The never-say-die City of Mount Vernon, NY, has asked FERC to subpoena information from Consolidated Edison of New York so it can review the agency’s “prior assumption” that the only place for the embattled Millennium Pipeline to interconnect with the utility is in its town.

At the same time, Mount Vernon has requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that the Commission produce “all documents and other relevant information” about the potential impacts that would occur if the termination point of the 425-mile Lake Erie-to-New York pipeline were sited at a location other than its city.

Both actions are necessary, the city says, to carry out the late December interim order in which FERC gave Millennium sponsors, Mount Vernon elected officials and the town’s citizens 60 days to “reach an agreement on a route to an interconnection with Consolidated Edison” for the proposed pipeline. The interim order awarded Millennium conditional approval to build all but the last two miles of the U.S. leg of the pipeline that would run through Mount Vernon.

At the end of the 60-day negotiation process, FERC said it will issue a final order to authorize the construction of Millennium, and the specific route to the termination point (CP98-150). If the two sides are unable to reach an agreement, the Commission indicated it will decide the route through Mount Vernon.

“If the parties are going to meaningfully attempt to ‘negotiate’ an alternative route and termination point for the pipeline as it effects Mount Vernon…then the parties must understand, be fully informed and provided with all the relevant technical information concerning the infrastructure needs and existing conditions related to Millennium and Con Edison’s interconnection requirements,” Mount Vernon said in a Dec. 26 letter to FERC Chairman Pat Wood. Absent this information, “FERC’s prior assumption that the only possible interconnection point between Millennium and Con Ed must be in Mount Vernon is impossible to meaningfully evaluate,” the city noted.

As such, Mount Vernon called on the Commission to exercise its power to subpoena Con Ed “witnesses, compel the attendance, take evidence, and require the production of any books, papers, correspondence, memoranda, contracts, agreements or other records which the Commission finds relevant or material to the inquiry” involving issues related to the interconnection of the proposed pipeline and Con Ed’s distribution facilities.

Additionally, the city asked FERC to “produce all documents and other relevant information in its possession regarding possible interconnection points between Con Ed and the proposed Millennium Pipeline, together with any information it has with respect to the potential impacts that might occur if the pipeline is terminated at an alternative location, pursuant to FOIA.”

This request “includes, but is not limited to, any and all documents relating to FERC’s prior assertion that Mount Vernon appears to be the only point for interconnecting the pipeline to Con Edison’s distribution facilities,” the city said in its letter.

Although it’s only a very small part of Millennium’s proposed 425-mile pipeline, the two-mile stretch through Mount Vernon is critical, given that shippers have designated delivery points in Mount Vernon for approximately half of the proposed pipeline’s contracted-for capacity — 230,000 Dth/d. Elected officials and residents in Mount Vernon are opposed to the Millennium-favored route through their city because, as one source told NGI, “basically the pipeline would be running down their Main Street.”

Regardless of how the routing issue plays out through Mount Vernon, FERC already has indicated its strong support for the U.S. segment of the Millennium project that would extend from Lake Erie to New York State. It would bring both U.S. and Canadian gas to the metropolitan New York City area and other growth markets in the Northeast.

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