Yet another access road planned for PennEast.  This one goes from Pleasant Valley Road onto their site on Baldpate Mountain.

The access road is the dark grey path on the upper left of the map snaking up to the pipeline construction area.

Note that the picked one of the steepest possible slopes for this road.  Here’s approximately where it is on Google Earth with 3D terrain turned on:

As you can see, the proposed access road goes up the side of the mountain and then back down to get to the pipeline construction area.  This is the second steepest slope on Baldpate that I can see, and PennEast seems to have made it deliberately as awful as possible.

And this is on top of the existing impacts we knew about.  Here’s a direct overhead shot of the site:

You can see all of those construction work spaces digging into the existing old growth trees, and then the helpful access road to make it even worse.

As a final note, I’ll show what Fairfax Hutter dubbed the Baldpate “Mohawk”.  The so called “colocation”, that really isn’t.  In this case, the pipeline has to be sited far enough from the high voltage lines that the construction is in an entirely new corridor on Baldpate, with a thin area of trees between the power lines and PennEast e.g. the Mohawk.

My son might think this is cool, but pretty much everyone else is going to hate this.

This post shows the differences between the February 2016 route and the September 2016 route, and also the new HDD site impacts from the September 2016 route.

This post covers PA.  There was also one for NJ.  I’ll also be covering access road impacts in a separate post as well.

In these posts the bright pink line with the milepost numbers is the February 2016 route. In some cases we include the 400′ survey corridor for that as well.

The new September 2016 route shows the actual ROW in faded pink and orange, and temporary work spaces in cyan.

PA Red Bridge Road

PA Hexenkopf Road

A large change near hexenkopf

PA Route 33 additional workspaces for HDD

More workspace for HDD south of the shopping center.

PA Route 33 Lowes Shopping Center HDD

The HDD entry/exit in the Lowes Shopping Center parking lot.

PA Daniels Road

Route moved closer to houses

PA Move 50′ West of Golf course

PA Change across Dannersville Road

PA Change across West Beersville Road

PA Change Cottonwood Road

Route expanded to cut more trees

PA Appalachian Trail HDD

A very large change by the Appalachian Trail.  They are now doing a very small HDD under the trail itself, but with the corresponding large HDD site impacts at entry/exit.  Plus far more extensive tree cutting to accommodate this route.

PA Blue Mountain “Easy out” area

PA Blue Mountain Trail Area change

PA Lower Smith Gap Road

A very large change moving the route over a thousand feet north on the other side of Lower Smith Gap Road.

PA Beltzville Lake HDD Impact

PA Lovitt Road extensive new construction areas for HDD support

PA Hatchery Road Major Change

A major change near Hatchery Road to try to bring the pipeline within a utility easement.  What it’s doing is actually widening an existing 200′ wide cut to 250′ wide.  And now, instead of going through a valley, it is going up and down the mountains on steep slopes.

PA Kidder Compressor Site

PA Route 2020 Changes

PA Shantyroad Road Quarry major changes

PA Auburn and Leidy Interconnects

Change for the interconnects into the UGI Auburn gathering system and the Transco Leidy line. The Leidy line is the one PennEast says doesn’t exist!

Running these sites is getting expensive.  If you want to help out with the hosting and other costs of running thecostofthepipeline.com along with pipeinfo.org, then please take a look at the donate page.  Thanks!

This post shows the differences between the February 2016 route and the September 2016 route, and also the new HDD site impacts from the September 2016 route.

This post covers NJ.  There will be a followup for PA.  I’ll also be covering access road impacts in a separate post as well.

In these posts the bright pink line with the milepost numbers is the February 2016 route. In some cases we include the 400′ survey corridor for that as well.

The new September 2016 route shows the actual ROW in faded pink and orange, and temporary work spaces in cyan.

Hopewell NJ Scotch Road HDD Site Impact

This shows the HDD setup site south of 546 near Scotch Road.  These HDD impact pictures show you that HDD isn’t “free”.  There’s an impact in large setup spaces that are clear cut.

Hopewell NJ Scotch Road HDD Site Impact 2

The other end of the impacts.

Hopewell NJ Bear Tavern Road change

The route is moved slightly south.

Hopewell NJ Baldpate Mountain HDD site impact

They’re going to clearcut that big cyan square for the HDD under Pleasant Valley Road/Moores Creek.

Hopewell NJ Baldpate HDD Impact 2

This is the other end of the Baldpate HDD site, in the middle of wetlands.

West Amwell NJ Old Route 518 Change

Here the route is shifts to the East about 150 feet on the southern portion of the map, and 50′ to the west on the top portion.  This helps PennEast impact two houses more directly, and also causes maximal tree cutting damage in the area.

West Amwell NJ Suez water site

The route is shifted approximately 50′ to the west here, resulting in even more tree cutting on steep slopes and wetlands impacts.  At least it’s a little further from the Swan Creek Reservoir dam.  It also appears to still cut the water pipe.

West Amwell NJ Route 179

The route is now about 150′ east of the previous one

Delaware Township NJ Brockville Hollow Road HDD Site

This documents the new HDD entry/exit point for the Brockville Hollow site and associated route change.

Delaware Township NJ Lower Creek Road HDD Site  Impact

Another new HDD site, this one is Lower Creek Road.

Delaware Township NJ Rosemont Ringoes Road HDD Impact

The other end of the HDD site from above and associated route change.

Delaware Township NJ Sanford Road HDD Site

A huge impact from HDD entry/exit on a farm house on Sanford Road.

Delaware Township NJ Hewitt Road HDD Impact

The other end of the above HDD work.

Kingwood Township NJ South of Featherbed Lane HDD Impact

Site impact in cyan below Featherbed Lane.

Kingwood NJ Kingwood Lockdown Road new Impacts

Huge construction zone taking out trees south of Kingwood Lockdown Road.

Kingwood NJ North o Kingwood Lockdown Road HDD Impact

Impact site from HDD entry/exit and associated route change

Kingwood NJ Kingwood Road/519 HDD site impact

Another HDD site impact

Holland Township NJ  Milford Warren Glen Road/519 HDD Site Impact

New HDD and associated route change

Holland NJ Reigelsville Milford Road

Route 75′-100′ north of previous route

Holland NJ Route 627 Route variation

One of the biggest changes in NJ, the route has moved North about 1,300 feet.  PennEast keeps waffling between these routes here.  It is clear there is NO good route through this very sensitive and difficult area and PennEast’s constant waffling indicates this.

It also shows PennEast’s statements of “no new landowners” are impacted is false.  The route here is completely different from the prior one.

Holland NJ Gilbert and Elizabethtown Interconnect Closeup

A closeup of the Gilbert generating plant area.  The lateral is now completely different from the previous one.

Running these sites is getting expensive.  If you want to help out with the hosting and other costs of running thecostofthepipeline.com along with pipeinfo.org, then please take a look at the donate page.  Thanks!

Since I wrote the entry on the proposed access road connecting to Stymiest Road, I’ve received a bunch of emails and also had a chance to check out the site myself.

Here’s the construction map to refresh people’s memories.

As it turns out this is one of those dual-named roads that runs between West Amwell and Lambertville.  It looks like in West Amwell the road was renamed in honor of a previous Police Chief for the township. Searches for his name in the township reveal the obituary of his wife, who was listed as living on “Old Rock Road” in West Amwell.

The Lambertville side is called simply “Rock Road”.

I took a drive up there today to see what it was like, here is how far I went, and then took pictures coming back down.

And here’s what the road looks like up there:

As you can see the road is all gravel and a narrow single lane, it terminates at this house.

Going back down you can see a moderate slope, and there are many twists and turns (it twists to try to stay on a rough ridge line trending down).

Coming down near the bottom you see a sharp turn to the left and a warning of a “one lane bridge”.

Turning the corner you do indeed see a very narrow two lane stone bridge, shored up with some modern steel.

If you turn around from where I’m standing here you’ll see a sign.  This is a sign that  Sean Pfeiffer of West Amwell emailed me about.  You see, this isn’t just any tiny road named after a former police chief from the 1980’s.  It has some history somewhat older than that as well.

The sign reads:

In 1778, during the Revolution, the Township of West Amwell had the colonial road used by The Grand Continental Army under the command of General George Washington enroute to the battle at Monmouth NJ.  This section of the Bungtown Road is in its original untouched condition.

As it turns out, the Bungtown Road was a big deal for Lambertville and the region:

http://www.nj.com/hunterdon/index.ssf/2015/10/new_historical_research_book_on_early_history_of_l.html

There is a notice about this book in the West Amwell Township committee meeting minutes from 2015:

So this is where PennEast wishes to build an access road.  Connecting to a tiny one land gravel road on sloped land and many twists and turns, with a minuscule one lane bridge at the entrance to it, and which is part of what one historian calls “the most historical road in the nation”.

And then connecting down onto nearly as small Quarry Road:

Imagine earth movers, huge trucks carrying 50′ lengths of 36″ pipe, and support vehicles all moving through this area.

Now perhaps you have an idea why so many people think so little of PennEast.

The September 2016 route changes are now available for viewing in Google Earth:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1UB77IFfE7pFpI6h9UZnHGWhDu0o

Note that this route map is hard to see when zoomed fully out. Zoom in to your area to see the actual impacts.

This map is a little different from the ones PennEast has published before (of course).  This one does not have mile markers on it, but it does show the exact impacts from the pipeline and its construction.  The picture below shows a sample of what the new maps look like:

The orangey-beige line in the center is what PennEast is calling the “operational” right-of-way for the pipeline.  This is what they will keep clear-cut forever, and varies from 35′ to 50′.

The yellow area outside of that is the “legal” right of way.  This is the 50′ area centered over the pipeline.

The blue areas show the “temporary construction” areas.  These will also be clear-cut of trees.  This is the first time they’ve put the temporary construction areas into an easily used Google-map form for people to look at (note: after the DEIS comment period, of course!).

Areas that show no blue temporary construction zones are areas where horizontal directional drilling (HDD) will be employed.  In those areas there is no digging down from the top, instead they will be drilling underneath the land.  Note: while HDD minimizes impacts where it goes under, the entry/exit points for HDD are typically huge and have very large impacts.  Here’s a sample near Brockville Hollow Road where a new HDD proposal is in place:

Here you can see a big blue rectangle in the middle of the screen and then no more blue below it – the rectangle is the HDD entry/exit staging area.

Above ground facilities are also shown, these are shown in dark blue outlines.  See below for an example:

This sample is from the terminus of the pipeline route in Pennington.  These are the Transco interconnect and Transco receiver site.

If you have any questions or issues with the maps please don’t hesitate to email thecostofthepipeline@gmail.com.

The map links on this site and on http://pipeinfo.org have also been updated.

If you want to help out with the hosting and other costs of running this site along with pipeinfo.org, then please take a look at the donate page

Part of the September 23rd data dump from PennEast about the new route variations included more details on proposed access roads to the pipeline construction areas.  These are new roads that are built in places where public roads are not within a certain distance of the construction (I believe this is around 1/2-1 mile or so).

Lambertville and West Amwell get to see a new one: a new access road proposed to connect to Stymiest Street in Lambertville.  If you never heard of it, don’t feel bad, I had to look it up too.  It appears to be more of a driveway than an access road.

Here is PennEast’s proposed construction map:

The new access road is the dark grey area near the middle, connecting Stymiest with the pipeline route.

Those concentric wavy  sort of lines you see on the map are called contour lines – they depict changes in elevation. As you can see, not only does the pipeline construction cross a lot of contour lines, so does the new access road.  And no, PennEast doesn’t believe in switchbacks either – the road charges right up the hillside.

In addition to additional new erosion issues that this will cause, this is also going to be a nasty traffic issue for Lambertville as well. Here is a map of the larger area:

This map shows the Swan Creek Reservoir, Stymiest street in the middle, and where it connects into Quarry Street/Rocktown Lambertville Road.

Anyone who lives in the area knows what Quarry Street looks like – two cars typically can’t comfortably pass each other on most of it. There’s the google Street View look at it above.  Imagine a 20 ton pipe truck going over that speed hump in front of the house!  Imagine trying to get to the West Amwell municipal building on the connecting road!.

Imagine massive construction vehicles regularly traveling these roads.

The impacts to Lambertville and West Amwell both are going to be enormous. But they won’t be known in detail until 2017 – sometime AFTER PennEast expects approval from FERC and receive eminent domain authority.