Media Note: Word of Gas Pipeline Opposition Spreads to New York

It’s been in the Vermont headlines for months: Many residents on this side of Lake Champlain oppose a Vermont Gas project to build a pipe south to Addison County — not to mention the company’s Phase 2 plan to extend the pipe under the lake to the International Paper plant in Ticonderoga, New York.

Hundreds turned out for a rowdy Public Service Board hearing in Middlebury last month. Homemade signs — now weathered, but still visible — dot Route 74 in Cornwall and Shoreham; others direct passersby to grassroots websites such as “keepcornwallsafe.com” and “keepshorehamsafe.com.”

But it seems to have been a strongly worded letter of opposition from the Cornwall selectboard to Governor Peter Shumlin that finally got the attention of New York. An article headlined “Some Vermonters oppose IP pipeline” ran in yesterday’s edition of the Plattsburgh Press-Republican. The Albany Business Review subsequently picked up the news for a brief notice in today’s morning edition, billing their item “Gasline for upstate NY factory faces opposition from another state.”