In Newton, we live with more than three hundred miles of leaking deteriorating pipelines under our streets while National Grid’s extensive pipe replacements are protecting its exorbitant profits and locking us into an enormously costly, wasteful, polluting and dangerous dependence on gas.
Yet, this week, as our state legislators are about to vote on a climate bill that will begin the conversion from gas to safer energy sources and efficient technologies, Newton’s Public Facilities Committee October 23 agenda has another National Grid proposal for more gas pipeline replacement projects!
With enormous gratitude to Newton’s Senator Cynthia Creem for her dedication to urgently needed gas system reforms, I urge our City officials to align with the new law designed to protect ratepayers from the costly expansion of an obsolete polluting gas system. It is time for Newton to get off this self-destructive path and deny National Grid its requests.
Newton resident Peter Barrer’s analysis of National Grid’s 2022-2023 pipeline projects shows that Newton’s enormously costly pipe replacements have not reduced the number of leaks, nor the risks of explosions and fires, nor the air pollution indoors and out. Gas leak repairs were more successful and cost effective. (See Gaspipes.org)
As the enormous damage and suffering from extreme weather increase every year, imagine how much safer we will be when the law finally changes the rules so instead of a $40 billion giveaway to National Grid, the incentives go for repairing the most dangerous and wasteful leaks and switching to clean energy.
We can do it. “…the history of the conversion of every appliance in New York City over the span of a few short years in the 1950s should inspire advocates of the “electrify everything” movement that large-scale appliance conversion is indeed possible…” Nicholas Pevzner, Buried Grudges (2018) Urban Omnibus
Ellie Goldberg
Newton Centre
