Transcontinental’s Leidy Southeast gas pipeline may get the NJDEP go-ahead to finish the Skillman Loop one year late. But Township officials declined a chance to publicly push for completion at an August 9 public hearing held on terms protecting residents and preserving wetlands and water quality at Lower Middle School.
DEP Hearing Officer Richard Langbein noted the format for public comment at the start of the evening, saying public officials in attendance would get the chance to speak before others because “they represent a significant cross-section of the community's population.” Sadly for Montgomery, that equated to no official voices.
The only individual who spoke with some form of Township representation was Clem Fiori, chairman of the town’s Open Space Committee.
Minutes before the hearing started, former Mayor Christine Madrid wondered aloud where current Mayor Patricia Graham was. Graham was supposed to speak on behalf of the Township Committee. In her absence, Madrid didn’t leave her seat or comment during the hearing. A lack of attendance by the rest of the Committee and residents of Montgomery overall was noticed by NJDEP for its official record.
Martha Wright whose Skillman home borders the pipeline route says the gas line folks have done the opposite of the Township: they showed up, communicated and were neighborly.
“I would love for Montgomery Township to show one ounce of concern about us,” Wright said. “They have not been thoughtful and have not answered any of our questions. I just find the way it has been handled from the township side to be unbelievable. There is no help or consideration, it has all come through Williams Transco.”
At the August 9 hearing, Wright and her husband Glenn spoke well of Transco, but acknowledged thunderous noise from the drilling, startling them, their cats and dogs and wildlife in Skillman too, 24/7 last winter. They hope Transco's permits can be approved and the job is done within 60 days with open-cut trench work.
“I literally lived with the construction for a year and a half,” she said. “Frankly I would like to be considered an endangered species. If Transco drilled 100 yards to the left they would be in my living room. I don't know what the excitement is over the land; it is flat and there is no runoff. We have never had flooding and there would be no runoff into the stream if Transco was allowed to continue. I would like to see common sense consideration.”
The June filing included geotechnical analysis from Transco. Transco's Chris Brown says Transco cannot currently inspect its pipeline for anomalies and corrosion, and ultimately they aren’t maintaining the pipeline as needed with the holdup. Makeshift operations without the completed loop keep pressure on the existing “B” line.
“If something were to happen to the existing ‘13’ line and/or we were to take it down to do maintenance, we would have zero gas to pass through this area here because the ‘D’ line is tied into the existing line. Reliability is engrained in any engineered product, anything that anybody designs. As part of our FERC application the reliability of the system was engrained in that design and incorporated at inception, as evidenced by the fact we have launchers and receivers at both ends.
“Our pipeline systems, whether here or down in Texas, are designed for the peak capacity day. Here, that typically occurs during winter. That is when everything is relying on us transporting the contractual gas volumes we have transported in here. Should an outage occur during winter, consumers would be greatly impacted and the reliability of Transco’s system would be scrutinized by federal agencies,” Brown said.
John Todd of Transco says substantial construction had been completed by last November with those two lines, spanning 2,800 feet and 2,000 feet bordering Princeton and Montgomery.
However, three drilling attempts at the last section, including tries for 24 hours a day, were ineffective given the ground conditions. Todd says there are fractured strata at the site, within the drill profile and “not due to the hardness of the rock or encountering hard rock.” Each day Transco’s mud engineer analyzed drilling fluids to help, and they hired third party HDD inspectors to oversee the contractor.
Brown noted the hire of a mud drilling engineer on site. Nothing changed. He said that in his 25-year career a drill has never reacted to the rocky ground conditions the way it did in this part of the Skillman loop. “Not for lack of trying, as we did try on three different occasions for a period of six months,” Brown said.
Although the 1,250-foot Section remained incomplete, last December 14, FERC gave approval to Transco to install a bypass of that section “in order to meet natural gas demands for the 2015-2016 heating season.” On December 17, 2015 a new flood-hazard area (FHA) application to the DEP was submitted for open-cut drilling.
On March 22, the DEP requested that Transco withdraw its permit application. In June Transco submitted a new FHA permit application together with an “enhanced” technical analysis supporting the open-cut method, which Todd says has the least environmental impacts.
Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, says Transco has a self-inflicted hardship by choosing this route for the pipeline, coming in and digging its giant trenches, disrupting soil, ruining vegetation and creating significant water quality impacts. He believes the state DEP should look at new and cumulative impacts due to additional pollutants and stream buffers being destroyed.
Robert Goldston, a Princeton University Astrophysics professor, Princeton Plasma Physics researcher and chair of the Princeton Ridge Coalition safety committee, told the DEP he was concerned about the delays while Transco was running gas in the existing pipeline at “twice the speed it should be running,” He says there is real danger in running the gas so much faster at points with curvature in the pipes.
“We are getting gas that should be going through two pipelines actually through a narrower pipeline, which might be three times the normal speed. It is a safety issue we need to resolve quickly,” he said.
Mary Penny of Skillman, immediate past president of Montgomery Friends of Open Space, expressed disappointment that a lot of land covering the Transco pipeline span was from utilization of Green Acres funds, paid with millions of Montgomery tax dollars. MFOS has worked for 14 years to preserve land and $1.2 million in Green Acres funds plus state Agricultural Development Committee funds, allocated for preserving farmland, stream corridors and sensitive wetlands.
“Concrete is man’s last crop, so with the open cut the NJDEP should hold them to the highest standard possible,” she said.
The NJDEP decision for Transco permits is due September 2. Final public comments were to be submitted in writing to Mark Harris of the DEP’s Trenton office by Wednesday, August 24.