Culture & Community | Environment | Arts & Culture
Contributed Photos. Pictured in the second photo is Sydney Collins, an organizer with Sunrise New Haven.
Sydney Collins, an organizer with Sunrise New Haven, didn’t realize she had been passing by a gas pipeline. She initially thought it was a water distribution line, “because why would something that has methane fracked gas go above a water body and be literally right by the road?”
But now that she knows, she wants to educate everyone she can.
Last Saturday, Collins stood atop a metal railing overlooking the Mill River to educate 25 adults during the first of four stops on the “Stop Fossil Fuels Bike Ride,”a collaboration between Sierra Club Connecticut, Radical Adventure Riders New Haven, Sunrise New Haven, New Haven Climate Movement, and No Pipeline Expansion (NOPE) Northeast.
After kicking off the event on the sunny sidewalk of the Bradley Street Bicycle Co-op, ride marshals led the group on an approximately five-mile route spotlighting fossil fuel infrastructure and environmental justice issues in New Haven and beyond.
Near the intersection of State and James Streets, this above-ground pipeline is part of a 1,100-mile-long pipeline system owned by Enbridge, an oil and gas corporation headquartered in Canada. Enbridge owns and operates the longest crude oil and liquids transportation system in the world.
Enbridge proposed an expansion to their Northeast pipeline system in 2023, which would cut across Connecticut on its way from New Jersey up to Massachusetts. This expansion, Project Maple, seeks to replace existing pipelines, add secondary pipelines, and expand compressor stations on its route. Opposition to the project led to the launch of NOPE Northeast (formerly known as “Stop Project Maple”) shortly afterwards.
The pipeline carries compressed natural gas—a fuel predominantly composed of methane, a greenhouse gas up to 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide in contributing to global warming. “It hurts human health, it hurts our statewide goals to reduce [emissions],” Collins said.
“It doesn’t make sense to expand natural gas when Connecticut has plans to reduce emissions by 45 percent by 2030,” Collins noted. “It’s 2025! And we haven’t gone down!”
Amidst the background of noise from cars near Criscuolo Park in Fair Haven, this reporter (in full disclosure, also a member of the New Haven Climate Movement or NHCM) spoke about the impact of transportation emissions on ocean health and marine life, as part of NHCM’s DeCARbonize the Oceans campaign. NHCM invited attendees to move away from private car usage at least one day per week as part of their CARbon Free Fridays (formerly Fossil Free Fridays) project.
Next, Anstress Farwell, President of the New Haven Urban Design League, spoke about the polluting facilities and contaminated sites around where the group was standing, from federal oil reserve tanks to the decommissioned English Station, a former coal- and oil-fired power plant that has been partially remediated. (Last fall, Farwell similarly convened a series of educational walking tours of English Station and the Mill River District which highlighted the area’s environmental history.)
Farwell also noted the covered salt piles in the distance, the presence of which New Haveners recently pressed the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (CT DEEP) about. “The impact here is truly an environmental justice issue,” she said.
Along the way to their last stop, the group also rode through the tunnel of the newly developed section of the Farmington Canal Trail at the corner of Orange and Grove Streets.
The group settled on the grass of Jean Pope Memorial Park across the Yale Central Power Plant. Sena Wazer—a climate organizer from Mansfield, graduate student at Yale School of the Environment, and most recently a Stop Project Maple intern at Sierra Club Connecticut—expressed her disapproval of state leaders’ support of gas as an energy source for Connecticut.
“The specific person I want to call out is the governor, Governor Lamont, who has been very pro-methane expansion recently. There’s been a lot of misinformation narratives going on around the ‘energy crisis,’ and some folks say natural gas is going to help with that,” Wazer said.
Wazer and Collins.
Wazer also highlighted controversy surrounding the Capitol Area System in Hartford, the system controlling heating and cooling in several buildings, including government buildings. The state has committed to burning gas to power the project, while Sierra Club Connecticut is calling for the use of network geothermal for the project instead.
Attendees criticized how this choice replaces “a dirty option with another dirty option” and would lock in decades more of pollution.
Wazer also touched on the issue of compressor stations in Brookfield, facilities meant to regulate pressure in the pipeline. Despite being just 1,900 feet from the town’s middle school, there are plans to double the size of the station.
“[Brookfield residents] already have really bad ozone, they don’t need more methane, they don’t need more of this stuff polluting their community,” Wazer said. Without more pushback, CT DEEP is set to move forward with granting the project a permit.
“We are not seeing our state stand up to the federal administration in the way that they should, I would argue. Instead, we're seeing them allow and push for this expansion to move forward. They need to know that we’re not okay with that and this needs to change,” Wazer said.
She invited attendees to scan a QR code to send an email to Governor Lamont and CT DEEP Commissioner Katie Dykes to oppose these three gas expansion projects: the doubling of pipeline compressor stations, using fracked gas to power Capital Area Systems, and Enbridge pipeline expansion. Readers can send a letter to them online.
Acknowledging the Yale campus backdrop, Chris Schweitzer, director of the New Haven/Leon Sister City Project, drew parallels between United Illuminating’s (UI) liability for cleaning up English Station to what he feels is Yale University’s responsibility to clean up for their billions of dollars in accumulated “climate damage” from years of emissions.
“Under U.S. environmental law, if you pollute a site, you’re liable even if that land gets sold and sold. UI is on the hook for cleaning up [English Station] forever, and they’re being pushed to clean it up,” Schweitzer said. “So clearly, legally, we have to clean up after ourselves. What’s Yale going to do to clean up for these 90,000 tons [of carbon dioxide emissions], $200 a ton of cost of carbon [per year]?”
Several attendees chimed in with their thoughts, while others grabbed snacks or scanned the QR code to take action. The group rode back to Bradley St Bicycle Co-op to close out, with each participating promoting their upcoming events and opportunities for advocacy.
Desen Ozkan and Faith Donaghui, both residents of Middletown, came down to New Haven for the bike ride after hearing about it from Collins. Donaghui appreciated that the organizers used this opportunity to teach attendees about what is going on around local impacts of fossil fuel infrastructure.
“It was great to see how passionate people are about climate action and also the local community,” Donaghui said.
Ozkan said that the ride allowed her to become “aware of what infrastructure we already interact with every day and the hidden ways that our life is comfortable or not comfortable. Exposing a lot of that is really important.
Peoples’ stories and energy systems’ impacts on communities are “important to keep in mind as we turn the lights on or think about changing from oil to heat pumps,” Ozkan said.
Learn more about Project Maple here. Send a pre-written letter to CT DEEP Commissioner Dykes and Governor Ned Lamont to oppose state gas expansion projects here.