The proponents of building the Pilgrim Pipeline in New York and New Jersey have a professional public relations staff twisting half-truths, and non-facts into spin purporting to show the ‘benefits’ of burying their crude oil pipeline through our communities.  What do we have, besides a large water supply and the health of ourselves and our children we want to protect?

Thanks to CAPP volunteers, we now have a point-by-point rebuttal of Pilgrim’s arguments and spin.  A new PowerPoint presentation called Pilgrim Pipeline: Lies, Deceptions, Hypocrisies and Delusions is available on the CAPP web site.  Among the claims we challenge are:

• “the 178 mile pipeline will create 2,000 temporary and 50 permanent jobs”
• “new pipeline technology is safer than old”
• “the overwhelming majority of pipeline incidents relate to older pipelines”
• “by any statistical analysis, pipelines are the safest form of petroleum transportation” [a big whopper]
• “Hudson … closures due to Sandy prevented oil shipments and caused gasoline shortages across the region”
• “we have eminent domain under NJ law and the right to enter property under federal law” [an even bigger whopper]
• “the pipeline won’t leak,” BUT
• the pipeline “will replace trains” … “won’t replace trains” … “may replace trains”
• “resistance to the pipeline has come primarily from outside groups”
• “the more people hear about this project the more they will like it” [comic relief here?]

A lot of these sound reasonable on the surface, right?  Read here why they aren’t so reasonable and are downright misleading!  Or, click here for the PDF version of the presentation.