PRINCETON: Environment groups warn of pipeline problems

By Philip Sean Curran, Staff Writer
   Environmental activists are warning of the negative impacts of pipeline projects, this as a Southwest pipeline company is proposing an East Coast expansion that will go through part of Princeton.
   The forum, arranged by a regional chapter of the New Jersey Sierra Club, was part education about, part advocacy against laying pipelines through residential and natural areas.
   Williams, an Oklahoma-based pipeline company that transports natural gas, wants to expand its existing pipeline to increase capacity to move gas from the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania to its customers.
   Jennifer M. Coffey, policy director of the Pennington-based Stonybrook Millstone Watershed Association, told of the natural wildlife that live in the Princeton Ridge, where the new pipeline will go through. The proposed Princeton leg of the expansion starts at the Coventry Farms property, located just east of the Great Road, to Cherry Valley Road and then going into Montgomery. About 29 properties are impacted.
   ”One of the things that befuddles me is I don’t understand why we keep wanting to put pipe through our forests,” she said to an audience at Princeton University on Wednesday evening.
   Kate Millsaps, conservation program coordinator with the New Jersey Sierra Club, told the audience that one unknown is how much gas is in the shale.
   ”So we have no idea how many pipelines we actually need to transport the fuel from Pennsylvania to the New England markets or potentially exporting it out of this country,” she said.
   She charged that gas drillers are in a hurry “to get as much gas as they can before there are tighter regulations on the industry. So this has resulted in a glut of natural gas in the market.”
   In her remarks, Faith Zerbe of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, explained the dynamics of how pipelines function and their impacts. One element includes compressor stations, located at points along the pipeline, to keep the gas moving.
   ”They’re often very noisy,” said Ms. Zerbe, who feels there ought to be “no” pipelines. “A lot of communities are dealing with noise ordinances trying to stop it that way or have them put in different types of devices on the compressor stations to keep it quiet.”
   Ms. Zerbe, a Philadelphia resident, said that in Pennsylvania, a lot of state parks and lands are being drilled “like crazy.”
   Opponents of the Williams proposal and other pipeline projects plan to attend an April 18 meeting in Washington, D.C., of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the government entity that must give its approval. A flier at the Thursday’s event showed a red circle around and a red line going through a hand holding a rubber stamp with the agency’s initials FERC on it and the word “approved.”
   As part of its outreach to the public, Williams plans to have an open house April 11 starting at 6 p.m. at the Otto Kaufman Community Center in Montgomery, so that people can learn more about its project. The center is located at 356 Skillman Road.