David Crea
Process, Energy & Reliability Engineer, Watkins Glen, NY
(David Crea is employed by US Salt but speaks here for himself only)

Gas Free Seneca, opponent of propane storage in the Watkins Glen area, portrays itself as “Little Red Riding Hood” in a battle with “The Big Bad Wolf,” but it’s just the opposite. This is Part IV. Read Part I here, Part II here and Part III here.

Now that we’ve covered the many myths of Gas Free Seneca, what is it that motivates their ‘devotion to cause’? What is the ideological foundation of these anti-carbon activists? Natural Gas Now, EID and others have exposed the money flowing from Ithaca’s Park Foundation and others.  That is certainly a part of it.

But let’s ask a deeper question: What ideology drives these people to be against any form of energy containing carbon so much?  Why are they seemingly willing to use carbon-based energy, but not “accept” the normal accommodations of a marketplace that drives change based upon the free choices of millions of consumers, and currently calls for more storage of gas and gas-liquids in this area?

One More Myth!

As a segue into that explanation let me dispel one more myth, I didn’t cover in Part III:

MYTH #25 Only storage facilities in salt have had Catastrophic Failures!  We are doomed if this one is used!

This claim traces to an undated, self-serving, short, shallow and un-referenced “report” written by the President of Falcon Gas Storage, published in a now-defunct magazine “ENERGY MARKETS” to promote storage in their facilities using depleted reservoirs.  Although it used to be available at Falcon’s site, it has now been pulled.  It is no longer available, except at places where stored for use as a brickbat, as at Gas Free Seneca here.

When you start examining the so-called “catastrophic failures” (Gas Free Seneca’s terminology in their ad)you find that author John Hopper’s original terminology was “Catastrophic Events” and “Catastrophic Loss of Property”.  And, you find the Gas-Filled Senecans are labeling as “catastrophic failures” such events as a new storage cavity that never passed its initial MIT (and thus was never a storage facility) and one which had reduced capacity due to “salt creep.”

That is a long stretch of the meanings of “catastrophic’” and “failure,” to say the least. The 2001 Yaggy facility’s leak near Hutchinson, KS is attributed to “Casing Failure” but the story is far more complex than that, and involves unknown old oil wells, never plugged.  Without references to the events, or a lot more research on my part, I do not know the details of the others.  I can say though, that today’s modern downhole wireline casing-inspection techniques (applied every 5 years as part of the license requirements) would have caught the root-causes of the majority of past events.  Note there have been no ‘Casing Failure’ events in the past 11 years, as technology evolved to detect downhole-defects.

Two “Valve Failures” he lists are normally solved by engineering redundancy in piping-design, and a “[Well] Packer Failure” is an unclear, certainly rare, work-over event.

Revealingly, though Hopper admits to “single-point-failures” (such as “compressor shaft damage”) at their own depleted reservoir storage facilities, he refuses to put them in the listing of disruptive-failures as at salt-cavity facilities.

This paper would not pass my high-school English class (no references) and certainly would not pass peer-review if subjected to it.  Nor does Gas Free Seneca’s use of “Catastrophic Failures” pass the “King’s English” test!

Is Gas Free Seneca Driven by NIMBYism or Some Other ‘Ism?

Now, back to that explanation. You can attribute a lot of the opposition’s fervor to NIMBYism, but I think there is a far-deeper drive.

Let me posit this bold postulate, and then defend it:

The ideologues at the core of today’s “liberal-progressives” are this generation of yesterday’s (1930’s or 1960’s, take your pick) “socialists-communists” who want to destroy US culture and society, so they can rebuild it to their own ideal.

Yeah, I know, look how well that worked out for the old Soviet Union.  The economy of the US simply out-performed that of the Soviets.  Our people applied more ingenuity, created more valuable ideas, and created a “wealthy” middle class, the envy of the rest of the world.  The Soviet-socialist experiment failed just as every other experiment at “socialism” has failed, because: Property rights are trampled “for the common good.”  When that happens, the end-result turns out not good at all for everyone!

Today’s generation of ideologues are not strictly “socialist-communists” though.  They are “responsible lovers of Mother Earth” – the politically correct faculty at Cornell University, et al have taught them to be that.  They see the ideal society of their future as a “carbon-free” and “sustainable” one.

And, just like their ’30’s and ‘60s era radical forebears, they are willing to destroy today’s carbon-fueled society to rebuild to their ideal.  Never mind that they are typically also against nuclear power, and wind and sun are notoriously unreliable.  Nor do wind and sun, even with nuclear, provide adequate energy for the myriad needs of “transportation”.  There is a niche for electric cars, but it is an uneconomic small niche.  Ever heard of electric powered semi-trucks?  Nope!

If confronted with the actual energy-picture complexity and what different end uses need, then asked how to replace those, their answer would be: “Don’t bore me with the details to discourage me about this.  I trust our scientists and engineers will find the way to the truth and light!”  Wallah — Problem solved!

The trust shown toward scientists and engineers is nice, but misplaced as they cannot really pull rabbits from hats.

So, my crystal ball says there is an unending need for carbon-based fuels because they are compact and portable and can be supplied also for seasonal-only high-rate uses.  Thus, propane and natural gas will continue to heat buildings and homes.  And, gas and propane are cheaper than electric-power.

Let’s talk numbers: At $3.00/gallon of propane (which contains 92,000 BTUs), that is $32.61 per million BTUs.  I get natural gas delivered by pipeline to my house for about $12.00 per million BTUs.  If you don’t have those options, there is electric power, which at NYSEG’s 13.5 c/kWh converts to $39.55 per million BTUs.

Let me organize to recap:

1. Residential Natural Gas Heat costs:~$12.00/million btus;
2. Residential Propane Heat costs:~$32.61/million btus;
3. Residential Electric Heat costs:~$39.55/million btus.

Simple economics dictates that you want to burn natural gas if it is available, to control your cost best.  Then use propane if gas is not available, then finally default to electric power if the other options don’t exist.

For Gas Free Seneca and Its Ilk, It’s All About the Ideology

But enough of facts, which are only confusing to ideologues.  Let’s talk about ideology of these revolutionaries, particularly today’s anti-carbon revolutionary leaders.

One of the famous “revolutionaries” of the 60s, Saul Alinsky, who detested the middle-class but knew it was necessary to appeal to it, had the economic self-interest to write a book, Rules for Radicals in which he outlined deception as a key tool of the revolutionary who is the “brains” of a protest outfit. This is to delude the followers (Lenin’s “useful idiots”) who would otherwise not follow if they saw the true bigger picture.  Alinsky gave hands-on training to his community organizers in how to realize, eventually, the teachings of Marx and Lenin.

Thus, you don’t tell your followers that you want to “destroy Western Civilization as we know it.”  Rather, you do tell them you want to achieve “Social Justice.”  And, to the right audience of poor and middle-class people, you further explain you will tax into oblivion anyone who is “rich” so as to better support the deserving poor and middle-class. It harkens back to the “everyone should feel equally important and loved” touchy-feely 60s era, and is disguised socialist/communist hucksterism. It also appeals, oddly enough, to the super wealthy, who share with these folks a contempt for the middle class, and know every socialist society needs its guardians and patrons to run it; rulers who will be exempt from the socialism and profit from running such a society.

Promotion of class-envy (“Poor Me” vs “Those Damn Rich”) is one of their most-valuable tools, and you can see it subtly-woven through their actions.  One of the fractivist organizer’s subtle messages is: “Those of us who are poor need to act to prevent others (land-owners) from becoming rich.”   I saw this at the resistance-organizing meeting over at Interlaken, for instance.  The demographic segment of older and/or unsuccessful people with time on their hands is the most useful to such community organizers – after all, those people have the time to make signs and demonstrate a lot.

Whereas capitalism is based on individual and corporate property rights, socialism/communism is based upon the opposite concept, “group ownership by the government” and no individual or corporate property rights exist.  But, let me come back to the property-rights issue after I complete the second bit of Rules for Radicals background education.

A former radical/revolutionary, David Horowitz, has recently published a pamphlet entitled “Barack Obama’s Rules for Revolution: The Alinsky Model.” I recommend reading this for insight into the whole fractivist anti-carbon politically-correct culture of the day, for its insight into their tactics and diversions.

Horowitz’s first explanatory rule is perhaps the most telling to the practice of Gas Free Seneca type mythology:

“Politics is all about power relations, but to advance one’s power, one must couch one’s positions in the language of morality.”

Thus, you never admit that you are trying to steal a corporation’s property rights or their right to profits by preventing a business change or expansion.  Nor ever admit that you are ruining families’ chances to succeed by preventing jobs.

Rather, you are “protecting the vineyards from harmful fumes” and “keeping the tourists from being run over by propane trucks” and “keeping Watkins Glen from being blown off the map when the train falls off the trestle,” “protecting the sanctity of the Finger Lakes Brand” and “protecting the tourism Industry, on which so may small businesses depend.” Forget the fact wine-tasting tourism causes auto accidents and deaths, as anyone familiar with the local around-the-lake situation knows. For instance, a local lady was killed just two weeks ago, and six injured, by a DWI driver at 3pm as she came up a road that leads away from a winery.

Still, those reasons sounds pretty sweet, don’t they?  But at the root, prevention of someone doing what the free market (the free choices of millions of consumers) calls for is simply stealing someone else’s property rights. See the video below for a good explanation from famed economist Milton Friedman as to why those rights matter; he was trying to educate the hapless Phil Donahue. Gas Free Seneca would abscond our freedom to take risk for reward based on conjured up justifications that rely upon myths such as those articulated in Part III.

Gas Free Seneca Is All About Stealing Free Choices and Property Rights

Perhaps you don’t understand yet?  Let me explain further…..

Inergy Midstream purchased the US Salt Plant in 2007.  Because of interest in the salt business?  No!  Because there was unrecognized value to US Salt plant’s mined-out cavities, that could be used for gas and gas-liquids storage.  That “hidden value” of the cavities could be realized to fulfill existing and upcoming market needs for gas and LPG storage.  With a plant diversified beyond just salt the local plant situation would be more stable for the 135 employees involved.

Then, in 2012 Inergy Midstream purchased the New York State Electric and Gas (NYSEG) gas pipelines, compressor station, and the active gas-storage facility in Cavity 1.  Being businessmen and knowing opportunity was knocking, they proceeded to develop Gas Cavity 2 for storage, something which NYSEG has started, but never finished.  FERC has now authorized them to use Cavity 2 for storage.  Although Gas Free Seneca collaborated with EarthJustice to attack the geology with a tome from a highly-published geology professor (H.C. Clark), the professionals at FERC sliced and diced his objections (see pages 9 through 13 of that Decision).

This left Gas Free Seneca reeling, and now they are pulling out all stops, heedless of hypocrisy (see below), to politically prevent the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation from doing its duty to duly issue permits for the wells to be operated in storage mode.

What if Gas Free Seneca somehow succeeds in indefinitely delaying these sorts of natural responses to the free market?  For practical purposes, those property rights would then be destroyed and the decisions of a few substituted for the choices of those millions of consumers.  What would those property rights be worth?  That is dependent on myriad assumptions, but surely substantial.

That value-destruction, plus the $100 million of additional cost to Northeast US propane consumers last winter, shows the high-cost to society of those “enlightened” Ithaca voices (think professors Sandra Steingrabber and Tony Ingraffea) sitting in their citadel to the east at Ithaca.  It is no wonder the rest of Upstate NY refers to the general Tompkins County area as “The People’s Republic of Ithaca” or “Planet Ithaca.”

So, there you have the whole story, and put in a nutshell:

1. Radical ideology begets;
2. Regional activism for the “cause du jour” and
3. Lies/myths are promoted to delude the “useful idiots” (those whom Lenin was so fond of) to blindly follow and work for “the cause du jour,” that is a stepping-stone to;
4. The true end goal – a “carbon free” remake of current society. But, meanwhile, along the way;
5. Western Civilization is damaged because property rights are destroyed and unnecessary costs are imposed upon society.

And, the carbon-hating radicals and revolutionaries are happy, very happy, at this; but not the rest of us!

Editor’s Note: This series of posts was authored by David A. Crea, PE (Chemical) of Watkins Glen, NY. Mr. Crea is a resident of the Town of Reading on the west shore of Seneca Lake.  He is a 1974 graduate of the University of Idaho at Moscow, Idaho, and obtained his PE license in 1978.  He has four US Patents to his name for elemental phosphorus processing, and has been active in community in both Idaho and New York.  His now 40-year career spans different technologies: making elemental phosphorus and processing its wastes, to supplying energy for potato processing, assisting legal teams, to now making salt.  He has been an avid-spectator of the worldwide political milieu since beginning to read National Review as a teenager.

His proudest achievement for the betterment of Pocatello, Idaho was a 5-year stint of work with a Chamber of Commerce spin-off, Leadership Pocatello.  That led to installation of Simplot Square in downtown Pocatello, a $600,000 improvement there in 1989.  For his role in that, he was awarded “Outstanding Leadership Award” for 1990 and given Special Award for Simplot Square Project in 1991.

Now displaced to Watkins Glen, NY from Idaho, he played a key role to achieve a turnaround at US Salt in 2001 that saved it from looming-disaster.  Besides work, he is now in a voluntary technical citizen-activist role to “keep Gas Free Seneca honest.”  In that role, he revels in being known around Watkins Glen as “The Engineer whom Gas Free Seneca loves to hate!”

In that role, on July 14^th he was subjected to cries of “Shame on YOU!….Shame on YOU!…” from what were apparently professional protesters brought from Geneva and Ithaca to Watkins Glen for a rally and demonstration at the Schuyler County Legislature’s regular meeting.  The event and its aftermath, which included bullying and shoving the Legislators, are covered well here and here. Video of the raucous aftermath of the Legislature’s meeting can be seen here. The remarks Crea made at that meeting, on the high cost impact to society by Gas Free Seneca, from disruption of the free market system and regulatory delay, can be seen at 21:03 here.