The Draft Environmental Impact Statement is out.  It officially hit today from FERC.  Some quick facts:

• We have until September 5, 2016 to comment.  That’s our deadline (45 days), in the height of vacation season.
• You don’t have to be an intervenor to comment.  ANYONE can comment – and we want EVERYONE to comment.
• Intervenors do carry more weight, and their protests must be answered in the final FERC order.
• You can still Intervene!  We’ll have instructions up shortly to intervene-out-0f-time.

The full DEIS is available here:

http://www.ferc.gov/industries/gas/enviro/eis/2016/07-22-16-eis.asp

The plan is to get 50,000 (!) or more comments out there.  So start alerting your friends, your neighbors, your distant acquaintances, everyone you can.  Alert any intervenors you know, or people who should intervene.  CAPS, New Jersey Conservation Foundation, The Delaware Riverkeeper Network, Sierra Club, and others are all banding together to ensure there are sufficient in-person workshops, webinars, and anything else we can think of to get the issues with this DEIS thoroughly and completely documented.  We have 45 days, and we need to make the most of it.

Because this DEIS is a travesty.  In section after section FERC and their contractors state that they have insufficient information upon which to make a decision, and then they conclude each section that they have determined there is no significant impact to the environment.

We have no data on wells or springs in NJ or PA, and hope we’ll get some eventually.  But we’ve determined there’s no significant impact to wells or springs.

We have insufficient data on vernal pools, we’ll check that later.  But we’re confident there’s no real impact to them, and we’ll mitigate it somehow.

We have no idea about historical artifacts, properties, or areas within the impact area.  But we’re confident we’ll mitigate anything we find eventually.  Some day (as an aside: how do you mitigate impacts to unique historical areas?).

Their No Action Alternative is four paragraphs long.  Yes, four paragraphs.  They cite no sources or data, other than the list of shippers.  They point to that list of shippers and say “These shippers signed contracts. There fore, there can be no No Action Alternative”.  There is no mention of 7o% of landowners in NJ denying access.  No mention of affiliate transactions between companies like NJ Natural Gas buying the gas from New Jersey Resources, or PSEG Power buying from PSEG, etc.  They write off renewables and other areas without a single citation or data point.

And there’s no mention of storage, dual-fuel, or other alternatives.

This is a target-rich environment folks.  Let’s have at it.  More to come once we digest it in detail.