Toiyabe Chapter
Nevada and Eastern California
PO Box 8096
Reno, NV 89507
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Toiyabe Trails ONLINE!
Chapter Officers
Chapter Newsletter
Change of Address
Join us on an Outing in your area!
Ruby Pipeline: Permanent damage to critical habitat
Pronghorn's flourish in northern Nevada's healthy sagebrush ecosystem.
Proposed Pipeline Threatens Public Lands
El Paso Corp based in Colorado proposes a 680 mile, 42" buried natural gas pipeline from Wyoming to Oregon with the majority of the new route being constructed across northern Nevada. The pipeline slices across more than 350 miles of northern Nevada. (Nevada customers apparently would receive no gas from the pipeline.)[See the full Sierra Club Comments here.]
Alternative routes are available, especially the West-Wide Energy Corridor (http://corridoreis.anl.gov/ ) routes which have been specifically selected after rigorous environmental review to avoid as much as possible sensitive lands and resources.
Instead, the Ruby Pipeline proposed route crosses critical habitat in many places in Nevada and especially in the northeast and northwest portions. Further, the pipeline goes cross-country and does not follow existing roads or established utility corridors. It would create a new corridor in currently wild and open lands throughout Nevada where most access is via jeep trails or, at best, dirt roads.
Ruby Pipeline, LLC, could not have picked an environmentally worse route across Nevada than the proposed route.
The Sierra Club submitted its comments on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's (FERC) draft Environmental Impact Statement August 7, 2009. The Chapter strongly supported the no action alternative and opposed the proposed route because it would permanently destroy pristine sagebrush ecosystems.
The proposed pipeline route would cross critical wildlife and wild lands on the southern boundary of the Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge in northwestern Nevada, cut through a portion of the Black Rock High Rock Emigrant Trail National Conservation Area and border the Summit Lake Paiute Reservation in northwestern Nevada.
Proposed route of the Ruby Pipeline would cut through hundreds of miles of pristine country and not follow existing and designated energy corridors.
