Advocates are applauding the Washington, D.C., Public Service Commission's decision to pause a Washington Gas infrastructure rebuild known as Project Pipes.

The project began in 2014 as a 40-year plan to replace all the District's aging natural gas infrastructure, at a projected cost to ratepayers of $4.5 billion. The project is nearing the end of Phase 2 but last Tuesday the commission voted to put a Washington Gas request for a $57 million extension of the phase on hold. The commission cited concerns about the cost and the company's inability to reduce the number of leaks.

Tim Oberleiton, senior attorney for the nonprofit Earthjustice, said the approach of replacing all the gas infrastructure distracts from what he believes is the main problem.

"Washington Gas has incurred millions of dollars in penalties for failing to meet agreed-upon leak-reduction targets," Oberleiton pointed out. "Despite spending hundreds of millions of ratepayer dollars on this program, leaks are not moving down in a meaningful way. In fact, last year in D.C., the Beyond Gas campaign measured leaks across the city [and] found hundreds of active leaks across all eight wards."

In a statement to Public News Service, Canadian-owned AltaGas, parent company of Washington Gas, said Project Pipes targets the riskiest leak-prone pipes in the system.

The commission requested additional information from Washington Gas including data on the number of miles of pipe replaced in years past and associated repair costs, as well as the number of leak repairs conducted in past years. The request seeks performance metrics on each phase of the project, as well as data going back to 2005, 9 years prior to the start of Project Pipes.

The commission did not weigh in on the prospects for Phase 3 of the project, but advocates say Project Pipes runs counter to the city's climate goals, including a pledge to be carbon-neutral by 2045, which anticipated continual movement away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy sources for homes.

Oberleiton argued committing billions to new gas infrastructure will create an incentive to keep using a technology known to contribute to climate change. He noted a number of other cities have cut spending for similar projects or delayed them.

"In Illinois, the Illinois Commerce Commission, which is the PSC out there, put a halt on any and all activities in this regard, citing the cost overruns and climate risks," Oberleiton pointed out.

Community groups are joining the opposition. In November, the D.C. Advisory Neighborhood Commission representing Glover Park and Cathedral Heights passed a resolution opposing funding for Phase 3 and calling on the Public Service Commission to revise the project to focus on existing leaks and scaling new investment to match the city's energy and climate goals.

Advocates often refer to natural gas as methane, which is its primary component. As a greenhouse gas, methane is 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere. In homes, research shows the use of methane gas for cooking contributes to poor air quality and releases toxic compounds into the air including known carcinogens such as benzene.

Naomi Cohen-Shields, D.C. campaign manager for the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, said use of the term "natural gas" amounts to greenwashing by the gas industry.

"It's putting this idea into our heads that this is a clean form of energy that we can trust, that it's something that is safe to have in our homes, that it's better for the environment," Cohen-Shield explained. "We're beginning to dismantle that as the science is pointing more and more clearly to the fact that fracked gas, methane gas, is not a clean source of energy, that it's extremely harmful for the planet and also for people's health when it's burned in their homes."

Conservation groups are circulating a petition asking the feds to give "America the Beautiful National Parks and Recreation Lands" passes to new citizens at their naturalization ceremony. Members of the group GreenLatinos have met with multiple federal agencies to pitch the idea.

Louis Medina, communications and philanthropy director with the nonprofit Friends of the Inyo, said it would make a great "Welcome to America" gift.

"It would be a great way of giving them the best that America has to offer. It could instill greater patriotism and pride, and it could create new allies in the environmental movement," Medina contended.

The pass normally costs $80 per year and gets one car with up to four adults into all national parks and monuments. Last year, more than 878,000 people became U.S. citizens.

The group also wants to start holding naturalization ceremonies at sites on public lands. And they'd like to reverse the trend of national parks going "cashless," as they have at Yosemite and Death Valley.

Medina added parks may save money by requiring everyone to pay by card, but it risks turning people away who don't have credit cards or mobile payment apps.

"For communities of color and immigrant communities that already are having issues in accessing our national parks, because of costs, because of distance, or because of lack of familiarity, then cashless entry creates yet another barrier," he continued.

The petition currently sports more than 900 signatures and is available on the GreenLatinos website.


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A group of environmental and civil society organizations is fighting for better working conditions for people in countries that supply critical minerals to the United States.

Nickel, cobalt, lithium and other minerals are mined and shipped to the United States for use in manufacturing electric vehicles, long-storage batteries, microchips and solar panels.

Clayton Tucker, climate organizer for the nonprofit Trade Justice Education Fund, said conditions in countries where the minerals are mined do not meet U.S. standards.

"Mining cobalt, there's artisan mines, and child slavery is very, very commonly used," he said. "With nickel, in Indonesia to mine that you basically have to raze entire parts of the jungle and raze basically entire indigenous communities. "

Almost 219,000 electric vehicles are registered in the state of Texas, and the Department of Transportation is working on infrastructure to increase the number of charging stations across the state. Several nonprofits in Texas recently received federal grant funding to install solar panels in low-income neighborhoods, increasing the number of households using the clean energy.

Tucker and representatives from 38 other groups recently testified at a hearing with the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, calling for more stringent requirements for future Critical Mineral Agreements between the United States and other countries.

The only CMA that currently exists is between the United States and Japan. The U.S. trade representative has said the agreement strengthens and diversifies critical minerals' supply chains and promotes the adoption of electric vehicle battery technologies. But the environmental groups have said the agreement doesn't go far enough to ensure that workers and the environment are protected and that it sets a concerning precedent.

Tucker said the contracts come with certain perks, and the United States needs to leverage its power "because we need these minerals.

"We're basically trying to make sure that if you receive a subsidy, a tax credit or any form of other support," he said, "that you play by our rules with climate protections, that you play by our rules with labor protections."

The organizations want to be part of future CMA negotiations between the United States and other countries.

The new Buffalo Bills stadium may not be the best environmentally but it has some green qualities.

The steel for the stadium is being made locally and climate-consciously, using an electric-arc furnace. Studies show the process emits 75% less carbon than traditional steel manufacturing.

Brian Raff, vice president of sustainability and government relations for the American Institute of Steel Construction, said there are outside benefits to using electric-arc furnace steel.

"The supply chain for EAF steel is just a circular economy," Raff pointed out. "Everything that is waste, considered waste at one point, gets put back into the supply stream, gets shredded, melted down, and then made into new steel over and over and over."

Some downsides to electric-arc furnace steel are higher impurities and inclusions, and uneven heat distribution.

Other environmental benefits of the new stadium include reduced water usage, better stormwater flow, and a modern electrical system. The stadium will have 14% fewer spectators, also reducing other environmental impacts. Highmark Stadium will be completed in 2026.

Beyond the environmental impacts, the new stadium's construction creates 10,000 union labor jobs for western New York, and 60% of the 25,000 tons of the steel used for the stadium will be developed in New York.

Raff emphasized making the steel locally will have an economic ripple effect.

"25,000 tons of steel means millions of man-hours, and so that means it's going to keep those fabrication companies moving," Raff explained. "Cash is coming in the door, which means they're able to pay their employees. All of that money will be saved and spent in the local economies."

The project also creates greater opportunities for minority, women and veteran-owned businesses. An important part of the labor agreement negotiations was having local workers involved in the new stadium's construction.


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