FERC Rep Speaks with Town Councilor

At Tuesday night's Town Council meeting, Councilor Haugh gave a great overview of what is going on with the compressor station on the Atlantic Bridge project. The video should be up within the next couple of days, but in the meantime you can watch it on Channel 9 when they play the meeting.

Councilor Haugh had received new clarification from FERC regarding Spectra's lawyer's recent rantings that they would be receiving the Certificate from FERC "any day now" and would begin construction forthwith. Here is what FERC has to say about that:

-The FERC issues conditional authorizations, meaning the authorization is contingent upon satisfying certain items identified in the Order. If you look to past FERC Orders or the Atlantic Bridge EA, you will see that one condition that is routinely added to Orders is that prior to construction, applicants must obtain all applicable Federal authorizations, including those Federal authorizations that have been delegated down to the state. (Meaning Coastal Zone Management. At this time FRRACS believes that Spectra has only one permit--Fisheries.)

--Should the FERC approve the project, Algonquin still would not have the ability to begin construction. It must receive a separate Notice to Proceed with construction for this. The FERC routinely issues its Order before other agencies can act. However, the condition mentioned above, prevents any construction from occurring.

--Should the FERC approve the project, but another Federal authorization be denied, then Algonquin could not proceed with construction.

As always, our hats are off to Councilor Haugh for her passion and persistence!