August 30, 2017

Kimberly D. Bose, Secretary

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
888 First Street, NE, Room 1A
Washington, DC 20426

Re: Millennium Pipeline Company, L.L.C.

Docket No. CP16-486-000 (Eastern System Upgrade Project)

Dear Secretary Bose:

We write to request that FERC prepare a full environmental impact statement (EIS) for the
above-captioned project, to account for the cumulatively significant climate impacts of its
greenhouse gas emissions. We also request that FERC employ the social cost of carbon as a
methodology for assessing the significance of the projects impacts. Finally, we ask that FERC
adopt mitigation measures to reduce the severity of cumulative impacts from the project.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals recently decided Sierra Club, et al. v. FERC, No. 16-1329
(August 22, 2017), agreeing with the petitioners stance that FERC must do more to assess the
serious climate impacts of the massive gas projectthe Southeast Market Pipelines project and
downstream gas-burning power plantspresented in that case. Several holdings from the
decision apply to the Eastern System Upgrade Projects environmental review, and indicate that
FERC has impermissibly downplayed and avoided a serious discussion of the projects climate
impacts here.

First, the environmental assessment (EA) for the project impermissibly downplays the
cumulative climate impacts of the gas infrastructure build-out now occurring in New York and
surrounding states. No rationale is offered for the conclusion that GHG emissions from the
project would be cumulatively insignificant. Instead, in the EA, FERC chooses to look at the
types of climate change impacts that will burden the projects geographic area, such as flooding,
heat waves, and disease vectors. (Interestingly, even the seriousness of those impacts did not
prompt FERC to prepare an EIS on its own accord). FERC makes no effort to assess the regional
gas infrastructure in the current or recent regulatory review pipeline, and thus FERC fails to
reach an informed decision about the climate ramifications of the project. This must be
corrected: as the D.C. Circuit instructed FERC in the Sabal Trail case:

2101 Webster Street, Ste. 1300 Oakland, CA 94612 TEL: (415) 977-5709
 The EIS accordingly needed to include a discussion of the
significance of this indirect effect, see 40 C.F.R. 1502.16(b), as
well as the incremental impact of the action when added to other
past, present, and reasonably foreseeable future actions, see
WildEarth Guardians, 738 F.3d at 309 (quoting 40 C.F.R.
1508.7).
...
Quantification would permit the agency to compare the emissions
from this project to emissions from other projects, to total
emissions from the state or the region, or to regional or national
emissions-control goals. Without such comparisons, it is difficult
to see how FERC could engage in informed decision making
with respect to the greenhouse-gas effects of this project, or how
informed public comment could be possible.

Accordingly, we request that FERC prepare an EIS that quantifies the projects emissions
combined with past, present, and reasonably foreseeable future gas projects in the region. To
decide otherwise would violate NEPAs mandate for an informed public process.

Second, the EIS should employ the social cost of carbon methodology to assess the severity of
the projects direct and cumulative impacts. FERC has disavowed the use of this methodology,
but the D.C. Circuit has instructed FERC to explain its decision:

[I]n its rehearing request, Sierra Club asked FERC to convert

emissions estimates to concrete harms by way of the Social Cost of
Carbon. . . . But FERC has argued in a previous EIS that the Social
Cost of Carbon is not useful for NEPA purposes, because several
of its components are contested and because not every harm it
accounts for is necessarily significant within the meaning of
NEPA. See EarthReports, 828 F.3d at 956. We do not decide
whether those arguments are applicable in this case as well,
because FERC did not include them in the EIS that is now before
us. On remand, FERC should explain in the EIS, as an aid to the
relevant decisionmakers, whether the position on the Social Cost of
Carbon that the agency took in EarthReports still holds, and why.

Finally, the discussion of mitigation in the EA focuses on methane leak prevention and repair,
which are necessary measures, but FERC fails to explore mitigation for the combustion
emissions associated with the project and similar projects in the region, baldly concluding that
gas is cleaner than coal and so the overall impacts are not significant. This runs contrary to
NEPA. As the D.C. Circuit held:

The effects an EIS is required to cover include those resulting

from actions which may have both beneficial and detrimental
effects, even if on balance the agency believes that the effect will
be beneficial. 40 C.F.R. 1508.8. In other words, when an agency

2
 thinks the good consequences of a project will outweigh the bad,
the agency still needs to discuss both the good and the bad. . . .

To fulfill NEPAs mandate, FERC must account for the significance of cumulative GHG impacts
from this project and other gas projects in the region. Only once that is done may FERC develop
reasonable mitigation measures to reduce the climate impacts.

Thank you for your consideration of these comments.

Sincerely,

/s/ Patrick Gallagher

Patrick Gallagher
Legal Director
Sierra Club
2101 Webster Street
Suite 1300
Oakland, CA 94612
pat.gallagher@sierraclub.org

Diana Csank
Staff Attorney
Sierra Club
50 F Street NW
8th Floor
Washington, D.C. 20001
diana.csank@sierraclub.org

cc: Public File Docket CP16-486-000