There’s no polite way to say this: The people of Bristol, Vermont are STUPID. The Bristol Selectboard, citing a pending lawsuit by rabid anti-fossil fuel nuts, recently voted to end a license agreement with Vermont Gas granting the utility permission to build distribution pipelines along town roads. Now the town is doomed.
It took Vermont Gas Systems three years to build a 41-mile, $165 million natural gas transmission pipeline from Colchester to Middlebury. The pipeline went into service in April 2018. Vermont Gas then went to work to complete several local distribution spurs–short, small pipelines to deliver the gas to homes and businesses. One of those spurs goes to Bristol.
A handful of Bristol residents sued the town board last August for approving the local distribution pipeline without first holding a townwide vote (see Irrational Fossil Fuel Hatred in Bristol, VT re Local Gas Line). When you read the objections of those against the project, they don’t talk about exploding pipelines and safety issues, or running pipelines through pristine areas. How can they object on that basis? There are literally tens of thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) of miles of this very same kind of pipeline in every major and most minor cities and towns across the country.
When you read the comments of those in Bristol objecting to a few miles of local distribution pipeline, they talk about natural gas as “a big, dirty fossil fuel” and fracking as an abject evil, contaminating water, filled with chemicals, yada yada yada. In other words, they are clinically insane. They irrationally hate fossil fuels, even though their very lives and existence depend on those fossil fuels every minute of every day. We’ve run out of words to describe such lunacy. We just call them STUPID. Because that’s what they are.
The state’s sole natural gas utility will not be building distribution lines to provide service to Bristol residents in the near future.
The Bristol Selectboard, citing a pending lawsuit, voted March 18 to end a license agreement with Vermont Gas that had granted the utility permission to build distribution lines along town roads.
The Selectboard and the utility are defendants in a lawsuit brought by Bristol residents over the validity of the agreement.
Vermont Gas received approval from the town last year to connect Bristol residents to the natural gas pipeline that runs from Colchester to Middlebury. The utility had a previous agreement with the Addison County Regional Planning Commission for a pipeline to Bristol.
A group of 37 Bristol residents sued the Selectboard and Vermont Gas last summer for not holding a town vote, or providing public notice of residents’ right to petition for a vote, before signing the license agreement.
Jim Dumont, the attorney representing Bristol residents who oppose the expansion, said his clients were “very happy” with the Selectboard’s decision.
Both the utility and town filed motions to dismiss the lawsuit, but Addison County Superior Court Judge Alison Sheppard Arms ruled in January that the lawsuit could go forward.
Vermont Gas filed a letter with the state Public Utility Commission earlier this year saying that it was putting a pause on permitting the Bristol expansion.
Beth Parent, spokesperson for Vermont Gas, said the company wanted to terminate the agreement because of uncertainty with the ongoing legal issues.
“They’re really challenging our ability to provide service there,” she said of the plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit.
She added the utility hopes to find an “innovative way” to eventually provide natural gas to Bristol residents who want the service.
Valerie Capels, administrator for the town of Bristol, said that the Selectboard members had to decide whether to keep fighting the lawsuit once Arms had ruled against the town’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit.
“The Selectboard did not want to continue to spend taxpayer dollars,” on litigation, Capels said.
Both chambers of the Legislature have floated bills this session that would ban new fossil fuel infrastructure in Vermont, which was another factor the Selectboard considered, Capels added.
Vermont Gas’ plans for the Bristol pipeline had been “divisive,” she said, with some residents wanting the option to heat with natural gas and others not wanting the company to build distribution lines in town.
Opponents have said they are concerned about safety and methane emissions.
“It’s not a bridge fuel to renewables — it’s worse,” said Dumont.
Vermont Gas has said that switching from heating oil to natural gas reduces carbon emissions by 28 percent.
Now that the license agreement is void, the lawsuit will be dismissed, Dumont said.*
Vermont is a big dairy farming state. Maybe residents in Bristol and across the state will enjoy heating their homes with wood and cow dung–like some tinpot, third world country? Yeah, that’s really GREAT for the environment. Much better than nasty, filthy natural gas (with far fewer emissions), right?
So what happens now? People keep heating with dirtier fuel oil, or wood, or cow dung. The air gets dirtier. People and businesses move out of state where they can get natural gas. The tax base in Bristol shrinks. And the commie libs continue to tell each other how smart they are and how they stuck it to fossil fuels. Some things never change.
*VTDigger (Mar 28, 2019) – Bristol terminates agreement with Vermont Gas
A drawing that shows all the streets in Bristol that will not get natural gas pipelines (the “we’ve been screwed” zone):
This post appeared first on Marcellus Drilling News.