Natural gas in Vermont? No fracking way, say green groups

No drilling, no pipelines, and no natural gas.

If environmental groups in Vermont get their way, this could be the new slogan of the Green Mountain state.

That’s the message of their latest campaign to oppose the extension of a Vermont Gas Systems pipeline intended to transport shale gas from Canada to New York.

Vermont already became the first state in the union to ban the process of hydraulic fracturing to recover natural gas in 2012, but this latest move to block the pipeline specifically because it is natural gas follows a new message that may surprise many in the environmental movement.

“At a time when climate change demands we do everything we can to move away from fossil fuels, building a new gas pipeline in Vermont moves us in exactly the wrong direction,” said Sandra Levine, an attorney with the Conservation Law Foundation, in a media release Monday.

She joins a coalition of groups headed by the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, one of the most influential lobbies in the state, to gather signatures and oppose the pipeline project which would expand Canadian gas to Vermont homes.

Other opponents have raised other points in order to halt the transport of gas across Vermont territory.

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