Speaker 1: Early last year, I started hearing from some activists in
Speaker 1: Massachusetts about a natural gas project proposed in their town.
Speaker 1: One woman in particular really thought this was something I
Speaker 1: should look into. Her name is Andrea Honore.
Speaker 2: But it took me a good year to understand what
Speaker 2: was going on. I never heard of a compressor. I'd
Speaker 2: never heard of ferk. I didn't understand the process.
Speaker 1: Andrea lives in the town of Weymouth, Massachusetts. It's a
Speaker 1: coastal town of around fifty thousand people in the South
Speaker 1: Shore region, about half an hour south of Boston, and
Speaker 1: in twenty fifteen, Spectra Energy, a gas company from Texas,
Speaker 1: wanted to put what's called a natural gas compressor right
Speaker 1: on the water at the north end of town. Natural
Speaker 1: gas needs a little help to travel the whole length
Speaker 1: of a pipeline, and compressor stations helped to sort of
Speaker 1: goose the gas along the way. If you've never heard
Speaker 1: of these things, it's probably because they usually don't put
Speaker 1: them in the middle of cities or even heavily populated
Speaker 1: areas period They're generally placed kind of on the middle
Speaker 1: of nowhere because they explode, sometimes.
Speaker 2: Also breaking overnight.
Speaker 3: In Green County, an explosion at a compressor station in
Speaker 3: Sycamore had firefighters busy battling flames on Hopkins Run Road.
Speaker 4: We're continuing coverage tonight on an explosion that took place
Speaker 4: earlier today. According to the Monahan's Volunteer Fire Department, one
Speaker 4: person has died and two others have been flown out
Speaker 4: with burn injuries.
Speaker 3: Coverage on Witness Needs five.
Speaker 5: The ten starts right.
Speaker 3: Now, like breaking a ten.
Speaker 6: A gas line rupture leads to a big fire and
Speaker 6: explosion in Logan County.
Speaker 1: Now we're joined by the Guthrie Fire Chief, Eric Carlow,
Speaker 1: who is on the scene. There, a chief, what happened
Speaker 1: out there? Exactly?
Speaker 6: Well, guys, it we had an explosion at a gas
Speaker 6: compressure plant.
Speaker 1: But Spectra wanted to put the Weymouth compressor in a
Speaker 1: very populated area right at the foot of a heavily
Speaker 1: trafficked bridge. Here's Honoree again.
Speaker 2: But at the time, Spectra Energy offered my little town
Speaker 2: forty seven million dollars to drop official opposition. That's a
Speaker 2: lot of money.
Speaker 1: She had become somewhat known in the community as an
Speaker 1: advocate for school funding, so when she raised some concerns
Speaker 1: to the mayor about taking that money. He was surprised,
Speaker 1: but he.
Speaker 2: Called and he's like, well, what didn't the schools, you know,
Speaker 2: your school advocate. Wouldn't it be really great to have
Speaker 2: that money for the schools? And I'm like, well, yeah,
Speaker 2: if you want to be a one term mayor, go
Speaker 2: ahead take the money. Like that's not this is absolutely
Speaker 2: not no, there's no amount of money there would So,
Speaker 2: you know, he eventually asked around, did his thing. People
Speaker 2: started calling up his ass. It got made more public,
Speaker 2: you know, protests and that, and so he was like, Nope,
Speaker 2: we're not going to take the money.
Speaker 1: By that point, Honore had learned about the potential impacts
Speaker 1: of the compressor from a local group called Four River
Speaker 1: Residents Against Compressor Station or FRAS for short. One of
Speaker 1: the criticisms of the station is that it would be
Speaker 1: sited at the foot of the four River Bridge. Like
Speaker 1: I said, that's a major commuter bridge, so an explosion there,
Speaker 1: depending on the time of day, could do some serious damage.
Speaker 1: Alice Arena is the president of FRACS.
Speaker 7: I kind of hooked into it a little bit, and
Speaker 7: I thought, oh, hell no, how could they put something
Speaker 7: like this on this little tiny piece of land. So
Speaker 7: close to this brand new bridge, so close to a
Speaker 7: sewage pumping station. I mean, it just was madness and
Speaker 7: it made no sense.
Speaker 1: A lot of people thought that way, and opposition to
Speaker 1: the project started to grow over twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: Patrick O'Connor is from Wemouth. Today he's a state senator,
Speaker 1: but six years ago he was a city council president
Speaker 1: in Weymouth.
Speaker 8: You know, this is going to be in a large
Speaker 8: population center, the gateway really to two major cities in
Speaker 8: the Conwealth of Massachusetts, Quinsy and Weymouth, and it's going
Speaker 8: to be located next to a brand new bridge that,
Speaker 8: through the state and federal government, we spent over three
Speaker 8: hundred million dollars on. So you know, tens of thousands
Speaker 8: of commuters travel by this compressor station every single day,
Speaker 8: so it's not it's not the typical location for one
Speaker 8: of these compressor stations. That's one of that was one
Speaker 8: of the major things that we first sort of looked
Speaker 8: at and thought, this is unusual to be placed in
Speaker 8: an area where there's so much activity, both residential and commercial.
Speaker 8: That was the real catalyst to fight it, and then
Speaker 8: from there in the research that we've done, and in
Speaker 8: talking with other communities and other stakeholders, you know, we've
Speaker 8: identified a whole host of other things that are wrong
Speaker 8: with these compressor stations and why they shouldn't be in
Speaker 8: areas where people are, you know, regularly congregating.
Speaker 1: One thing O'Connor learned about was a process called a
Speaker 1: blowdown that happens at compressor stations.
Speaker 8: So they're basically using thousands of chemicals now to extract
Speaker 8: from the shale this natural gas, and as it's going
Speaker 8: through these compressor stations, one of the other components is
Speaker 8: that it's speeding this gas up, and it's taking some
Speaker 8: of those byproducts out of that gas, and then those
Speaker 8: byproducts are captured at the station and then every so often,
Speaker 8: you know, they were saying monthly or quarterly, but realistically,
Speaker 8: when you read their filings, it happens about two or
Speaker 8: three times a week. They'll take all that byproduct and
Speaker 8: release it into the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: That seems like a potential problem for a lot of reasons,
Speaker 1: but it also has a big immediate negative side effect
Speaker 1: for people living nearby.
Speaker 8: It stinks, they said, it smells like, you know, rotten eggs.
Speaker 1: Last fall, it seemed like this six year fight was
Speaker 1: over the compressor and the pipelines that connects to are
Speaker 1: owned by Canadian energy giant en Bridge. Now they're the
Speaker 1: same folks that own the Line three pipeline you're hearing
Speaker 1: a lot about in Minnesota. The Waymouth project got its
Speaker 1: final permits in twenty nineteen, started construction, and in September
Speaker 1: twenty twenty was ready to start operating. Normally, that's where
Speaker 1: this story would end. Maybe the activists would launch a lawsuit,
Speaker 1: but it would be an upheld battle and it would
Speaker 1: probably take years. That's not what happened here, at least
Speaker 1: not yet. There was an election in January, you may remember,
Speaker 1: and that meant a changeup at the federal regulatory Commission
Speaker 1: that governs projects like this, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission,
Speaker 1: or FURK. If you listen to this podcast or you
Speaker 1: know me in real life, you know I love to
Speaker 1: nerd out on a good FURK story. Generally I try
Speaker 1: not to bore other people with them. But buckle up,
Speaker 1: because today we're going to enjoy the rarest of things,
Speaker 1: a truly dramatic FURK story, and it could have huge implications,
Speaker 1: not just for the folks in Weymouth, but for other
Speaker 1: people living near natural gas infrastructure, and for this country's
Speaker 1: progress on climate action in general, all that coming up
Speaker 1: right after this quick break. I'm Ami Westervelt, and this
Speaker 1: is drilled. Activists like Andrea and Alice have been trying
Speaker 1: to get national reporters to pay attention to what's happening
Speaker 1: in Weymouth for years, and so has Miriam Wasser, an
Speaker 1: environmental reporter with WBR Boston's and PR news station. Last
Speaker 1: month something happened that made people outside of Massachusetts sit
Speaker 1: up and take notice.
Speaker 3: It is now suddenly like this big issue that gas
Speaker 3: companies all over the country are paying attention to. And
Speaker 3: one person I talked to just had this great line
Speaker 3: where he was like, Miriam, this is the Weymouth compressor's
Speaker 3: decoda access pipeline moment.
Speaker 1: That might be a stretch, but who knows. Here's what's
Speaker 1: been happening in Weymouth since last fall. So, like I
Speaker 1: mentioned before the break, despite a lot of pushback for
Speaker 1: years from local activist groups, the compressor station got its
Speaker 1: permits and started operating in September, and then almost immediately.
Speaker 3: They had an emergency shut down. Turns out this overing
Speaker 3: gasket failed and it wasn't supposed to be used in
Speaker 3: this situation. But anyways, workers had to manually shut down
Speaker 3: part of the facility, and in the process they vented
Speaker 3: a lot of natural gas into the area.
Speaker 1: People were pretty freaked out, especially the people who had
Speaker 1: been worried about this project from the beginning. And Bridge said,
Speaker 1: everything's fine. The emergency system worked like it should. We
Speaker 1: fixed a small maintenance issue, and we're back in business.
Speaker 1: Two weeks after that shutdown, FIRK says, okay, you're good
Speaker 1: to go. Here's your final final permit. Now keep in
Speaker 1: mind this is still the Trump administration's FIRK, which was
Speaker 1: extremely pro oil and gas. The head of the Commission
Speaker 1: at the time was Neil Chatterjee, Mitch McConnell's energy advisor.
Speaker 3: And then six days later, the Waymouth compressor has a
Speaker 3: second emergency shutdown. This time it's I there was some
Speaker 3: sort of loss of power to the emergency shutdown system
Speaker 3: and it basically, I mean, it did what it's supposed
Speaker 3: to do, right. It lost power, it triggered itself to
Speaker 3: shut down, but again vented a lot of natural gas
Speaker 3: into the area. And people were so alarmed and a
Speaker 3: number of our congressional delegates were really alarmed, and they
Speaker 3: reached out to the federal government.
Speaker 1: That triggered an investigation from the federal government, specifically from
Speaker 1: the Pipelines and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration or PIMZA. The
Speaker 1: investigation kicked off in October, effectively pausing all activity at
Speaker 1: the Weymouth compressor and activist groups and local legislators took
Speaker 1: that opportunity to appeal to Ferk to say, hey, this
Speaker 1: is what we said was going to happen. Now it's happened.
Speaker 1: You need to rethink this. Here's State Senator Patrick O'Connor again.
Speaker 8: It was almost an immediate emergency shut down, and then
Speaker 8: right after that there was another one when they started
Speaker 8: to get up and running again. And no one could
Speaker 8: have made a better case for why that compressor station
Speaker 8: shouldn't be there than the company themselves by having those
Speaker 8: malfunctions happen.
Speaker 1: I should mention that O'Connor is a Republican and this
Speaker 1: is something that I see over and over again that
Speaker 1: when it comes to national discussions in DC, a lot
Speaker 1: of times debates around natural gas and oil and other
Speaker 1: kinds of fossil fuels are kind of in the abstract.
Speaker 1: At the local level, these things are not partisan. When
Speaker 1: there is a pipeline or a compressor station in your
Speaker 1: district causing potential harm to your constituents, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: it seems very clear that it's something that you might
Speaker 1: want to do something about. And O'Connor is very frank
Speaker 1: about what he thinks FERK should be doing in situations
Speaker 1: like this, you know.
Speaker 8: Seeing regulatory commissions that have all this authority and power
Speaker 8: make decisions based on what the industry wants them to do.
Speaker 8: That practice as a whole, whether it's in healthcare or energy,
Speaker 8: or education or wherever it is, just has to end.
Speaker 8: And it's been going on for far too long down
Speaker 8: in DC. So yes, I would hope that not just FORK,
Speaker 8: you know, but other agencies see that people are paying
Speaker 8: attention more than they have ever been paying attention to
Speaker 8: what's going on down in our federal government, and that
Speaker 8: we need to actually look out for our taxpayers, look
Speaker 8: out for our neighbors, and you know, not just rubber
Speaker 8: stamp these projects and these initiatives that big, big corporations
Speaker 8: put forward.
Speaker 1: Okay, So the Weymouth compressor was temporarily paused in October
Speaker 1: there was this federal investigation going on. Legislators and activists
Speaker 1: were appealing to Furk, and then Firk did something kind
Speaker 1: of weird. They initially declined to rehear the arguments about
Speaker 1: the Weymouth compressor, but they didn't completely shut the idea
Speaker 1: of a rehearing down. Oh Furk, you inscrutable beast. Here's
Speaker 1: Alice arena with fracks.
Speaker 5: They had to either give us the rehearing or they
Speaker 5: had to deny it. They didn't have a choice, so
Speaker 5: they denied it on November twenty third, but said, but
Speaker 5: you know, maybe we'll think about this later. So it
Speaker 5: was it was a non denial denial. It was kind
Speaker 5: of crazy in December. At the commission meeting on December seventeenth.
Speaker 5: I believe we were on the docket on the agenda
Speaker 5: for this meeting, and we're like, we don't even know
Speaker 5: what it is that they're talking about, but they were
Speaker 5: talking about the denial.
Speaker 1: Apparently at the December meeting they decided to table the
Speaker 1: denial discussion until January.
Speaker 5: So at the January meeting on January eighteenth, three of
Speaker 5: the commissioners Chatter, Gye, Glick and Clements voted to deny
Speaker 5: the denial double negative, and so we said, well, gosh,
Speaker 5: that's wonderful. You denied the denial, but you didn't give
Speaker 5: us the rehearing. So what can we do. So Frank
Speaker 5: started a campaign with our allies, you know, across the
Speaker 5: state and our members, the state delegation and our federal delegation,
Speaker 5: and we went after Frock on the dock and said,
Speaker 5: you have to give us the rehearing. You can't. You know,
Speaker 5: you've got to either deny it or or approve it,
Speaker 5: one or the other.
Speaker 1: Now by this point, Biden has been inaugurated and a
Speaker 1: guy named Richard Glick has been appointed the FURK Commissioner.
Speaker 1: And this seems like a big deal to climate activists
Speaker 1: because Glick has been very outspoken about the fact that
Speaker 1: he thinks FERK ought to be considering environmental justice and
Speaker 1: climate impacts when they evaluate things like pipelines and compressor stations.
Speaker 3: What was like super surprising is after this meeting, Commissioner
Speaker 3: Richard Glick got on Twitter and he said, quote, the
Speaker 3: Weymouth Compressor Station raises serious environmental justice questions which we
Speaker 3: need to examine. The communities surrounding the project are regularly
Speaker 3: subjected to high levels of pollution and residents are concerned
Speaker 3: emissions from the station will make things worse. In three
Speaker 3: years at FIRK, i've seen little more than lip service
Speaker 3: paid to environmental justice. This needs to change, and that
Speaker 3: I'm sure, as you know, Amy is like an astounding
Speaker 3: thing to hear from someone within FIRK.
Speaker 8: It really is.
Speaker 1: That was Wbuur's Miriam laws her again and she's right.
Speaker 1: In twenty years reporting on energy and climate change, I
Speaker 1: have never heard a FIRK commissioner say something like this,
Speaker 1: let alone put it in writing in public. And then
Speaker 1: came another big surprise at the FIRK meeting in February.
Speaker 1: Here's Alice Arena again.
Speaker 5: So in February, on February eighteenth, at that meeting, they
Speaker 5: opened up another subdocket where they issued an order for
Speaker 5: paper briefing on the compressor station. And this order for
Speaker 5: paper briefing kind of says, did we do something wrong?
Speaker 5: Did we consider environmental justice? Did we consider safety under
Speaker 5: the Natural Gas Act? And what has changed? So? What
Speaker 5: has changed since the certificate is in September? And as
Speaker 5: far as we're concerned, what has changed since they issued
Speaker 5: the original certificate back in twenty seventeen, and so going
Speaker 5: back to twenty seventeen, we've got lots of things that
Speaker 5: have changed climate, you know, the acceleration of climate change
Speaker 5: going above and beyond when anyone expected. So we've got
Speaker 5: that going for us. And also necessity, the gas is worthless.
Speaker 5: The domestic need has gone down, the international need has
Speaker 5: gone down, and so why are you even doing this?
Speaker 5: So that's where we are right now. We are in
Speaker 5: this briefing period and the briefs are due technically April fourth,
Speaker 5: but that's a Sunday, so we're saying April second.
Speaker 1: The industry is of course also filing briefs and not
Speaker 1: just Mbridge, every large gas company and trade group. As
Speaker 1: if Ferk decides to rethink this permit, it might just
Speaker 1: rethink others. Here's State Senator O'Connor again.
Speaker 8: Oh, they're all in. When you look at the wee
Speaker 8: an email every time that somebody files, and when you
Speaker 8: look at who's filing, it's all the big players, you know,
Speaker 8: the ones that don't even have a financial interest in
Speaker 8: what's going on in North Weymouth because they know that
Speaker 8: this is a real showdown. Ferk is asking some real
Speaker 8: legitimate questions about the operational practices, the public health components,
Speaker 8: and of a lot of other the demand and need
Speaker 8: for natural gas, especially in this region.
Speaker 1: Adam Carlesco with Food and Water Watch brought a lawsuit
Speaker 1: against FERK last year for failing to consider impacts like
Speaker 1: the ones people are concerned about in Weymouth. We covered
Speaker 1: that case if you want to go back and listen.
Speaker 1: I was curious for his take as someone who's been
Speaker 1: frustrated with FERK and gone up against them in court
Speaker 1: over their reputation for rubberstone projects.
Speaker 6: They're willing to open up a docket and look at
Speaker 6: issues that might have been overlooked under a regulatory captured
Speaker 6: FERK under Trump and a lot of the folks that
Speaker 6: were working with in the agency at that time. And
Speaker 6: so that shows me that there's a little bit of
Speaker 6: willingness to listen to public outcry and kind of correct
Speaker 6: mistakes that might have been there and you know, some
Speaker 6: oversight issues that they might have had.
Speaker 1: And even if it doesn't, the Commission is signaling in
Speaker 1: a pretty big way that it plans to look more
Speaker 1: closely at projects like these. But Carlasco says he's still
Speaker 1: waiting to see real action from FERK, not just speeches
Speaker 1: and tweets.
Speaker 6: I'm not necessarily holding my breath on anything, because while
Speaker 6: there's a lot of lip service coming out of the
Speaker 6: Commission on the whole, I'm not necessarily, i guess, overly
Speaker 6: optimistic about some of the approaches that they're taking so far.
Speaker 6: They're still issuing certificate orders are wholly deficient. They issued
Speaker 6: one on a project that's running through New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 6: and New York that is wholly disregarding any sort of
Speaker 6: indirect impacts, specifically downstream combustion. This is supposed to go
Speaker 6: into the New York City metro area, and they completely
Speaker 6: fail to look at how this would impact compliance with
Speaker 6: New York's climate policy laws. And they're not looking at
Speaker 6: how it might incentivize for the drilling within the Marcella's shale,
Speaker 6: despite it coming directly from the Marcella's shale. So they're
Speaker 6: wholly ignoring a lot of the issues that are and
Speaker 6: play here.
Speaker 1: In June, Neil Chatterjee, the former head of FIRK and
Speaker 1: still a commissioner, will leave his seat and Biden will
Speaker 1: appoint another commissioner, so the FIRK that makes a final
Speaker 1: decision on the Waymouth compressor will be very different than
Speaker 1: the one that approved it, replies to the briefs that
Speaker 1: are being prepared now will be doing early May, and
Speaker 1: then Ferk needs time to read through it all and
Speaker 1: discuss it, so it's unlikely there will be a decision
Speaker 1: until June or July. In the meantime, Alice Arena is
Speaker 1: enjoying an unfamiliar sensation optimism.
Speaker 5: When it all started to happen, We're just standing there
Speaker 5: with our hands up in the air, going what the
Speaker 5: heck is going on here? It's like we're so used
Speaker 5: to just being beaten on the head by Fark and
Speaker 5: by all of the agencies that all of a sudden
Speaker 5: we're sitting in the sand.
Speaker 1: What that's it for this time? Thanks for listening. We'll
Speaker 1: be sure to update you on this project as there's news,
Speaker 1: and don't forget we'll be back soon with a new
Speaker 1: narrative season on the natural gas industry in general. So
Speaker 1: make sure you're subscribed so you won't miss that. Big
Speaker 1: thank you to our latest Patreon subscriber. They are Daniella Osiander,
Speaker 1: Jake Full and Fiona Writer. If you would like an
Speaker 1: ad free feed of the podcast plus bonus content. Go
Speaker 1: check out patreon dot com slash drilled. You can also
Speaker 1: access exclusive Drilled merchandise, and you can feel free to
Speaker 1: drop me a note over there about stories that you
Speaker 1: want to see or maybe features that would be interesting
Speaker 1: for patrons too. Thanks for your support and we'll see
Speaker 1: you next time.