This is part of the 3D Fly over video series for the proposed PennEast pipeline routes. This post covers the West Amwell, NJ and Lambertville areas.

As with all of the videos in the series, the smokey black area is the 400′ survey corridor, the light blue areas are the temporary work spaces, and the red area is the permanent right of way.

In the West Amwell video we start at an HDD site, the large light blue block is where the HDD equipment will be drilling down into the earth. In this zone PennEast is proposing over 6,000 feet (longer than a mile) of HDDing, which is incredibly long and aggressive. Doubly so when you consider it’s all very hard bedrock in this area.

This means if the HDD fails, all of this pristine land will be open trenched, including the Alexauken Creek. At about 39 seconds in you see the exit point for the HDD, and the Lambertville connector peeling off to the left to go to the Lambertville compressor station.

At the 50 second mark, as we approach Route 179, you can see the Hunterdon South Branch Library building on the far side of the street (second large building out from the pipeline route).

It proceeds to open trench through several pieces of farm land.

At 1:37 the Swan Creek Reservoir starts to slide into view on the left, and you can see the pipeline more than doubling the existing power line cut (in fact going up and down ridges), creating more erosion issues into Swan Creek. Right after that you can see the poor houses on Old Route 518 West who have the construction 10′ from their houses.

At the 2:00 mark, it diverges from the power lines and cuts up a steep and heavily wooded slope to the highest point on Goat Hill. This is the area documented with over 80 old hand-dug quarry holes going back to the 17th-18th century which today act as vernal pools. Many endangered salamander species have been documented as laying eggs in these pools, many of which will be destroyed by the pipeline construction and are barely mentioned in the DEIS.

After it crosses Hewitt Road you swing by my house (Hi!), it cuts through a bunch more pristine wetlands areas owned by my neighbor, and than at 2:21 it impinges directly upon the Goat Hill Natural Heritage Priority Site for no apparent reason. As with Gravel Hill, this is a special NJDEP designation for an exceptional and rare ecosystem.

It proceeds to cut through a couple of farms here, then swings a bit to the East to start going towards Baldpate Mountain and Hopewell township.