My consulting firm did an analysis of the Purpose and Need and Alternatives sections of the DEIS during the DEIS comment period, and found a number of issues and deficiencies with it. The analysis was commissioned by a couple of groups, but was signed by a much larger consortium of organizations opposed to the pipeline.  You can read a summary and get a link to the entire submission from the firm’s website.

One of the most amazing findings to me was who made the best case against PennEast.  There are a lots of good candidates for this title – the Skipping Stone studies, NJCF comments, the Delaware Riverkeepeer’s commissioned research, and of course the NJ Rate Counsel’s stellar submission all come to mind.

But as good as all those sources are, there was one set that was even better.

To me, the strongest case against PennEast comes from the owners of the company themselves.

Yes, that’s right, PennEast’s own owners.  Specifically, what I’m talking about is the companies’ statements to the SEC in the form of their  yearly 10K filings.  Every year, public companies have to file a form 10K with the government that details their financial position, and outlines their operational parameters, risks, and any other relevant information the public should know about the company and its health.

Several of the PennEast owners detail their regulated utilities natural gas supplies as part of their filings. And that’s where it gets interesting.

South Jersey Industries, a 20% owner in PennEast, has a subsidiary named South Jersey Gas.  That subsidiary has several pages of details on their natural gas long term precedent agreements, the pipeline that supply them, and their peak day requirements.  SJG very convincingly outlines their systems’ breadth and resiliency and concludes “SJG projects that it has adequate supplies and interstate pipeline entitlements to meet its design requirements“.

New Jersey Natural Gas, another 20% owner and the largest customer of PennEast, doesn’t bother with page after page of data.  They just come out and say it:

“In fiscal 2015, NJNG purchased natural gas from approximately 86 suppliers under contracts ranging from one day to one year and purchased over 10 percent of its natural gas from two suppliers. NJNG believes the loss of these suppliers would not have a material adverse impact on its results of operations, financial position or cash flows as an adequate number of alternative suppliers exist. NJNG believes that its supply strategy should adequately meet its expected firm load over the next several years“.

UGI Corporation – the PennEast 20% owner and project manager – has this to say in their filings:

“Gas Utility meets its service requirements by utilizing a diverse mix of natural gas purchase contracts with marketers and producers, along with storage and transportation service contracts. These arrangements enable Gas Utility to purchase gas from Gulf Coast, Mid-Continent, Appalachian and Marcellus sources. For the transportation and storage function, Gas Utility has long-term agreements with a number of pipeline companies, including Texas Eastern Transmission, LP, Columbia Gas Transmission, LLC, Transcontinental Gas Pipeline Company, LLC, Dominion Transmission, Inc., ANR Pipeline Company, and Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company, L.L.C.”

They conclude with this statement:

“Gas Utility anticipates having adequate pipeline capacity, peaking services and other sources of supply available to it to meet the full requirements of all firm customers on its system through fiscal year 2016. Supply mix is diversified, market priced, and delivered pursuant to a number of long-term and short-term primary firm transportation and storage arrangements, including transportation contracts held by some of Gas Utility’s larger customers.”

The statements of all three companies are the same going back several years – it’s an reassuring affirmation that they are all good, their supplies are highly diversified and more than adequate, and they have no single points of failure to worry about.

So the next time someone tells you that we need PennEast, you set ’em straight.  Here it is straight from the owner’s mouths:

South Jersey Gas, New jersey Natural Gas, and UGI Utility all say “we don’t need PennEast”.

Today I put a “Donate” menu item on the site.  I’ve resisted doing this for years now, but money is tight and I still have many things I want to do with both http://thecostofthepipeline.com and http://pipeinfo.org.

I want to host a lot more files on pipeinfo.org, get a lot more analytics going, and ultimately get advanced searching functions so people are no longer beholden to the FERC site.

Donations will help make that a reality, please see the Help Keep This Going page for details.

Thanks,

-Mike

 
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For some reason FERC has been re-submitting some reports to the docket today, including the NJDEP comments on the Draft EIS. The full report is here:

http://elibrary.ferc.gov/idmws/file_list.asp?accession_num=20160919-0014

Part of the report contains comments from the NJ Geological and Water Survey department of the NJDEP (NJGWS). Their comments talk about concerns of arsenic, boron, and other contaminants that have high concentrations in the proposed PennEast route. Their conclusion on arsenic migration can be fairly categorized as “we don’t know” – which appears to be an honest statement, not subterfuge. They state:

It’s already been mentioned that the Serfes study may not all that relevant because it concerns itself with construction impacts and not really the operational impacts (which are the ones many people are worried about).

But that’s neither here nor there.  The point is that NJGWS rightly points out that “The proposed pipeline route will cross over a number of geologic units with known elevated levels of arsenic. This has been well documented and studied over the past decade“. As such, they take a conservative view (which I wholly concur with) that if construction is approved, that PennEast be wholly responsible for the impacts.  And they are taking FERC to task on exactly what those impacts might be.

In their comments, NJGWS states (emphasis mine):

“It is important to note that PennEast has specifically designed the route to avoid traversing lands preserved by federal easements but it is quite willing to trample upon state preserved lands because FERC’s certificate will allow them to do so.  The NJDEP has asked PennEast to consider NJNLT lands as the most important state preserved lands to avoid, yet PennEast refuses to do so.  This refusal is especially insulting because the NJNLT was specifically created in 1969 by the New Jersey Legislator to preserved lands that protect the state’s natural diversity such as endangered species habitat, rare natural features, and significant ecosystems and to ensure the protection of such lands from condemnation.  Since 1969, no lands owned or managed by the NJNLT have been condemned.  If FERC issues a Certificate to PennEast with the powers of condemnation, this will be the first time in 47 years that the natural diversity of the NJNLT preserve is threatened.

PennEast clearly endeavored to be model citizens (or as close as they can get) during the DEIS comment period from July 22-September 12th.  Most likely they didn’t want a bunch of nasty citizens complaining to FERC and getting it on the record.

So they waited until the comment period is over.  And now that it has, they’ve picked up right where they left off.

Two days after the comment period ended PennEast had a Real Estate company send letters out to everybody letting them know that they’d be swinging by in a few weeks to asses the value of their properties.  Even to people who have phoned, faxed, emailed, and told PennEast in person to bugger off and leave them alone.  A copy of one of the letters is shown below.

Here is what I wrote to FERC about this latest violation of property owner’s rights.

I urge any landowners who have received this to call up Integra Realty AND send them a letter via registered mail indicating that this assessment is unwanted by you, the property owner, and that it constitutes harassment.  Let them know that you have told PennEast in no uncertain terms that they and their agents are unwelcome. And that you will do whatever is required to protect your legal rights.

My name is Michael Spille, I am writing on behalf of West Amwell Citizens Against the Pipeline (WACAP). We are an organization of over 200 individuals who reside in and around West Amwell, NJ who have a number of issues with the proposed project.

Today, multiple members of WACAP received the letter shown below.  In this letter, a real estate company is indicating that they are going to be coming into the area to assess the value of people’s properties.  This is letter is being sent to numerous landowners who have refused all survey access to PennEast, who have sent registered letters telling the company to leave them alone, and have made it abundantly clear on this docket that they want nothing to do with the company.

Further, at this stage in the FERC process PennEast in fact has no special rights.  Absent a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity, PennEast is simply a vanilla private company with no authority.

Sending these letters to landowners who have indicated they do not want solicitations from PennEast is harassment.

Further, asserting that they will assess the properties automatically if the landowner does not contact them is further harassment.

Integra Realty Resources and PennEast have no rights to visit any of these locations, and no right to assess the value of any properties.

Further, it is clear that PennEast waited until AFTER the DEIS comment period ended to begin this harassing campaign.  It is clear PennEast does NOT want this harassment on the official record for the DEIS.

We ask FERC to contact PennEast immediately and ask them to cease and desist this activity.

Almost a year and a half ago, I was asked to speak at a meeting of DTCAP (Delaware Township Citizens Against the Pipeline).  Among the organizers were Charles Slonsky and Marty Wissig, and they asked me to do something a little different: could I do a  presentation that would inject some hope into people?  Charles had observed that as time marched on and people attended more and more meetings about PennEast, the rooms would get more and more sullen, and over time more and more attendees would come out depressed, downtrodden, frustrated, and angry (or more likely, all of the above).

What Charles and Marty told me was that people were just being constantly hit with an avalanche of bad news about the project.  How FERC always approved these projects, how PennEast had the upper hand in every negotiation, how the regulatory deck was stacked against us in Pennsylvania, how the administration in NJ was bending the process here in our state, and on and on and on.  Etc. etc.

We were giving them nothing but bad news, and people can only take so much of that.

So Charles had the brilliant idea of a “wins” segment in the meeting.  This would be a segment where we would highlight positive news, and in particular we would talk about any sort of “wins” we could stack up against PennEast or other pipeline projects.

I put the presentation together and walked the crowd through it  at the DTCAP meeting.  And – despite my jitters in speaking to a packed auditorium at the Delaware township school – the presentation was a smash hit.  Charles was exactly right, people needed a shot in the arm and encouragement that all was not lost, and that these projects can be beat.

That presentation electrified the room and got a lot of people out of their funk.

Since then DTCAP and others have regularly highlighted “wins”, and we have been fortunate that there have been a lot of them.  That includes the denial of the Constitution Pipeline by NYDEC on Earth day; the withdrawal of the NED pipeline by its backers; FERC denial of a pipeline and LNG export facility on the west coast for lack of customers; and the recent ongoing delays of the Garden State Expansion project; and many others.

Now, if we step back for just a moment, for the past couple of years it has become clear that a show down was brewing over the explosion of natural gas infrastructure in this country.  The massive volumes of natural gas freed by fracking came about very quickly, and so industry is rushing to get first mover advantage to build pipelines to move that gas before the market saturates, and inevitably, tanks.  Equally clear is that, in such a gold rush sort of environment, companies would push too far and too hard, and abuse would run rampant.  And FERC’s rubber-stamp policies would magnify those abuses.

As abuse continues and becomes more and more evident to the population, resistance will form.  And if the abuse continues for long enough, eventually opposition will expand exponentially, gather itself up, and and then lay poised waiting on a critical event to precipitate it.

In our case, I have believed for awhile now that the PennEast Pipeline is where opposition will gel and people will make a stand. We just needed a single event to act as our seed crystal, and take our super saturated opposition and precipitate it into action.

The DEIS Deadline as Seed Crystal

As it turns out, the deadline for the Draft Environmental Impact Statement was that seed crystal.  It was a rallying point where everybody – and I mean everybody – would focus their attention.  For months groups have been laboring over their opposition studies, comments, and legal briefs.  The issuance of the DEIS on July 22nd accelerated that process as the groups had a concrete entity to pick apart (and boy, was it easy pickings!).

Finally, September 12th came – the last day to comment on the DEIS.  That day dropped into our calendars, and all of the PennEast opposition came to a head and accreted around it.

On that remarkable day, FERC recorded 735 submissions against the DEIS.  All in one day.

Many of the groups and individuals poised against the project waited until that final day to enter their submission, and as a result the full weight of opposition was not known until that point.

What we actually saw on that day was hammer blow after hammer blow after hammer blow against the project.  It was not “the usual suspects” giving vague assertions about imagined dangers.  It was a series of detailed, nuanced, in-depth analysis, research, and facts pulled together over many months – all indicating how bad the project was, the inadequacies of the DEIS, and the extent to which FERC overstepped its bounds.

There have been many meetings with a “wins” section since Charles’ brilliant suggestion all those months and years ago.  But there has never been a “wins” report anything like this one…..

The organizations behind those hammer blows was also a shock in some cases. The EPA, US Fish and Wildlife Service, and the NJ Rate Counsel went out of their way to point out the wholesale litany of inadequacies in the DEIS. The NJ State Agricultural Development Committee and NJ Department of Environmental Protection also have continued to moderate their enthusiasm for pipeline projects and offered very strongly worded objections to the DEIS and the PennEast proposal.

In no particular order, I want to highlight just some of those hammer blows that have brought PennEast to its knees. Note that this list is by no means exhaustive – it would take weeks to highlight all of the many splendid submissions that individuals, municipalities, and organizations against PennEast labored to put on the docket by the deadline.

Hammer Blows Against the DEIS

The TREMENDOUS comments by the NJ Rate Counsel indicating that PennEast is lying about its purpose and need, that rate payers will be unfairly impacted, and FERC should deny the project as there is no public benefit to be derived from it

A total smackdown of the DEIS by the National Park Service in relation to the Appalachian Trail

The U.S. EPA completely eviscerates the DEIS in a 20 page long submission and objects to it for being incomplete, inaccurate, and unacceptable. That flatly reject it.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service comments on botched, inadequate and missing surveys, and concludes they are unable to accept it. They also decline to be a cooperating agency. Hurrah!

HALT PennEast totally rips FERC conditional approvals and use of eminent domain to pieces

The NJ State Agricultural Development Committee objects to many agricultural aspects of the DEIS and says conserved land is purposefully targeted by PennEast

NJ DEP offers 40 pages of detailed comments of problems, issues, and omissions from the DEIS.

Just one of many, many, many comments from the Delaware Riverkeeper Network picking apart the DEIS from every conceivable angle

A more complete list of Delaware Riverkeeper submissions on the DEIS is available here

Analysis by Columbia University Environmental Law Clinic and Eastern Environmental Law Center in a 37 page brief accompanied by multiple research studies and reports

CAPs and HALT PennEast picking apart the purpose and need and inadequacies of alternatives

Just one of dozens of New Jersey Conservation Foundations comments against the DEIS, this reduces the flawed PennEast economic reports to rubble

Comments of the Rosemont Water Company about missed impacts to their public drinking supply system

Comments of Suez water objecting to catastrophe, unnecessary and undocumented impacts to Lambertville, NJ’s drinking water system

Comments of NJ Sierra Club that DEIS should be withdrawn

Comments of Hunterdon Land Trust asking DEIS be withdrawn

91 page brief by Lower Saucon Township, PA blasting FERC and the DEIS

Comments of Cooks Creek Watershed Association

Hundreds of letters opposed to the DEIS filed by DTCAP

Comments of Delaware Township NJ, pointing out numerous errors in the DEIS

Signatures of residents objecting to the DEIS submitted by Holland Township CAP (one of many batches)

Comments of Clean Air Council demonstrating DEIS is inadequate and flawed and does not accurately capture impacts

55 page brief by Stony Brook Millstone Watershed Association documenting numerous issues with DEIS

Comments of Frenchtown Environmental Commission demonstrating many undocumented impacts to the Frenchtown area.

52 page report on impacts to Land Use and Planning in Kingwood Township, Delaware Township, and Hopewell Township in NJ

Comment from Fairfax Hutter showing PennEast missing impacts even where they had survey access

Comments of Appalachian Trail Conservancy on lacking information about impacts to AT and incomplete plans

The Lehigh Valley Planning Commission notes that many impacts in their region are undocumented and there was no attempt to avoid many sensitive areas despite what PennEast asserts

Today Suez intervened on the docket about their water treatment facility at the Swan Creek Reservoir, and their concerns about PennEast impacts.  This validates what’s been reported to date that PennEast is a direct threat to Lambertville’s water supply.

http://elibrary.FERC.gov/idmws/file_list.asp?accession_num=20160912-5864

From the filing:

SWNJ is a water purveyor and property owner in the location of a portion of the proposed PennEast pipeline. SWNJ’s Lambertville Water Treatment Facility provides water to approximately 4,000 residents and businesses in the City of Lambertville and Town of West Amwell, in Hunterdon County, New Jersey. SWNJ relies upon the critical infrastructure associated with the Lambertville Water Treatment Facility – namely the Swan Creek Reservoir (the “Reservoir”), the Raw Water Intake Pipe from the Reservoir (the “Intake Pipe”), and the Lambertville Dam (the “Dam”) – to provide such essential water service to the area. The PennEast proposed pipeline project will directly transect the Intake Pipe and be located approximately 350 feet away from the Dam. SWNJ is concerned about the safety of its critical infrastructure given the close proximity of the proposed pipeline to the Dam and the fact that the pipeline, as proposed, will transect the Intake Pipe. SWNJ is also concerned about the effects the installation of the proposed pipeline may have on the natural state of the property surrounding the Reservoir.

Accordingly, the Commission’s actions in this proceeding, which relates to the construction and operation of the proposed PennEast pipeline, directly, and immediately affect SWNJ, and no other party can adequately represent SWNJ’s interests. By intervening in this proceeding, SWNJ will be able to monitor all developments in this matter that may affect SWNJ’s interests including the potential effects of the proposed pipeline’s location, construction, and operation in the event PennEast’s application is approved. The Commission, therefore, should allow SWNJ to intervene in these proceedings.