Time is running out for getting off fossil fuels and switching to green energy to fight climate change. We are facing record-breaking heat waves, droughts, fires and flooding. Still, Eversource wants to expand the natural gas infrastructure with a new, high-pressure gas pipeline through the streets of Springfield.

We urge Eversource to invest instead in a just transition to clean, renewable energy.

As people who live and work in the city and surrounding affected areas, we oppose Eversource’s plan to transport more gas from a new metering station in Longmeadow to Springfield's downtown Springfield metering station for distribution. The leaking and burning of gas from this proposed new pipeline will worsen the climate crisis and the pollution in the already poor-quality air in a city with one of the highest asthma rates in the country.

Gas ratepayers will be stuck with the enormous cost of the new pipeline. While those who can afford it make the switch to electricity powered by renewable energy, low-income and working families will be left to bear the multi-million dollar burden of financing this unnecessary project.

Eversource does not even claim that Springfield needs any more gas. Instead it says the pipeline is needed for “redundancy”, i.e., a back-up system. But any “redundancy” in heat energy should be supplied by a transition to non-polluting clean, renewable energy, a conversion scientists around the world are urgently demanding. The new Massachusetts Next Generation Climate Roadmap Act law sets goals and incentives for this transition, starting now.

What Eversource does NOT say is that gas pipelines are dangerous. It was a gas pipeline that caused the massive downtown Springfield explosion in 2012. The deadly 2018 Lawrence explosion and fires killed one person, displaced 30,000 others, and damaged 40 homes. The recent Marshfield pipeline fire burned for nine hours because Eversource didn’t know the shut-off valve location!

Gas is polluting. It is dangerous. It fuels the climate crisis. The new pipeline is costly and the cost will fall upon gas customers, particularly poor and working people. And we don’t need it.

Therefore we urge Eversource immediately to stop plans for the construction of the Springfield-Longmeadow pipeline and invest instead in the necessary just transition to electrification from clean renewable sources to serve the people of Springfield.