Bernice from Milford brings up many good points, among them a note about the nature of the fire departments in our area. The FERC should take notice:

On a closer to home note, I live in Hunterdon County, a very rural, historic, river town area. We are living on a fault line and had an earthquake a few years ago. We have only volunteer fire departments. I have lived through the Edison and Allentown pipeline explosions. It looks like the end of the world. Last winter, a house that probably would be on the pipeline route, went on fire. Every fire department for miles was there. They got stuck getting up the hill to the house and flagged down my kids in a four wheel drive truck to try to clear a path through the snow. They couldn’t and instead had to help drag hoses toward the fire. Needless to say, the house burned to the ground.

What would happen if a pipeline exploded?

Devastation.

And on an even more personal note, I have wanted to be a farmer all my life. I finally bought a farm with eleven rental units on it, nine years ago. I went through the expense of getting a building lot approved for a farmhouse and paid an architect for drawings. Now there will be a bomb in my front yard when I build. How much value will that house lose? All of it. I am in the process of getting funding from the USDA to start my farm, live in the farmhouse and now the pipeline is putting an end to that. My dream of farming and living on the farm and having a retirement income is all lost for the benefit of PennEast and gas that will never be used by Hunterdon County residents. Not to mention, my eleven tenants are worried about living near a pipeline that they will have to cross everyday.

This is just one persons nightmare from this pipeline. Multiply it by 108 miles of lives. If it gets approved, why can’t we be paid fairly for what we are losing? Please deny them permission so I can get on with my future hopes and dreams to just live safely and farm on MY LAND.

I know in my town and the surrounding areas fire departments always have a tough time getting funding. They’re mostly volunteers. They’re always fighting for equipment. It took years for West Amwell to finally get modern radios, which help keep firemen safe when they’re entering burning buildings. Every year we get a note from wafco26 (http://wafco26.com/) asking for money, which we gladly donate to every year. We’re all on wells which means no hydrants. Towns routinely help each other when disasters occur but they can only stretch so much. If a 3′ pipeline ruptured I believe it would be far beyond our local fire department’s ability to handle.

Maybe that $5,000 PennEast is donating to organizations will help? Well let’s see, just the radios I mention above cost more than $5,000 in total cost. So I don’t think it’s going to make all that big of a difference. A single fire truck costs more than $100,000……