Protecting Seneca Lake Some of my neighbors drove to Watkins Glen recently to take part in a protest against a proposed natural gas storage facility being built by a Texas based company called Crestwood. They joined several hundred others on the shores of Seneca Lake to call for a halt to the project, which would fill a salt dome with pressurized natural gas. Seneca Lake is part of Lake Ontarios watershed. Some portion of any brine chemicals or radioactive materials that end up in Seneca will eventually make its way to our drinking-water supply. Its all connected. Its also connected through economic activity. Seneca Lake by itself is important, but its not just one lake. Its the whole region. The entire region needs to come together. The storage of gas in underground caverns has been done before and has proved disastrous. The gas storage facility poses risks to both ground water and, if it leaks, to Seneca Lake itself. No information on geological integrity of the salt cavern has been made available to the public or for independent scientific review, and many people fear that a catastrophic explosion similar to that of a 2012 accident in Bayou Corne, Louisiana, could occur after the cavern is filled. In that accident, a salt dome filled with gas collapsed resulting in a huge (and still expanding) sinkhole and many millions of dollars of damage. Back in the 1960s, when compressed gas was stored in the Seneca Lake shoreline cavern, it suffered a massive roof collapse. The cavern is currently filled with brine. Opponents of the project say its too risky to re-use it for gas storage. Between 2001 and 2004, at least three explosions and fires resulted after failures of other underground gas storage areas around the country, according to the Public Education Centers investigative news website. The same news story quotes from a report by Dr. Rob McKenzie, retired CEO of the Cayuga Medical Center, who did a risk analysis of the proposed salt dome storage project. Worldwide, said that report, the percentage of incidents involving casualties at salt cavern facilities as a percentage of facilities in operation in 2005 was 13.6 percent, compared to 0.63 percent for depleted (oil and gas) reservoirs and 2.5 percent for aquifers. McKenzies report adds that his risk analysis shows the chances of a serious accident within Schuyler County within 25 years is over 35 percent. Our entire regional economy will impacted by the proposed facility. While it will bring a few construction jobs to the Seneca Lake area for a few months, the long-term impacts of truck traffic, on-going compressor noise, methane flaring, and other activity associated with a large potentially hazardous industrial facility in the heart of the Finger Lakes best wine country are almost certain to be negative. There are better ways to store natural gas. SUSAN PETERSON GATELEY
Posted on: Sun, 23 Nov 2014 02:41:55 +0000
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