Tag: Approval Process

More on PennEast trespassers

Brian’s FERC submission mentions trespass:

Also to address the continued trespassing of PennEast employees on private land, and the implications of allowing trespassers to continue violating landowners’ no trespassing notices, as well as FERC’s implicit approval of such trespassing by it’s acceptance of surveys that were obtained illegally.

PennEast Trespassers!
PennEast Trespassers – Alt Site!

Nora writes about trespassing:

3) Question 32 asks “When they come to get permission for signing the survey permission, what are their tactics that they use?” PennEast replies “If they are not able to reach the property owner by telephone, land agents will attempt to introduce themselves in person and will carry appropriate identification. If no one is home, they will leave contact information at the door.” My response to this is “We have posted No Trespassing signs all over our property. What gives PennEast agents the right to trespass on my property? Because of the rich wildlife that inhabits are property hunters and poachers illegally come onto our property. No one, unless invited, can trespass on our property!!!!

PennEast Trespassers!
PennEast Trespassers Alt Site!

Stephanie writes about trespassing:

PennEast workers are wrongfully trespassing to make their plans, and are extorting the use of Emanate Domain against people who have little time, little money to properly deal with it.

PennEast Trespassers!
PennEast Trespassers Alt Site!

Deborah King writes about PennEast trespassers:

PE representatives have already seriously compromised their credibility. They have cancelled meetings with communities because they cannot address the legitimate concerns raised by residents. Despite PE’s promises, they have yet to answer questions posed at the DE Twp September 29 meeting. They have used bogus math to exaggerate the tax benefits that communities would receive. And have misled residents about our rights and trespassed on my property.

PennEast Trespassers!

PennEast Trespassers Alt 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

FERC Scoping Meeting last night

I wasn’t able to make the Trenton meeting on Wednesday due to a work conflict, but I made the 40 minute drive last night to attend the single meeting in Hunterdon County.

It was quite an amazing experience.

I got there early at about 5:20 to ensure I was early enough in the queue to be able to speak. There was a list of elected officials who would go first, then a list of everyone else. I was on page four of the “everyone else” list. As it turns out over 70 speakers signed up in total and I spoke around 9:40, so I suspect some people might have gotten bumped due to time constraints.

The vast majority of the speakers were against the pipeline. I think only about 3 of them were pro-pipeline, including a union worker and a woman who worked for an energy company.

A huge number of the speakers ended up being individuals who’s FERC submissions I highlighted here. The Kingwood mayor kicked ass again, demanding that if the pipeline went through all residents of his town would have their wells monitored for a minimum of 10 years.

The woman who started an organic farm because she has severe chemical sensitivities spoke. She eloquently let the committee know that this pipeline was running right through her farm, her own safe source of food.

The “Mr. Butterfoos!” woman from Hopewell NJ spoke in my group of four. It was very moving to hear her describing the land preservation process in detail and to relate the personal history of her farm.

State and local officials testified over and over again how bad this pipeline was. It’s not about NIMBY. It’s about the route going through extraordinarily sensitive areas with no apparent acknowledgement at all from PennEast. A woman from the Sourlands conservancy relayed a story about talking to PennEast in one of the open houses. She asked asked a simple question – “What do you know of the Sourlands?”. Not a single PennEast representative had ever heard of the Sourlands.

A representative of another environmental group talked in depth about various protected species and the different layers of protection available. In his words, it would take years for PennEast to enumerate and study all of the protected species impacted by their route.

I’d heard some scattered reports of union members being present at meetings in an intimidating manner. I saw a bit of that last night. While it was “standing room only” at the meeting, it looks like every single person actually standing around the perimeter of the room was a union employee. I didn’t realize this until a union rep spoke and they cheered and hooted extensively. While they have a right to speak their word just like everyone else, the symbolism of all of them standing in a ring around the room was not lost on me. It was a pretty clear bullying/intimidation measure. I understand to a degree where the unions are coming from – jobs are important. But they seem to obsess on jobs on the exclusion of all else, which seems to be a short sighted policy to me.

The most surprising speaker to me was an emergency management manager from one of the towns in Hunterdon (not sure if it was Kingwood or another town). He pointed out a specific area where the PennEast nat gas pipeline will be crossing a petroleum pipeline. His concern? Terrorism. I hadn’t even thought of this angle, but apparently OEM-type individuals think very hard about domestic terrorism potential of projects. He demanded to know what kind of security PennEast would provide to this critical pipeline crossing area. He pointed out that mere fences wouldn’t work – a potential terrorist could just lob a satchel charge over a fence, or just use a drone to deliver an explosion wherever they wanted.

At one point pretty far into the meeting the usual applause accompanied the wrap up of one of the ecological minded groups that spoke – and a single individual giving intense boos. The boos rapidly escalated into profanity, and after about a 30 second tirade that left the entire group a little non-plussed the individual finally left the auditorium. His gist was “fuck you all, this BS set of regulations is why I can’t get a fucking job!”.

A speaker immediately after his outburst referenced him directly. She stated that she felt for the plight of the unemployed and it’s a serious issue in the state, but building pipelines wasn’t the answer. Instead she mentioned the prospects of both alternative energy providing employment…and jobs for maintaining existing pipelines that have fallen into disrepair.

Only a few people cited the eia.gov numbers on use and consumption, and only in NJ, so I was glad that I focused on that area in my three minutes. While I’m a horrible public speaker, the crowd responded to the numbers – it’s clear this pipeline is massive overkill if you’re just considering the energy requirements of NJ and PA. It’s abundantly clear that they’re thinking of distribution across the country and possibly overseas, which means PennEast is more or less lying to the FERC in their justification for the project. Pointing out that there were only 10 days of extreme price volatility in a 1,824 day period was especially eye-opening to many people.