Earlier in the week the disastrous access road proposed to connect to Stymiest Street in West Amwell was described. There PennEast proposed to build a temporary construction road charging straight up the mountain and cause severe runoff and erosion issues. Not to mention it was connecting to a tiny one lane gravel road that in turns connects to tiny Quarry Street in Lambertville.
But that isn’t the worst one proposed. Oh no, there are more! Over in Delaware Township, the plans have changed around Lower Creek Road from open trenching to a Horizontal Directional Drilling “solution”. These are sold as being much better for the environment (a claim many dispute, but that’s the topic of another story). In this case, the HDD proposal means they need large staging sites on either side of where they intend to drill. South of Lower Creek Road they propose a staging site on a neighboring farm of T.C. and Joe Buchanan. And to get there, they propose to use their driveway as a construction road. Yes, that’s right. Here are the plans:
That dark gray wavvy line is the proposed road. You can see it snaking between the farm houses and buildings on the farm, then running along the pipeline route and terminating at the HDD staging site.
Here’s a google earth map showing the same area:
As you can see from the plans and the pictures, what they are proposing is to go up T.C. and Joe’s existing gravel driveway. Here’s what that driveway looks like:
This is a typical country farm one-lane driveway. They’re going to expand this to be 50′ wide, taking out trees on both sides. Look back at the plans, and you’ll see it running within about 10′ of their farm house. It runs right across their fields, making them useless.
The HDD itself goes down about 80′ – right at the level of everyone’s wells in the area. TC tells me it’s going right through some wells.
Imagine having machinery like this lumbering 10′ away from your house:
As a final insult, all this information came out AFTER the DEIS was issued. So TC and Joe don’t even have an opportunity to comment or object in the official process.
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The Cost of the Pipeline 
This just gets worse and worse for tearing up the whole area.Here is a quotation from the book “Shoeless Joe” on which the movie “Field of Dreams” was based. It reminded me of all who are fighting Penn East:
“Once the land touches you, the wind never blows so cold again. You feel for the land like it was your child. When that happens, you can’t be bought. “
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Sad to say, but I believe that this was done in retaliation because tc and Joe have been so vocal and tenacious. I also believe that it is intended to send a message to all of us who fight for our land. PE can say, “If only you had listened to us when we asked you to sit down and talk together, this could have been avoided”. I am afraid that more shoes will be dropped as we go down this path but there’s is no going back now. If anything, it will serve to strengthen our resolve.
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I believe what you said Joan. There is no other logical explanation for them putting the pipeline directly next to or possibly through my income producing homes/wells/septics. They are also located down a historic dirt road from 1801, single lane, on a cliff, next to and through a C1 creek. Even if this gas was needed, it would be the most idiotic choice for a route when there is open, uninhabited space all around. I may be getting paranoid, but it’s a screw you for being a whistle blower and not accepting their pathetic offer for the land we treasure, as Maryanne said, “like a child.”
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