You can access the FERC comments area by going to their eLibrary here:

http://www.ferc.gov/docs-filing/elibrary.asp

Select “General Search”, then “Filed Date during previous 1 years”, then put in Docket Number “PF15-1-” (exactly like that!).  What you’ll get from this search is all the documents filed with the FERC including required filings by Penn East, protest letters and letters of support.

Some of the filings may surprise you.  Going into this I expected the usual suspects to show up – various politicians, rabid eco fanatics, people yelling the government stealing from them yet again, and people with little better to do then to post things on government web sites all day.

What I saw instead was a tsunami of concerned citizens voicing their objections in well-reasoned, and sometimes heartbreaking, prose.  Couples pleading to keep their farm off the route.  Historical preservation societies high lighting revolutionary war sites in the path of the pipeline.  Wives describing their husbands’ stupendous flower garden built over a life time that will be devastated by this work.  Park officials detailing the effects of clearing wide lands on steep slopes.  Rural residents who survive off wells worried their drinking water could be poisoned.

I’m highlighting those documents that really spoke to me.  If you know of any good ones I’ve missed please let me know and I”ll get them posted here.

We’ll start with this one, a West Amwell resident who tells us about the Mount Airy Historic district and what this pipeline will do it and her property:

FERC Generated PDF