Cragg B. Utman, Hopewell Township
I read with amused befuddlement the letter last week about the proposed pipeline through Hopewell Township. The hyperbolic language used to describe the effect on seemingly every aspect of life and geology along the route made me think it was time to clean out the Cold-War-era bomb shelter and stock it up for a long stay. Whole properties being “destroyed,” totally “severed” migratory routes, all waters “will be polluted,” wells “sealed” by blasts, “massive amounts of arsenic” released, whole forests “fragmented,” and even invitations sent to “alien invasive plant species” to have some sort of orgy of proliferation! I haven’t worried about anything so much since the documentary movie, “Mars Attacks.”
Really? Folks, it is just a pipeline. Yes there will be effects (mostly very temporary) of it going through. Yes, there should be strong efforts at mitigating any and all effects, including route planning (I think running the whole thing along the existing power line right of way would accomplish most of this; it would only possibly cost the company a bit more). But pipeline Armageddon?
The problem with most things today is that we have lost the questing nature of doing things for the “greater good” (can you imagine trying to build the Golden Gate Bridge today? In California? Never!) and only respond to the “squeakiest wheel.” Well, the folks I’ve been reading in this paper have been squeaking like a room full of mice at the cat farm.
In several weeks it could be built. Mitigation efforts can make things right in months. Birds will sing again and migrate. Water will flow clean. The sun might even shine.
Is there no appetite for negotiating with all concerned to come up with an agreeable plan? No, this pipeline is extremely dangerous, is all about evil profits, it’s even “corporate colonialism” (which stretches the definition of colonialism a wee bit). We won’t benefit at all, they say; our way of life will be forever altered. Really?
I sure would like to get rid of my dirty, dust-creating oil furnace for a much cleaner, more efficient natural gas one. Would that anyone would put a natural gas pipeline in my street. I’d love the heat control of a gas stove versus the electric one I have now. And gas hot water? Wow! How 21st century!
These NIMBY types would have us in sod huts freezing to death. (Oh, yeah, what’s a “fracking pipeline” by the way; one that “fracks” along the way?) And isn’t it amusing how the guest piece below the letter to which I refer is about how the horribly foul Meadowlands were made into a model sanctuary and this pipeline would end history as we know it?
So, please, go ahead and be concerned about this and other things (there’s always something occupying these people’s time). But, please, please Chicken Littles of the world, tone it down about 500 notches. Why not work out a respectful-of-nature and win-win solution to the issue. And please stop this anti-capitalistic ranting about everything and be a little grateful for the capitalism that gave you your warm homes and Prius, and probably your incomes.
