PennEast representatives sometimes seem almost mortally exasperated in dealing with the press and general public.  They are constantly barraged with accusations of the company being bunglers, incompetents, deliberating misleading, and just plain not very good at their jobs.  And PennEast reps can’t understand why this is.  Why all the hate, people?

Well, tonight I was looking in some more detail into those IBA Avoidance routes.  In particular I was double checking the alignment, which I know is off a bit here and there.  I do that by changing the transparency of the PennEast map image back and forth from fully transparent to fully opaque, and seeing how the underlying Google map matches up to the PennEast map.

And in doing so, I remembered why it’s so hard to get the maps to line up exactly.  The PennEast map is the most ridiculous map artifact I’ve ever dealt with.  Here’s what I mean.  Here is a closeup of the PennEast version of the “IBA Avoidance” area going around Baldpate mountain.

Map A – PennEast’s Extraordinarly useful Map

And now here’s the same thing in Google Earth:

Map B – Google Earth Version of the same location

Yes, these two maps are showing the same thing!  The blob you see on the left on PennEast’s map is in fact a Trap Rock quarry.  The black line is the Delaware River.  The beige-ish blob you see to the right of the Delaware?  That’s Lambertville City!  The beige line you see above the pipeline route?  That’s the Route 202 bridge.

Oh yeah, and Google Earth has little things like city markers and road names!

If you look really closely you actually see many features are entirely missing from the PennEast map, such as several housing developments.  It makes you wonder just how old the PennEast base map really is.

This is a microcosm of what people who deal with PennEast see every day.  Mind-numbingly bad and useless information and materials.

Pat Kornick, you wonder why people hate your company so much?  Look at “Map A” and wonder no more.

Welcome to the “All Possible Routes” PennEast map:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1D3K52CZ7YlojYulRNHdHpei_D-Q&usp=sharing

To help people make sense out of the craziness that is PennEast, I’ve put together a map that contains a number of route changes into one place.  This map shows all of the various major PennEast re-routes, including:

• 2014 original Route
• Jan 2015 MAJOR Route Change
• March 2015 Route Changes
• September 2015 Application Route
• February 2016 Route Changes
• September 2016 Route Changes
• “IBA Avoidance” proposals from PennEast

Please note that the IBA avoidance maps are only approximate, they are based on manually aligning the PennEast images in Google Earth via image overlay.  They may be off by up to a 150′ or so, so take them with a grain of salt.  The other maps are all directly sourced from PennEast.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1D3K52CZ7YlojYulRNHdHpei_D-Q&usp=sharing

Running these sites is getting expensive!  Please help defer our costs and pop over to the donate page, or use the donate button below.  Thanks!

Many people are confused by the FERC intervention process, and the various time windows when you are considered “timely”, and when you’re considered late (technically known as intervening “out-of-time”).

What is intervening in a FERC matter?  What it means is that you are formally declaring yourself as an interested party.  And by doing so, you are forcing FERC to respond to any issues you bring up.  Plus, you can be party in any suits or motions against the project before FERC.  Note the intervening is not the same as commenting – intervening defines your status are someone formally declaring yourself as wanting to be involved.  Comments are independent of that, and you can comment as many times as you like.  You only need to intervene once in the proceeding, so if you’ve already intervened you’re all good, and keep focusing on sending FERC comments!

If you’re not an intervenor, FERC has no obligation to listen to you or to respond to, and you may not be party to any motions against it.

On the “timely” vs. out-of-time stuff, there are only limited times when FERC considers you intervening in a timely manner.  If you intervene out side of these windows, FERC may reject your intervention out of hand as being obstructionist and/or irrelevant to the proceedings.  So you want to be a “timely” intervenor if at all possible.

The good news is that right now we happen to be in such a window!  FERC has a rule that states that any filing to intervene during a DEIS  comment period is automatically considered “timely”:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/18/380.10

Any person who files a motion to intervene on the basis of a draft environmental impact statement will be deemed to have filed a timely motion, in accordance with § 385.214, as long as the motion is filed within the comment period for the draft environmental impact statement.

Since FERC has added a 30 day comment period on the Draft EIS (based on the September 23rd route changes), this means people can file a timely intervention with FERC.

So if you file by December 5th, you will be automatically accepted as an intervenor on PennEast.

There are many reasons to intervene in the proceeding, and no downsides at all.  Some things to note:

• FERC’s own regulations say they must answer every issue pointed out by an intervenor.  If you are not an intervenor, there is no requirement that they answer you.
• Higher intervenor counts tell the federal government the level of interest and opposition to the project
• Timely intervening  is very simple.  See the link below.
• You don’t need a lawyer and it’s free
• Adding yourself to the growing list of intervenors sends a powerful message to our politicians, agencies such as NJDEP and the Delaware River Basin Commission, and others.

http://www.pipeinfo.org/intervene

We also have a sample document you can use to intervene anytime by December 5th.

Sample Intervening Document – use by December 5th, 2016

Be sure to replace your name and address everywhere relevant in the document (bolded).

NOTE: If you miss the December 5th, deadline, we go back to any requested interventions being “out-of-time”.  Those are more complex and may be rejected by FERC, so it’s in your best interest to get this done by the 5th!

If you do need to intervene out of time please contact us at thecostofthepipeline@gmail.com and we’ll get you instructions in how to do so.

Running these sites is getting expensive!  Please help defer our costs and pop over to the donate page, or use the donate button below.  Thanks!

So PennEast released part of their “traffic plan” today as part of their big data dump to FERC.  It’s not so much of a plan as it is a list of what roads they’re crossing, and whether they’re going to bore under them, HDD under them, or simply open trench cut through them.

Originally indications were that PennEast would bore or HDD under every asphalt road, at least in the NJ side.

Well, they changed their minds.  The following is the list of roads where they intend to Open Cut trench.

As we mentioned before, FERC has opened a 30 day comment period on the PennEast pipeline that runs from Nov 4th 2016 to December 5th.  We need you, your friends, your neighbors, and anyone else you can think of to take advantage of this opportunity and comment to FERC.

While the comment period is ostensibly about the route changes PennEast made in late September, 2016, you can in fact comment on any aspect of the project.  For those who want to focus on just the September 23 2016 filings, you can get all the files over at pipe info.org here:

http://www.pipeinfo.org/sep-23-2016-route-change

The first  two files have a broad overview of the changes with some boilerplate text describing the changes.  The rest are detailed construction maps (including HDD proposals).

To help people along, the Citizens Against the Pipeline (CAP) organizations are putting together a series of templates that people can submit.  We’ll be distributing these through all of the CAPs and various web properties in the next week.

Here’s our first set, which are admittedly biased towards my neck of the woods (West Amwell/Lambertville).  These are all in MS Word format:

• Alexauken HDD Protest And Concerns – documents concerns and worries about the HDD under the Alexauken Creek.
• Suez Water Site Protest and Concerns – Documents issues with impacts to Suez Water site, the drinking water supply for Lambertville.
• Old Route 518 Unacceptable Housing Impacts – Unacceptable impacts on  Old Route 518 West.
• Stymiest Road Access Road Concerns – List the unacceptable historical and residential impacts of a proposed access road connecting to Stymiest Road in West Amwell.

As always feel free to personalize and modify these to your tastes and concerns.  More to come!

If you’re not sure how to comment, please visit this page for detailed instructions:

http://www.pipeinfo.org/ferc-comment-instructions

As always, we ask that people try to split comments up by topic, one topic per submission, so that FERC doesn’t lose anything in the process.  Also, if possible please try to submit new, original comments.  Recycling old comments can help, but fresh new ones are always better.

We also have a motivation powerpoint (link below) to help underline why it’s still important to comment, and some “wins” we’ve had in recent months.  This fight is far from over.

West Amwell CAP Presentation – 30 Day Comment Extension

For anyone with any questions or comments, as always feel free to email me at thecostofthepipeline@gmail.com

Running these sites is getting expensive!  Please help defer our costs and pop over to the donate page, or use the donate button below.  Thanks!