Author: Mike Spille

I'm a thinker, an analyzer, a synthesizer. Maybe not in that order. I live in West Amwell NJ with my wife Kristina, our two kids Day and Z, our two dogs Fern and Cinna, and three cats Ponce de Leon, Oliver, and Doolittle.

Flammable gas pipelines and quarries – a match made in heaven, am I right?

Stephen from Stockton NJ tells us about the Trap-Rock quarry in Delaware Township. The pipeline will be running within a few thousand feet of it…where they routinely use blasting. And where, as many have pointed out, the ground is predominantly diabase, a very hard rock that transmits vibrations (e.g. like those from blasting) surprisingly long distances.

I am opposed to the obviously short-sighted reliance and expansion of our dependence on the climate-changing fossil fuels transported by the proposed Penn-East pipeline (PF-15.1). The safety issue raised by putting this pipeline so close to the active Trap-Rock quarry in Delaware Township NJ must be seriously addressed before the committee can consider accepting the plan. Both the original route and the newly presented alternate route come within a few thousand feet of the quarry, where blasting of the bedrock occurs. The blasts create seismic vibrations along the diabase bedrock that extends well into the proposed pipeline routes near the quarry. the harder the bedrock, the greater the transport of the seismic energy.

Surprisingly, the alternate route remains closer to the blast site for an even longer distance than the original route. Both routes are unacceptable, as is the whole short-sighted pipeline concept. Peak particle velocities (PPV) are high enough that residences along this bedrock within a few thousand feet from the quarry blast sites are significantly shaken by the blasts. The proposed pipeline routes are at a similarly close distance to the quarry and on the same bedrock formation.

Within a few years, these seismic vibrations will create local stresses and strains on the pipeline and welds, allowing for formation of defects that will enhance subsequent corrosion. Obviously, this will significantly increase the probability of cataclysmic rupture of the pipeline.

The developers of this project ignore this problem but realize that the probability of pipeline failure is significant enough to become an LLC so as to protect themselves. Who will protect the other Americans along these routes, or are some just ‘collateral damage’? Co-locating the pipeline near blast sites is a ridiculously short sighted endeavor. We have seen no indication of real-time surveillance of pipeline integrity during pipeline usage.

How has the committee assessed the problem of the co-location of the pipeline near a blast site? Are there specific seismic measurements along the route near the quarry? How does the planned expansion of the quarry fit into the future safety of the pipeline? Is there an assessment regarding multiple years of seismic activity caused by the blasts on the integrity of the pipes and welds? The land in the area of the pipeline near the quarry, between Brookville Hollow road and Lambertville-Headquarters road, is diabase and a poor drainage area. What is the effect of long term water exposure in the wet soil on pipeline and weld durability, especially after damage caused by the seismic quarry-initiated vibrations? What is the shut-off time if a rupture occurs? Will it be similar to 1.5 hours seen in the San Bruno explosion? Has the committee done its due diligence in protecting the public and ensuring the long-time viability of this precarious venture?

I know this quarry! You can see it on the D&R Canal tow path between Stockton and Lambertville, my wife and I take our dogs walking on their regularly.

Here it is on Google Earth in relation to the pipeline survey corridor:

As you can see Stephen is correct, the pipeline passes within 3,500 feet of the pipeline.

There’s another active quarry near me where the pipeline also will be passing – the one by Baldpate mountain:

This one is 3,100 feet from the pipeline route.

Why would you place a pipeline that close to blasting sites? And then double down by putting the pipeline into hard bedrock that’s going to transmit those blasts highly efficiently right to your pipeline welds?

Stephene’s submission is below:

Stephen from Stockton – original submitted text

Stephen from Stockton – original submitted text Alternate Site

Running pipelines near schools

Craig from Bath, PA informs the FERC:

I am writing this in hopes of ferc NOT allowing the proposed penn east pipeline to happen. Not only do I have safety concerns about this pipeline running adjacent to Moore elementary school where my daughter attends, but also the long term affects it will have on the watersheds, forests, and landscape that are irreversible.

There are no long term study’s that conclude that there are no side effects to the families who live within a certain proximity of these gas lines. That in itself is scary, but than there is the possibility of leaking gas, valve stations, blowdowns, or an explosion of unknown proportions along the pipeline. Would any of the voting members of ferc be ok with a gas line running within 3/10 of a mile from there house or that close to their child’s school?

The impact on the local ecosystems and watersheds should be enough of a reason to not allow this pipeline to happen. I know just how important preserving our community is first hand as I have two farms in my family that are preserved. Many residents have fought many many years to keep our township rural and agricultural. I am sure this applies to all the other townships along the proposed path of this pipeline, not just Moore township.

The scars left behind after a pipeline is installed will never, ever go away. Swaths through forests, access roads, natural springs being compromised, and change in water run offs are just a few examples of how a pipeline destroy local ecosystems. The effects on the local wildlife are unmeasurable as well.

No local community is even benefiting from this pipeline. All the gas will be shipped overseas to the highest bidder, leaving the gas company richer and thousands upon thousands of folks homes and communities with an everlasting scar reminding them of the greed of the gas company and the government.

I understand the whole imminent domain but that was put into place back in the 1800s to be used only if there was a benefit to the community or government by “taking” someone’s land. Well, doesn’t this seem mighty unconstitutional? One company benefits, while local communities and ecosystems suffer forever.

If anyone cares about the voices of the little people effected most by this proposed pipe line, I would encourage anyone from ferc or the gas company to come out into the local communities and talk to people and see just how many “stop fracking” or “stop penn east pipeline” signs adorn the local community yards and shops. I was at a town hall meeting last month with 240+ attendees and no one was there to represent the gas company or ferc. What a shame.

Just vote NO NO NO. Stop the penn east pipeline

As I mentioned in an earlier post the pipeline is slated to pass within just over a thousand feet of West Amwell Elementary school. It really does look like PennEast picked “cheapest” as their route criteria instead of “safest, best for the environment”….

Craig’s submission is available below:

Craig’s submission – FERC Generated PDF

Craig’s submission – FERC Generated PDF Alternate Site

People’s voices are being lost by inadequate FERC processes

Below are some additional comments I submitted today to the FERC regarding the scoping process and the poor resources they give individuals to have their voices heard.

I believe the FERC is not providing adequate means for impacted residents to have their voices heard in regards to the PennEast pipeline. While at first glance it may appear that there are sufficient avenues for individuals to comment, including the ferc.gov website and the individual scoping meetings, upon deeper inspection it’s clear that these alternatives are deeply flawed and rob people of their rights.

We have only two scoping meetings in NJ, located an hour apart from each other. As an example, the Trenton location was closest to me but I was unable to attend due to a conflict with my job. As such I was forced to drive to the northern Hunterdon location which is a very long distance away. I know many people have been dissuaded from attending the pipeline meetings because of timing.

In addition the meeting lengths are inadequate. At both meetings time was cut off with people who were on the speaking list dropped. I was lucky enough to speak because I left my job early and made the long drive, arriving at the meeting location 40 minutes in advance. As it was I wasn’t able to speak until 9:40pm, less than twenty minutes before the meeting was terminated. That means people who arrived on time at 6pm were left out.

FERC needs to extend the scoping period by at least 90 days and add two more meetings venues in NJ so that people’s voices will be heard.

The other issue is the ferc.gov web site. This web site has multiple down times every single day. Literally every day – I check the site routinely to search for interesting comments to highlight on my weblog, and every single day I encounter problems. I know there is the backup site for searching, but that does not help people who want to make comments or eFilings. To make matters worse the web site is extremely hard to use requiring a number of arcane steps to get comments submitted or to submit files. I am a software developer with 25 years experience in the field and I, as a software professional, have extreme difficulty in using your site. My initial eFiling took multiple tries to go through.

I can only imagine how the average citizen with a less technical background copes with the site.

This provides a material barrier to people letting you know about issues with the pipeline and its proposed route.

We’re dealing with a billion dollar pipeline, slated to carry a billion cubic feet of natural gas per day in a high pressure 3 foot wide piece of steel, in a trench 8 feet deep that’s over a hundred miles long. And our only tools to comment on this immense project is a creaky stone age web site reminiscent of the worst of the Internet from the 1990’s, and over-crowded, widely spaced apart scoping meetings where people’s scheduled speaking times are dropped.

I’ll update this post with the link when it becomes available on the eLibrary FERC site.

Poorly planned out scoping meetings

Kenneth Collins is a well-known opponent of the PennEast pipeline. You might have seen his youtube videos floating around urging home owners to deny PennEast access to their land and force eminent domain court cases up and down the entire route. His thesis is that if PennEast were faced with mass eminent domain hearings, they would likely pack it up and go home rather than run that gauntlet and likely incur mass negative publicity.

Kenneth isn’t just about eminent domain though. In his submission below he points out the inadequacies of the scoping meetings:

I hereby request that FERC extend the scoping period for this proposed project for an additional 90 to 120 days and require at least one more scoping meeting in each of the two directly impacted states, NJ and PA. The scoping meetings that were held served to disenfranchise the public for various reasons:

• The severely cold weather, ice and snow resulted in dangerous driving conditions that prevented many people from travelling to the scoping meetings.

• Many of the chosen facilities utilized for the scoping meetings presented challenges for the handicapped that made it excessively arduous for them
to attend. The venue at the Northampton Community College in Easton, PA in particular was far less than handicapped friendly.

• Many of the venues utilized had inadequate parking, specifically the West Trenton Ballroom and The Grand Colonial. At the West Trenton Ballroom the parking area was full an walking from anywhere nearby was very dangerous due to the frozen snow and high traffic location. Some attendees parked on the firehouse lawn and were threatened to be towed, but many people were disenfranchised and simply left because there was not adequate parking. The venue in Wilkes-Barre had parking two blocks away on a brutally cold evening that was dangerous for many to be out on. The Grand Colonial lot filled up quickly and the press reported, “Because vehicles of those attending filled its parking lot, there were dozens of cars and trucks parked along the highway, almost as far west as the State Police Perryville station.”
http://www.nj.com/hunterdon-county- democrat/index.ssf/2015/02/300_at_penneast_meeting_almost_all_speakers_op pose.html

• FERC failed to properly manage the scoping meeting held at the West Trenton Ballroom, and as a result many people who signed up to comment were not afforded the opportunity to do so. People who signed up to speak were told they would not be allowed to because the meeting was over. Understandably this upset those who were disenfranchised, and since there was only one more scopin meeting scheduled for the next night an hour drive time away, those who were refused the opportunity to speak at the West Trenton Ballroom were denied the chance to speak, and incensed with the process.

• The Obama Administration is in the process of rolling out new methane standards in accordance with the Global Methane Initiative. These new standards are to be rolled out this year, and the environmental impacts of this project must be in accordance with those standards. It is not possible to properly assessthe environmental impact of this project until these new methane standards are made public and PennEast makes measures to conform to these standards available to the public. We can’t evaluate the technology if it has not been made available to us, and as a result we can not present our concerns relevant to the EIS.

I ask that FERC schedule these two additional scoping meetings without delay and extend the scoping period by a minimum of 90 days.

I talked to some people at the Thursday scoping meeting in Hunterdon and they claimed that “budgets” were the reason that scoping meetings were so few and far between. This is ludicrous – when considering the impact of a billion dollar, 3 foot wide high pressure natural gas pipeline you shouldn’t use money as an excuse for cutting corners. The government should not be cutting corners with people’s lives. My neighbor was at the Trenton meeting and said the place was packed solid and many people couldn’t speak. I saw the same at the Hunterdon county meeting.

The FERC should not cut corners and should not rubber stamp this pipeline. There are literally thousands of submissions to the FERC web site in opposition of this pipeline. Hundreds of people have taken up the daunting task of testifying in person to the FERC and public in opposition of this pipeline. The FERC needs to slow down and carefully consider all of the facts before them, and give local residents more time to consider the route(s) and comment on them to the FERC.

Kenneth’s submission is below:

Kenneth Collins submission – FERC Generated PDF

Kenneth Collins submission – FERC Generated PDF Alternate Site

Issues with routing

Ned from Easton, PA writes to the FERC pointing out how bad the PennEast pipeline route is – and how easy it would be to fix it.

We are opposed to the PennEast pipeline project, and we call on the FERC to return a “no action” judgment for many unwise engineering decisions the company appears poised to make.

For example, how many interconnects does PennEast truly need with Transco/Columbia Gas pipeline in Williams and Lower Saucon Townships, Northampton County? The so-called Hellertown Lateral which hugs the northern side of Interstate 78’s west-bound lane from milepost 69.0 to its terminus in the existing city gate facility on the Hellertown- Raubsville Road, would, if built, provide an Interconnect between PennEast’s proposed system and Transco/Columbia Gas system. That being the case, why is a second Interconnect planned nearby at milepost 71.4 on land tract P9-7-13? Furthermore, with two Interconnects proposed within 4.5 miles of each other, why does PennEast need a separate right- of-way to connect those points (meaning the ROW as currently proposed to run from milepost 69.0 to 71.4)? Why not co-locate with the existing Transco/Columbia pipeline at least between these interconnection points which they plan to link? The second Transco Interconnect (the one proposed near milepost 71.4) is in remote, steeply sloped, inaccessible terrain more than 1500 feet from the nearest highway and, as proposed, will require construction of a dedicated access road to construct and to service it. The one at the western end of the Hellertown lateral is 10 ft from a major highway (the Hellertown-Raubsville Road) and has a truck- suitable entrance. Why can’t this Interconnect serve any gas cross-over needs between PennEast and Transco/Columbia?

Cannot FERC see that with poor judgments in planning such as this — and with the countless other engineering deficiencies, environmental challenges, and destruction of cultural/native peoples’ habitats as pointed out by numerous other commenters — that this entire PennEast Pipeline project is an unmitigated disaster? As noted above we urge a “no action” solution or, less preferably, a re-routing of the ROW from milepost 69 onto the Hellertown lateral with subsequent co-location on the Transco/Columbia ROW to reach tract P9-7-13 at presently designated milepost 71.4 and beyond.

See Ned’s submission below:

Ned from Easton PA – FERC Generated PDF

Ned from Easton PA – FERC Generated PDF Alternate Site

Comments from a member of the West Amwell Pipeline committee

Jennifer Andreoli commented to the FERC as part of West Amwell’s Pipeline Committee, link here:

West Amwell Pipeline Committee Member Coments – FERC Generated PDF

West Amwell Pipeline Committee Member Coments – FERC Generated PDF Alternate Site

Please read her comments in full, but this passage in particular really struck me:

If you put aside the extremes, the environmentalists and the pipeline companies, you are left with the citizens impacted by the pipeline. As one of these average citizens I can tell you there is an awful lot of conflicting evidence from both sides. Because of this I felt it necessary to talk to other average citizens who have been impacted by similar applications in other towns. Speaking directly to these people is where I found truth on the aftermath of these applications. There are two key points that struck me more than even the evidence on the environmental impact and potential economic boon for the region.

The farmer. I spoke with a woman from PA and found she has had similar problems as our own Mr. Fulper in West Amwell Township with pipelines. The crop yield is lower on and surrounding the lines, the destruction from the installation is not repairable; the disregard by pipeline companies of the land is disheartening. Both of these individuals have had issues with the pipeline companies coming on their property, destroying property, crops and soils, doing what the company claims are routine maintenance without prior notification. In both cases, the pipeline companies after much arguing and threats to contact attorneys would only offer a minimal monetary compensation for the loss. Even going as far as to tell both farmers, go ahead and take us to court, it will cost you more in legal fees. That was a disturbing discovery especially in light of the fact these are private companies being given permission by our federal government to take land from individuals. When questioned, our government repeats these private companies are required to follow certain rules, regulations and standards of practice which it appears no one holds them accountable to.