To the Editor:

Over the past two years, Albany County residents have heard much about the threat to the environment and the public safety posed by Bakken crude oil trains at the Port of Albany. Not much has been said about even greater numbers of crude oil trains which pass through southern Albany County, specifically through the towns of New Scotland, Bethlehem, Selkirk and Coeymans.

These communities are traversed by multi-million-gallon unit fracked-oil trains on CSX coming from the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota and going to refineries in South Philadelphia and New Jersey.

But New Scotland and Bethlehem, as well as Knox and Berne, also have the dubious distinction of potentially hosting a huge fracked gas pipeline, which has been proposed to be built between northern Pennsylvania and eastern Massachusetts, crossing through a large part of eastern New York including southern Albany County.

This pipeline, dubbed the Northeast Energy Direct pipeline, has been proposed by energy transportation giant Kinder Morgan Inc, of Houston, Texas. The NED pipeline would have a diameter of 30 to 36 inches and a high operating pressure (1,400 pounds per square inch, about 5,000 times the pressure of the gas line coming into your home) while cutting a wide swath through the towns of Knox and Berne, before reaching New Scotland and Bethlehem.

The NED would not serve gas customers along its path through New York, which is why the word “Direct” is in its name: It will go directly from Pennsylvania to the east coast of Massachusetts.

In fact, much of the gas in this pipeline is intended for export to foreign countries where the price of gas is high, much higher than anywhere in the United States. Export facilities on the east coast of Massachusetts and eastern Canada would liquefy the gas so that it can be pumped onto large ships and transported overseas.

Property owners along the path of this proposed pipeline really have no say in its construction through their land. If landowners don’t agree to the terms of Kinder Morgan (which are not very favorable to the landowners), the company can acquire their land through eminent domain proceedings and there is nothing they can do about it. Such land-grabbing tactics seem un-American and unfair.

Property owners would receive a pittance for the inconvenience and danger the pipeline would bring. When, in the future, Kinder Morgan decides it no longer needs the pipeline, it will be free to abandon it in place without removing it or restoring the land that was disturbed by construction of the right-of-way, leaving an unsightly and environmentally undesirable landscape.

What are some of the dangers of this project? A right-of-way several hundred feet wide will be cleared, groundwater will be disturbed, water wells could be affected, aquifers are in danger of contamination, and gas leaks culminating in fires and explosions are always a possibility.

If a fire starts, there is no way to extinguish it but to let it burn itself out. Safety valves are located only every 10 miles; so, even if the valves are turned off, there is still 10 miles-worth of gas in the pipeline. That’s a lot of gas to burn off before the fire goes out. What will happen to people and property while this uncontrollable burn occurs?

There are health threats, as well: When there are leaks in the pipeline, as well as when a section of the pipeline is vented in order to make repairs, the toxic chemicals used in the fracking process in Pennsylvania will be released into the air which Albany County residents breath. Some of these chemicals are very potent.

So what’s in it for residents of Albany County and the towns of Knox, Berne, New Scotland, and Bethlehem? Very little, really.

Like the CSX oil trains, it is mostly risk and little reward for our citizens. Very few people will be employed along the several-hundred-mile route of the NED. Property taxes will not be much. We will not be able to use the gas. We don’t need the NED coming through our communities.

It’s time we got off our energy addiction by reducing our energy consumption and using more renewable energy. Kinder Morgan’s NED is not the answer to our energy future.

Tim Truscott

Albany