Stop Project Maple: What We’ve Accomplished And What’s To Come
Sena Wazer
February 2025
Photo Credit: CT League of Conservation Voters, September 24, 2024
The Stop Project Maple campaign started over a year ago, in 2023, when Enbridge released their "Project Maple open season” announcement, looking for buyers of additional fracked gas that would run through their enlarged “Algonquin” Gas Transmission (AGT) pipeline. This proposal follows two earlier completed expansion projects of the same pipeline segment by Enbridge. We defeated a third expansion before, and we know we can defeat this one too.
Over the past year, our coalition has been hard at work mobilizing to defeat Enbridge and Project Maple. Here are some of our 2024 highlights:
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Advocates in each state held rallies and delivered letters from state and local elected officials to their governor opposing the pipeline expansion. Check out coverage of the Connecticut rally on the front page of the Hartford Courant and by The Struggle.
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The coalition and local residents rallied in opposition to pipeline segments in Middleboro and Lincoln, MA; Burrillville, RI; and Brookfield, Coventry, and Chaplin, CT.
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Coalition members wrote op-eds and letters to the editor opposing the project and calling for action. Check out some of these pieces here.
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Grew our coalition to 100+ organizations across the impacted states.
In 2025, we are continuing and expanding this work. In January, we initiated a campaign tactic called “bird-dogging”, showing up at any event where Governor Lamont is speaking and reminding him publicly of our opposition to his support for fracked gas expansions. Subsequent to his State of the State remarks on January 8, opening day of the CT General Assembly, where he said he supports adding costly new nuclear power and is ok with gas expansion, we reminded him that we also don’t want more nuclear power for data centers.
Photo Credit: Tenaya Taylor, January 13, 2025.
On Tuesday, February 11 at 3pm the coalition will gather at the Eversource headquarters in Hartford to protest unaffordable rate increases, harmful to low income customers, and the continued expansion of fossil fuels. The rally will include speakers and an action. Register here.
Additionally, over the next few months we plan to host in-person educational events in communities impacted by the pipeline and its segments, increase our visibility through op-eds and letters to the editor, and continue growing our coalition. But to create meaningful change and stop this latest expansion we need as many people involved as possible. Join our coalition here and don’t forget to email Governor Lamont and Commissioner Dykes to tell them that we don’t want more fracked gas.
I grew up less than a mile from the pipeline that Project Maple would expand, near Chaplin and Coventry, where Enbridge has moved forward with expansions of Compressor and Metering and Regulation stations respectively. Stopping this pipeline is personal to me.
Connecticut residents deserve to live in a state that prioritizes their health and wellbeing above corporate profit. Young people deserve to grow up in a world with a safe and secure future. Project Maple directly threatens these values, but together we can demand better.
Sena Wazer is an intern for Sierra Club Connecticut on the Stop Project Maple campaign and a graduate student at Yale School of the Environment.