Empire State Pipeline and the Bergen Swamp Preservation Society
An example of land use conflict resolution
The Empire State Pipeline project was designed as a 155 mile long high pressure natural gas pipeline from Canada crossing the Niagara River north of Buffalo, NY and terminating in the Syracuse, NY area. Conceived as a nearly straight line, the project proposed to traverse many active farms, wetlands and one National Natural Landmark (NNL), the Zurich Bog.
The US Department of the Interior designated the Zurich Bog as a NNL and placed the bog under the local jurisdiction of the Bergen Swamp Preservation Society, an organization earlier formed to protect another NNL, the Bergen Swamp. When representatives of the pipeline company went to meet with board members from the Bergen Swamp Preservation Society, we were told that the Preservation Society would fight the pipeline with all of its legal, fiscal and political resources because it was unthinkable to have a pipeline constructed through the middle of a National Natural Landmark.
We expressed our appreciation on behalf of the pipeline company for their directness, and tried to immediately engage this group of university professors with advanced degrees in botany and biology in working collaboratively on what certainly had the potential to be an ugly, protracted, public contest. I asked if they or some of their Society colleagues would spend a day – any day of their choosing including Saturday or Sunday – to show me the Zurich Bog and, rather than spending their resources fighting with me, would help me to figure out what rerouting would cause the least environmental disruption in the area around this important bog.
The Society board members were clearly surprised; they asked for a break in the meeting so that they could confer among themselves outside the meeting room. When they returned to the table, they reasserted their complete rejection of proposed pipeline routing; they expressed skepticism that they were appropriate people to assist in the routing of a pipeline, but they agreed to meet at Zurich Bog two Saturdays later.
Clearly our task on behalf of the pipeline company was to try to reach a settlement because going around the bog would be expensive and a battle with a preservation group would have delayed the final approval of the project by at least six months. I spent several days with the board members of the Society hiking carefully in and around the bog, walking optional routes around the bog, studying maps and attending board meetings of the Society. Slowly over the days we spent together, I came to appreciate the Society’s commitment to the Zurich Bog and began to envision a framework for a proposed resolution. After conferring with my pipeline client, and discussing my concepts with one of the Society board members, I sent the outline of an agreement to the Society and asked that I be put on the agenda of the next board meeting to present this to the board and to react to their questions and comments.
I was invited to the board meeting, but the lively board discussion revealed that the agreement needed more work. At the board meeting the following month, we proposed that if they would allow us to construct the pipeline through this NNL, we would do the following:
- Use special care in construction (load fuel outside the bog, wash all machine tracks clean before entering the bog to prevent the incursion of foreign plant species, etc.)
- Separately pile the top 12” of muck which we then would carefully place and spread on the top of the refilled trench (to optimize seed germination in the top layer where any viable seed from rare wild orchids would most likely be found).
- Pump all of the water flowing into the trench into rather than away from the bog.
- Pay for, under direct Society supervision and research design, a biology graduate student to spend summers examining the new, post-construction plant growth on the pipeline route across the bog for seven consecutive years. (The Society was hoping that this “controlled disruption” would stimulate some rare orchids that only blossom every seven years. There is an apparent relationship between surface disruption and the germination of these rare orchids.)
- Pay for the construction of a “wooden pallet boardwalk” into the center of the bog for less-disruptive research and nature walks to see the bog’s unique carnivorous plants.
- All of the above activities would be supervised by the Society and paid for by the pipeline company.
The Society would never have accepted a cash donation; even to propose one would have been terribly offensive. In this settlement, they did not receive one dollar; the pipeline company paid a local university for the graduate students’ work and a local contractor for the installation of the boardwalk.
The Society felt they were untainted by cash and they accepted this offer as fair, protective of the bog, providing valuable research concerning bog species and allowing greater low-impact public appreciation of the NNL through the boardwalk. The Society wrote to the Public Service Commission (PSC), the lead regulatory agency, detailing the agreement and the Society’s support for the originally proposed routing through the bog.
Cost to the company: about $100,000 in special construction measures, research funding and the installation of the boardwalk.
Value to the company:
- Avoidance of at least $2 million in additional construction cost to reroute the pipeline around the bog,
- Elimination of at least six months of contentious hearings and project delay,
- Earned support at the regulatory agency. The PSC publicly noted this as outstanding environmental stewardship, congratulated both parties and cited this as a rare instance of a landowner writing in support of a project crossing that landowner’s property.