By Patty Cronheim
The Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) has exercised its jurisdiction over the proposed PennEast pipeline, and I applaud this decision. This important interstate agency has the authority to look at the big picture – how natural gas pipelines impact the Delaware River Basin. The DRBC has the legal authority to require PennEast to comply with the DRBC’s codes and regulations to protect the river basin. Approximately 87 percent of the proposed pipeline runs through the Delaware River Basin. The Delaware is a national treasure providing us with drinking water and tourism dollars. DRBC’s involvement in the PennEast pipeline matters to everyone on both sides of the river.
PennEast claims DRBC is not allowed to look at the pipeline’s impact on the river basin. "This is not a jurisdictional issue," PennEast’s Patricia Kornick said . "This is an agency review process. Because it’s an interstate pipeline, (the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, "FERC") has final review." Clearly PennEast does not want the DRBC staff’s specialized knowledge of sensitive environmental conditions and technical experience protecting the river’s water quality to get in its way. PennEast prefers what Hopewell Township Citizens Against the PennEast Pipeline have learned will be a rubber stamp from FERC for whatever PennEast wants to build.
PennEast’s goal is profits. PennEast will use eminent domain to build the pipeline to make money. This is not a government infrastructure project like building a public road that benefits the public. No one here benefits. What is worse —- PennEast does not care. PennEast intends to clear cut miles of mature forest adding to our deer population by creating more edge habitat for deer and more dangerous car accidents. PennEast does not care about damaging some of the state’s most pristine streams, preserved open space, preserved farmlands and public parklands in Mercer County. Can you imagine a private citizen getting away with that? And, let’s be clear. PennEast is a private company. Makes your head spin? You’re not alone.
So now the DRBC will be telling PennEast that they need to stop and comply with their codes and rules. I and others here in Hopewell commend the DRBC for weighing in on this pipeline. The Commissioners have authority over this pipeline project. I support the DRBC as it works to enforce it’s environmental regulations and encourage the DRBC to stand fast in the face of PennEast’s recalcitrance to play by the rules. PennEast is not entitled to avoid the law.
Destroying trees, plants, and land for a new greenfields right of way through preserved farmland and open spaces is a slap in the face to New Jersey taxpayers who paid for these fragile greenways in our geographically small and population dense state. PennEast thinks it can just ignore the legal covenants of conservation easements that promise permanent preservation of our lands. The water we drink, the air we breathe, and the land we enjoy all depend on thorough regulatory enforcement by agencies like the DRBC.
A bipartisan majority of New Jersey taxpayers voted ‘Yes’ in every county on November 4th in favor of public question #2. Republicans and Democrats alike have come together in opposition to PennEast. U.S. Rep. Leonard Lance (R-7th District), State Assemblywoman and U.S. Rep.-elect Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-12th District) as well as State Republican and Democratic assemblymen and senators are opposing the PennEast pipeline because the cost is too high for New Jersey. The message to all agencies couldn’t be any clearer. We care about our land. This is what we value.
I asked a PennEast spokesperson at the Open House in West Amwell whether putting a pipeline through preserved land violates open space covenants. The response: that’s a "philosophical question." I respectfully say that it is not a philosophical question. PennEast chooses to ignore what we as a state value and the legal meaning of permanently preserved land.
We value the fragile, beautiful, living landscape around us more than we value the pursuit of high profits garnered from its destruction. The pipeline is a real threat to the very survival of 200-year-old forests, working farms, and pristine streams. The hard reality is that these areas will never recover after a 125-200 foot pipeline construction path scars and destroys them. I invite anyone from PennEast to take a walk with me and see some of the forests, farms, meadows, and streams they are so willing to ruin. Come see – not with an eye to get landowners to allow the pipeline surveys, but to actually experience them and maybe you’ll understand why we care so deeply about these special places and the laws that protect them.
I’m truly heartened that after carefully looking at this proposed pipeline plan, the DRBC decided to act to protect the river basin. I fully support and encourage the DRBC to stay its course and continue to exert the full measure of its jurisdiction over the proposed pipeline. I ask the DRBC to require PennEast to submit environmental impact studies specific to the local conditions in each and every comprehensive management area and special water protection area along the proposed pipeline route.
Hopewell Township Citizens Against the PennEast Pipeline has provided postcards for people to sign to go to the DRBC in support of their authority over PennEast pipeline. The postcards are available at the Mercer County Library on Delaware Avenue and at the Hopewell Township Municipal building. Also, on December 9 the DRBC is meeting at the Washington Crossing Historic Park Visitor’s Center. Please come support the DRBC’s scrutiny of the PennEast pipeline and ask DRBC to require environmental impact studies. ( For questions about the PennEast pipeline and the DRBC meeting, go to www.HTCAPP.org).
Patty Cronheim, of Hopewell Township, is coordinator of Hopewell Township Citizens Against the PennEast Pipeline.
