Michael J. Fitzgerald has been a journalist for five decades, working as a writer and editor for newspapers, magazines and web publications. In 2014 he published his first novel, "The Fracking War," followed in 2015 with "Fracking Justice." In 2018, he published "The Devil's Pipeline." He has written a weekly column, "Write On" for the daily 'Finger Lakes Times' newspaper in Geneva, NY for 14 years, He contributes stories to the Contra Costa Pulse newspaper in Richmond, CA. He also writes essays on Substack under the title Write On and On.
TOWNSHIP OF READING, New York - The drill rigs can be seen from all the way across Seneca Lake. It's seems clear that Inergy Midstream - the Kansas City, Missouri mega-company that bought U.S. Salt - is most likely getting ready to store natural gas in the salt caverns below the lake - not just propane.
Right now Inergy is trying to get the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation to approve a plan to store a massive amount of propane in nearby caverns as well as build a rail-car terminal and construct huge brine ponds. That project has been held up by persistent local protests over the inherent dangers posed by the storage. People also are concerned it will negatively affect the tourist and wine industries.
Inergy's Moler
But in various documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Inergy has also referenced that it plans on storing natural gas on the same site.
So much for assurances from Inergy Midstream's president, Bill Moler of Kansas City, that his company has nothing to do with hydrofracking for natural gas.
In the video below, Moler speaks at an April 2011, Inergy-orchestrated community meeting in Watkins Glen, trying to sell the audience on the propane storage project. But there's not a peep about natural gas being stored on site, too. In fact, Moler denies that Inergy has anything do to with hydrofracking for natural gas. Technically, that might be true. Inergy doesn't frack. But it will store the natural gas, some of which is likely destined to be shipped to overseas markets via LNG ocean-going tankers.
Below the video is photo taken of the U.S. Salt site, just north of Watkins Glen, where a drill rig is boring down into a salt cavern.
SENECA LAKE, New York, USA - A project to store propane (and eventually natural gas) in salt caverns alongside and below Seneca Lake is making an ugly industrial mess on the shore of the lake, just a few miles north of Watkins Glen in the Town of Reading.
The project is actively opposed by thousands of area people and businesses. An application is currently under consideration by the NY State Department of Environmental Conservation.
While the application works it way through the system, however, Inergy (and its wholly owned subsidiary U.S. Salt) have been busy, carving up a huge swath of the Seneca Lake shoreline and creating an industrial mess that looks more like something from a Mad Max movie (Mad Max's World of Industry) than the sylvan shores people expect to see in the beautiful Finger Lakes.
The four aerial photos below show how far along the project is. The Inergy company has gone to great lengths claiming this is just business as usual, similar to earlier local efforts to store lesser amounts of propane in the salt caverns.
It is not. This is a huge expansion as the photos show.
And the Quantitative Risk Assessment done last fall - paid for by Inergy - is being kept under wraps by the company. Inquiring minds would like to know what that risk assessment says.
If the project is approved by the DEC and the Town of Reading, people of the area will have to worry about possible propane explosions, fires, heavy truck traffic, railroad tanker car accidents, brine pond spills into the lake, possible earthquakes and a host of other pollution problems still under study.
And the Inergy firm has made it clear in various SEC filings that if it all goes sideways (as in some of the scenarios listed) it might not have the resources to pay for the devastation, cleanup and the various legal claims that would be forthcoming.
Here's a link to Gas Free Seneca, the local group coordinating efforts to keep Inergy - a Kansas City, Missouri company - from being allowed to continue: Gas Free Seneca website
These photos of the site on the west side of Seneca Lake were all taken by Gas Free Seneca.
WATKINS GLEN, New York, USA - A proposal to use salt caverns on the shores of Seneca Lake to store propane and natural gas is drawing a lot of attention - most of it negative.
The proposal is by a mega-corporation called Inergy (LINK:Inergy website) to use the caverns owned by its subsidary, U.S. Salt, to keep propane and natural gas - and become the transportation and distribution hub for gas for the entire Northeastern United States.
U.S. Salt (Photo by Observer-Review)
The proposal currently under discussion seems relatively modest and the company has been pedaling it hard with local government officials.
But many local residents believe that if Inergy gets the approval to do this, it will be a case of the camel getting its nose into the tent.
Increases in heavy truck traffic, noise, water and air pollution are all cited as reasons to oppose the project.
And those factors are especially important to local residents who have watched the area bloom in the past 10 years as a major tourist destination for central New York.
Watkins Glen has a gorgeous downtown area, a world-class race track, natural attactions like the Watkins Glen waterway and Seneca Lake. Added to that are more than 50 wineries around the lake that draw thousands of people ever weekend, nearly year round.
A gas-based industrial project - one that would send heavy trucks rumbling down the only highway through the center of Watkins Glen - would seem at odds with that.
Complicating the issue is the ongoing proposal to extract natural gas in the area using the 'hydrofracking' method that has been an environmental disaster in nearby Northwestern Pennsylvania.
Many local residents fear that if hydrofracking is allowed in New York (it is currently being studied), that the gas will end up being storde by Inergy on the shores of the lake.
Some believe that Inergy's project is actually counting on hydrofracking being approved as part of its business strategy for doing the project in the first place.
William Moler
An interview with Inergy's point man on the Seneca Lake project, William Moler, would seem to give pretty strong evidence that Inergy is banking on the gas from hydrofracking become part of its storage.
"The development of the Marcellus Shale has steadily increased the interest and value in its storage and transportation assets in a region that critically needs energy infrastructure to efficiently allow the Marcellus to proliferate," Moler told the Pipeline and Gas Journal last July in an interview.
The full interview and more comments about the connection between Inergy and the possibilities for hydrfracking in New York can be read here: LINK: Marcellus Shale and Inergy
