See letter from the National Park Service to PATH's attorney denying PATH's request for another "extension" of the EIS process and therefore denying PATH's permit, without prejudice. So ends our involvement with the NPS, for now. I'm sure Morgan will miss us! :-)
PATH's latest failure is dated February 27. NPS failed to make this information public until just recently, and credit goes to John for digging this up during a webpage drive-by. This information was NOT on the NPS's project website as recently as March 15, when StopPATH sent this letter to the NPS. Now we find that the decision had already been made before we wrote the letter. Despite the fact that the EIS process is supposed to be "open" and must consider park-owning citizen input, there sure was a bunch of secretive stuff going on that the public wasn't allowed to monitor. The NPS, their contractor for the project (and we found out that there had been a mysterious switch of contractors after the initial scoping process), and the PATH Companies carried on the EIS process in secret, for the most part, and the only way for the citizen stakeholders to get information was through a tortured process of making themselves continual pests and/or going through the FOIA process. Notice to the public of the application's process was sparse, with information appearing months later without notice, and requiring another round of the "Kremlinology" game we've been playing with entities supposedly working in our interest. The NPS needs to spruce up their sunshine. It sucks.
So... okay... Woo Hoo! Go back to start, do not pass "Go," PATH! Not that they really care anymore, PATH is a dead project. The only place PATH still walks upright is at FERC, where they continue to rack up "costs necessary to maintain the project in its current state" that come out of ratepayers' pockets. C'mon, let's get to the abandonment already!
PATH's latest failure is dated February 27. NPS failed to make this information public until just recently, and credit goes to John for digging this up during a webpage drive-by. This information was NOT on the NPS's project website as recently as March 15, when StopPATH sent this letter to the NPS. Now we find that the decision had already been made before we wrote the letter. Despite the fact that the EIS process is supposed to be "open" and must consider park-owning citizen input, there sure was a bunch of secretive stuff going on that the public wasn't allowed to monitor. The NPS, their contractor for the project (and we found out that there had been a mysterious switch of contractors after the initial scoping process), and the PATH Companies carried on the EIS process in secret, for the most part, and the only way for the citizen stakeholders to get information was through a tortured process of making themselves continual pests and/or going through the FOIA process. Notice to the public of the application's process was sparse, with information appearing months later without notice, and requiring another round of the "Kremlinology" game we've been playing with entities supposedly working in our interest. The NPS needs to spruce up their sunshine. It sucks.
So... okay... Woo Hoo! Go back to start, do not pass "Go," PATH! Not that they really care anymore, PATH is a dead project. The only place PATH still walks upright is at FERC, where they continue to rack up "costs necessary to maintain the project in its current state" that come out of ratepayers' pockets. C'mon, let's get to the abandonment already!
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