PRINCETON: Pipeline officials meet with neighbors

By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
   An Oklahoma pipeline company that transports natural gas said Thursday that it could not be sure yet whether it will need to use blasting for a proposed pipeline expansion through 1.3 miles of Princeton, including the Princeton Ridge.
   ”At this time, we don’t know. That’s part of our discovery process that we’ll be working here in the upcoming months, “ said Chris Brown, director of engineering of Williams, during a public forum in town hall.
   He said testing would have to be done to eventually determine what methods the company would need to dig through the rock and install the proposed pipeline. He said at this stage, Williams does not know how hard the rock is.
   Williams has proposed laying a 42-inch pipeline that would run mostly parallel to an existing 36-inch pipeline, laid in 1958. In Princeton, it runs through land starting at the Coventry Farms property, located just east of the Great Road, to Cherry Valley Road and then going into Montgomery.
   This is but one leg of an overall 28-mile pipeline expansion, going into parts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, that is intended to allow Williams to increase its capacity to transport natural gas from Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania.
   Williams, a Fortune 500 company headquartered in Tulsa, has customers such as utilities that pay to have their gas delivered, with the rates based on the distance the gas has to travel akin to a car travelling on a toll road.
   ”Companies like ours are being requested to build infrastructure that’s closer to the market,” said Cindy Ivey, Williams manager of public outreach, at the meeting.
   Williams has said the project has a $300 million price tag. Based on its timeline, the company anticipates starting work in the fall of 2014.
   Around 29 “potentially affected” Princeton property owners were invited to Thursday’s forum, with residents raising concerns about safety and property values being impacted, as well as safety violations at the company’s facilities around the country.
   For the project, the company must acquire 20-foot easements from the property owners.
   ”We actually do land value appraisals on the parcels,” Ms. Ivey said.
   Property owners are compensated for the easement, damage that occurs when using temporary workspace and for restoration, she said.
   If negotiations fail, the company could seek to use eminent domain, but only after getting federal approval to do the project. Williams, now at the very beginning of going thorough a federally mandated review process with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The commission has to approve the project to allow it to go forward.
   ”It’s not a rubber stamp,” said Douglas A. Sipe, an environmental project manager with the commission, at last week’s meeting.
   In addition to visiting Princeton, Williams’ representatives also met with the state Department of Environmental Protection on Thursday to introduce state officials to the project and get feedback.
   The company must also assess any environmental impacts of its project on natural resources and fish and wildlife. But the director of the New Jersey chapter of the Sierra Club said the project was bad for the environment.
   ”There is no need for this pipeline other than to promote fracking and the burning of fossil fuels that impact clean water and promote climate change,” said Jeff Tittel in a statement Thursday. “This line not only threatens the neighborhoods it passes through but threatens our environment. This pipeline is going to go through environmentally sensitive areas creating an ugly scar, adding to pollution, and putting people at risk.”
   Mr. Tittel made his comment as part of joint press release issued Thursday along with two other groups, Delaware Riverkeeper and Food and Water & Watch.
   Ms. Ivey said there would be public open houses about the project, including one on April 11 at the community center in Montgomery.