have the burden of having a higher risk with gas flow coming through the pipeline.”
Myers said he objects to the project for a number of reasons. “Fundamentally, this is an instance of a transnational fossil fuel company taking advantage of a small town who doesn’t have a lot of resources to push back for profits that come with a lot of pollution and a lot of localized risk, with no real benefit to the community,” he said.
“It’s a real injustice to the town of Brookfield that every day you send your kids to this middle school and you might just assume it’s safe. But reality would show that there’s a pretty giant hazard in close proximity of these kids. It’s really concerning.”
First Selectman Steve Dunn said he’s fully against the project as well.
“We as a town need to look at this really, really carefully. It is very close to the Whisconier school. Until we are totally comfortable that this would be operated in a safe manner that would protect our children, we’re not going to support this,” Dunn said.
The town will be hiring an attorney to see whether it can fight against the proposed expansion, he said. “We’re going to fight this,” he said. “My job is to protect the town and its residents.”
Pipeline dangers
The Brookfield compressor station pushes gas into the pipelines at 18,000 horsepower, Myers said.
The project would add two turbines with a combined additional 24,000 horsepower, which would “increase the flow” of the natural gas, Harding said. “You’re going be able to pump more gas at a higher rate at a higher speed, at a quicker, faster, higher capacity.”
Some of the dangers come from the natural gas that can emitted by compressor stations that are linked to blood cancers, lung and kidney damage, damage to the immune system, reproduction, and neural tube defects in infants, according to the National Library of Medicine.
“Gas lines always provide some aspect of danger to it. And you’re within yards of a middle school, in a highly dense suburban residential neighborhoods,” Harding said.
There are additional possible dangers at the compressor station, Myers said.
“Pollution from compressor stations comes primarily from ‘blowdowns’ and turbine combustion, if not electric compressors,” he added. “Blowdowns release pressure … and carry with them risk of ignition. Combustion of fuel in turbines releases many different types of hazardous byproducts.”