By Frank Mustac, Special Writer
HOPEWELL TOWNSHIP — PennEast Pipeline Company has been barred from accessing any and all public lands owned by Hopewell Township.
Township officials approved a resolution Monday prohibiting the company from surveying public property within the municipality.
The intent of the action is to prevent the PennEast from winning federal and state approvals necessary to construct a proposed billion-dollar-plus natural gas pipeline.
If completed, the 105-mile pipeline would run from Luzerne County in Pennsylvania near Wilkes-Barre and end at a junction with an existing pipeline in southeastern Hopewell Township, near Blackwell Road.
“I believe the goal is to stop the PennEast pipeline,” said Hopewell Township Mayor Harvey Lester.
The Hopewell Township Committee previously voiced its disapproval back in October 2014 when it adopted a resolution opposing construction of the pipeline project. The committee also authorized the township administration to participate and intervene in the regulatory process “as necessary to protect the interests of the township and its residents,” according to the resolution.
The move taken by the Township Committee this week, in part, endorses an announcement made by Mercer County Executive Brian M. Hughes on July 22, informing “officials associated with the proposed PennEast Pipeline project that the company would no longer have access to lands owned by Mercer County for the purpose of surveying the property to facilitate the project.”
“This decision was reached as a result of the company performing soil borings on Baldpate Mountain, which the county has deemed as potentially environmentally harmful,” read the announcement by Mr. Hughes.
Hopewell Township is a co-owner of the Ted Stiles Preserve at Baldpate Mountain, along with Mercer County, the Friends of Hopewell Valley Open Space and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.
According to language in the committee’s resolution approved Monday, the township “objects to granting any survey access” at the preserve, which is one of the public open spaces that “will be impacted by the preferred pipeline route.”
“Things are moving in the direction, I believe, of property owners that are declining to give survey approval,” Mayor Lester said.
Only about 35 percent of owners of land in New Jersey along the preferred pipeline route have permitted PennEast access to their properties, according to the DEP.
“People are still saying ’no,’” said Patty Cronheim of the Hopewell Township Citizens Against the PennEast Pipeline, who spoke at Monday’s meeting in favor of denying PennEast access to township-owned public land.
Representatives from the Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association and the New Jersey Chapter of the Sierra Club also spoke at the meeting, advocating to deny access.
