Laurie Cleveland, Hopewell Township
I’m a NIMBY, and you should be too. I say “Not In My Back Yard” to pipelines, developments and anything else that would destroy the peaceful nature and lyrical beauty of my own backyard. Hopewell, Pennington, Hopewell Township, Hillsborough, Montgomery, Skillman, Lambertville, West Amwell and East Amwell all enjoy the best backyard in Central New Jersey. We don’t have to mow it; we don’t have to build a fence around it; but we do need to protect it. Our backyard is the Sourland Mountain. The American Bald Eagle, the Wood Turtle, the Long-Tailed Salamander, the Indiana Bat, the American Kestrel, and many other animals protected by federal and state law, as well as 16 plant species classified as endangered or of special concern in New Jersey, share our backyard. In fact, over 90 percent of the Sourland region is habitat for threatened and endangered species.
Hikers, bikers, backpackers and birders come from miles around to play in our backyard. The Sourland Mountain is Central New Jersey’s last and only contiguous forest; the branches of the trees touch, which creates the deep forest environment that is beneficial to humans and critical for the survival of our native plants and animals
The proposed PennEast pipeline would cut a 125-foot swath (roughly, a six-lane highway) though the forest. Trees and perennials cannot be replanted in the right-of-way. This means the pipeline would fragment our forest permanently.
Fragmenting the forest is bad for several reasons. For example, the more forest we cut down and the more forest edge we create with roads or pipelines, the fewer birds we have migrating and breeding here. Birds need trees that touch, so they can hide themselves and their young from predators. Birds eat bugs. The fewer birds there are, the more bugs there will be. More bugs mean fewer plants or more insecticide on yards, farmers’ fields and in our water supply. More bugs means more spread of diseases like West Nile virus, Eastern equine encephalitis, St. Louis encephalitis and Lyme.
The forest edge is a deer’s favorite place. More forest edge means more deer. There are already 12 times more deer here than our forest can support. They eat our crops, harbor deer ticks, and cause car accidents. Deer cost New Jersey residents tens of millions of dollars each year in landscape and crop damage, in addition to Lyme disease and motor vehicle accidents (Deer are now the second-largest cause of automobile accidents in New Jersey, trailing only drunken driving).
In summary, the proposed PennEast pipeline would be built by a private company to transport its gas from Pennsylvania to somewhere else. This is not a project to serve the greater good. It will not create local jobs. It will not help the environment. It will not replace our rusty oil furnaces. It will decrease property value, raise our taxes, threaten our safety, damage our food and water supply and permanently destroy the delicate ecology of our own backyard.
