If you want to express your opinion, you need a seat at the table. This week, the town of Amherst moved to get such a seat when Berkshire Gas seeks approval from the state Department of Public Utilities for its next five-year forecast and supply plan.
The forecast isn’t sunny for Amherst, or for any of the seven other towns affected by the supply moratorium Berkshire Gas imposed in March 2015. The other communities are Deerfield, Greenfield, Hadley, Hatfield, Montague, Sunderland and Whately.
The moratorium is a kind of economic development plan in reverse. Here is where frustrations really start to build. The Northeast has enough problems competing with other states to attract businesses. It doesn’t need new ones.
Companies that prefer to use natural gas and were existing Berkshire Gas customers haven’t been able to get additional amounts of the fuel. Homeowners seeking their first access have been left out in the cold, all because the utility says existing pipelines can’t provide the volume of natural gas the local market demands.
And developers? While there are alternatives to natural gas that arrives from distant gasfields, such as burying storage tanks for liquid propane, those options are generally more expensive and more complicated. The 2016 construction season is more than halfway over with the moratorium still in place.
Berkshire Gas officials say they’re stuck with the problem that led them to impose the moratorium last year. At the time, Berkshire Gas said the restrictions would remain in place until the Northeast Energy Direct pipeline brought fracked natural gas into New England. But Kinder Morgan abandoned that project this spring in the face of strong public opposition, leaving Berkshire Gas without a fallback plan.
Along with Amherst, Deerfield and Montague are seeking to intervene in the regulatory process. They won’t be going it alone. On Tuesday, lawmakers also filed for the status, seeking the more detailed information provided to intervenors.
State Rep. Stephen Kulik, D-Worthington, noted this week that all of the lawmakers representing the eight communities affected by the moratorium are on board. Their goal: push the power of the consumer. Kulik would be joined in this by state Reps. Peter Kocot, D-Northampton; John Scibak, D-South Hadley, Ellen Story, D-Amherst, and Paul Mark, D-Peru. On the Senate side, that body’s president, Stanley Rosenberg of Amherst, seeks intervenor status.
Lawmakers have been pushing Berkshire Gas for months – and meeting with company officials regularly. Their steps to intervene suggest private negotiations aren’t going so well.
A DPU meeting is coming up Aug. 30 at 7 p.m. at Greenfield Middle School. If the lawmakers and municipalities win intervenor status, the public utility commissioners should expect to hear in plain terms how this utility is not serving its public.
But this need not and should not be adversarial. It’s up to all parties to find a solution to this as quickly as possible.