Category: village of ridgewood

tanker cars are Ridgewood Train Station

November 12,2016

the staff of the Ridgewod blog

Ridgewood NJ, Ridgewood has joined a growing chorus of North Jersey towns opposing the Pilgrim Pipeline.It passed a resolution, 4-0, with Councilwoman Bernadette Walsh recusing herself.

The Village now joins over 28 towns along the proposed Bergen County route to oppose the controversial Pilgrim Pipeline .

Pilgrim Pipeline LLC has proposed a brand new oil pipeline across northern New Jersey that would connect Albany, NY and Linden NJ.

The Sierra club has harped on safety issues in claiming the , “This bidirectional pipeline would carry corrosive, volatile Bakken crude oil through our communities.”

From the The Sierra club website , “Pipeline construction would have deleterious effects on both the open spaces and urbanized communities through which it would pass. In the Highlands and other sensitive areas, we would see wetlands destroyed, drinking water and critical habitats threatened, endangered species leveled to the ground, and impacts to waterways from more erosion due to construction. The pipeline would pass through environmental justice communities that have already seen too much air and water pollution as a result of the fossil fuel industry.”

The go on to say ,”The pipeline will carry North Dakotan Bakken shale oil. Produced through fracking, it is one of the most explosive types of oil in the world. In February the *Wall Street Journal* compared oil from 86 locations around the world and found Bakken crude oil to be the most explosive. Bringing this fuel into our state endangers our families, property, and environment.”

Sounds like a lot of anti-growth , anti-fossil fuels mumbo jumbo that the left uses in this country to stall progress.

The reality is there are zero recorded instances of crude oil exploding while being transported via pipeline in the United States. The differing levels of volatility inherent to different types of crude are rendered moot during pipeline transportation, as there is no air pressure or jostling that occurs inside a pipeline – the necessary factors for an explosion to take place. Bakken oil is already being transported between Albany and Linden by river barge and train; Pilgrim would transport this same oil by pipeline, the safest mode of transportation for these energy products.

The Pipeline Pilgrim is proposing will have an overwhelming majority of the projected pipeline route run along existing rights of way. In New York, as it heads south from Albany, the pipeline would run along the New York State Thruway within the existing highway easement. Landowners on either side of the Thruway may receive survey letters per NY state regulations requiring land adjacent to the proposed route to be reviewed for a variety of reasons, including environmental, archeological, etc. – a standard requirement for permit applications. The same is true of New Jersey, where the vast majority of the route would run along existing utility rights of way, and surveys must be conducted per New Jersey state regulations that mandate a standard land review requirement for permits. Depending on local geography, the range of review in both states is between 50 to 300 feet to either side of the centerline, which is why property owners receive survey requests. The footprint of the pipeline itself is only about 5 and ½ feet.

As of 2013 nearly half a million carloads of crude oil were transported by rail in the United States. In New Jersey alone, there are approximately 2,400 miles of rail freight lines. In recent years there has much fear about transporting oil through populated areas ,like Ridgewood by rail .

Moving oil and gas by pipeline was 4.5 times safer than moving the same volume the same distance by rail in the decade ended in 2013 in Canada, according to a new study by the Fraser Institute public policy think-tank.The study concluded pipelines are likely to experience 0.049 occurrences per thousand barrels of oil equivalent transported and rail will experience about 0.227 occurrences per thousand boe transported.

In The Wall Street Journal piece ,”How to Transport Oil More Safely”, “Pipelines are typically the cheapest, and in some cases quickest, way to move crude in the U.S., and they spill less often than other transport methods. In 2014, pipelines delivered 3.4 billion barrels of crude oil to U.S. refineries, according to Energy Information Administration data. The Association of Oil Pipe Lines says it has a 99.999% safe-delivery rate on these shipments. “On an apples-to-apples basis, pipelines have less accidents, cause less environmental damage and cause less harm to human health than do railcars moving comparable masses of oil and gas,”

In the New TYork Times article ,”Accidents Surge as Oil Industry Takes the Train” Today about two-thirds of the production in North Dakota’s Bakken shale oil field rides on rails because of a shortage of pipelines. And more than 10 percent of the nation’s total oil production is shipped by rail. Since March there have been no fewer than 10 large crude spills in the United States and Canada because of rail accidents. The number of gallons spilled in the United States last year, federal records show, far outpaced the total amount spilled by railroads from 1975 to 2012.

While nothing is fool proof , it would be wise to do some honest hard work on the issue instead of passing silly resolutions based on one-sided politically motivated sources of information .