SANDISFIELD — On the very day the pipeline company got permission to put its new third line in service here, three anti-pipeline activists were arrested for blocking a road, and witnesses say Massachusetts State Police used a stun gun on one man when he tried to run during an arrest.
For the first time since the protests began nearly six months ago, Massachusetts State Police K-9 units were leashed and at the ready, and so was an ambulance as activists formed blockades on either side of Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co. headquarters on Beech Plain Road.
The man, whom The Eagle has not yet been able to identify, was transferred from a state police cruiser to the ambulance for a medical check roughly 30 minutes after the episode.
Though the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Tuesday gave Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co. permission to flow gas on Wednesday, the political atmosphere of friendly protests and arrests here is increasingly curdling into one of barely concealed hostility.
A group of water protectors, many who had been previously entrenched at Standing Rock, N.D. to fight the Dakota Access Pipeline, are using a more unpredictable and aggressive approach to pipeline resistance than their much-older fellow activists from the Sugar Shack Alliance.
Both groups started working together last summer, and while each occasionally peels off for its own actions, the water protectors lately have been arrested with more frequency and charged with more serious crimes.
The protests and first series of arrests began in early May when the company began to cut trees in a roughly two-mile swath of Otis State Forest that is owned and protected by the state.
The Kinder Morgan subsidiary’s 13-mile tri-state Connecticut Expansion Project will carry natural gas from Wright, N.Y., to Hartford County, Conn.
Activists, residents and lawmakers have fought the project on a number of grounds, including what they say is the effect of fossil fuels on the climate.
The company says it is working with other pipeline companies toward a solution to the problem.
The Berkshire Eagle – Heather Bellow – 11.02.2017
Posted by: Nelson Bailey
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