Ideas

By Peter Rugh, Waging Nonviolence,07 November 13 - Reader Supported News

f you walk along Manhattan's West Side Highway, upon the long strip of bike lanes and greenery between the Hudson River and the droning automobiles, you'll come to a fresh patch of pavement that's a stone's throw away from the Pier 51 Playground. You can't tell by the look of it, but beneath the new asphalt hundreds of millions of cubic feet-worth of natural gas are flowing.

While the national climate movement has focused on the transnational Keystone XL pipeline, this tiny site has been the object of a more-than-two-year local battle over the first natural gas pipeline to enter New York City in 40 years. Objecting to the high radon content of the fracked gas and the risk of explosion this pipeline carries, my friends and I waged a campaign of legal challenges and protests against its operator, Spectra Energy Corporation.