by Andrew Stein April 18, 2013 vtdigger.org The House Fish and Wildlife Committee voted unanimously on Thursday to drop a Senate bill aimed at enhancing state oversight of oil transmission pipelines.
The bill was crafted with the intent of ensuring the state’ s regulatory power over the potential piping of tar sands oil through the Portland Montreal Pipeline. The pipeline is owned by the Portland Pipe Line Corp and runs through the Northeast corner of Vermont.
The committee’ s decision to vote down the bill comes four days after an Act 250 land-use coordinator in the Northeast Kingdom issued a jurisdictional opinion that said the Portland Pipe Line Corp. would require an Act 250 permit if it sought to reverse the flow of its pipeline to transport tar sands oil.
S.58, the bill that passed out of Senate, would have required pipelines to undergo review by an Act 250 environmental commission in case of any ‘ cognizable physical change to the pipeline or associated facilities, unless the change is solely for the purpose of repair.’
Rep. David Deen, who introduced parallel legislation to S.58 in the House and who chairs Fish and Wildlife, said that his committee is ‘ comfortable’ that the jurisdictional opinion will protect the state for at least the next two years. The committee came to this decision after two days of testimony on the issue.
‘ We are not going to move forward on S.58 at this time,’ Deen said. ‘ Now that a decision has been issued, we’ re going to wait to see if there are going to be legal actions taken.’
Portland Pipe Line CEO Larry Wilson told VTDigger that his company is still considering the commission’ s decision.
‘ The company is reviewing the details of the opinion and evaluating its options in order to determine whether and how to respond to the opinion,’ he said. ‘ PMPL has been a responsible, law abiding corporate citizen of Vermont for 72 years with a legacy of safety and environmental excellence ‘¦ We intend to remain a good neighbor, solid corporate citizen, and sustain our strong safety and environmental performance throughout our future.’
If Portland Pipe Line takes legal action, a court decision could settle the matter for the Legislature of whether the state has environmental oversight of this change of use.
‘ There are more ways to push back on this than if a statute is passed,’ Deen said.
Such legislation could come up again, he added, but it’ s not likely to do so until the next legislative biennium.
House panel jettisons tar sands oil oversight bill
Submitted by tim
on