About one-hundred activists gathered in West Roxbury on Saturday to protest a natural gas pipeline under construction there. The high-pressure pipeline would travel beneath three residential streets and near a quarry where regular blasting takes place. West Roxbury resident Bill Kessler says he’s worried about the potential for explosions along the new pipeline, and at a gas metering station on its route.
“I live two blocks from where the station is going to go. If that blows, my house blows,” he says.
Tucker Lieberman lives next-door to the pipeline’s work site. He says the project’s dangers go beyond West Roxbury:
“It’s a neighborhood concern, but it’s also a general environmental concern. When we get a supply, an increased supply of natural gas that has chemicals in it, those contaminants go into the air, they go into people’s homes.”
Some protesters claim they caused Spectra Energy — the pipeline’s owner — to cancel work for the day. The company denies this, saying there was no work scheduled in the first place. Activists plan to continue their protests later this week.
