Press conference testimony

I'll be testifying at a press conference tomorrow in the County Annex in Jim Thorpe.  A representative from the Sierra Club will be there along with two property owners from Towamensing Township.  Here is a copy of my testimony:

My name is Roy Christman.  I live at 6495 Pohopoco Drive, Lehighton, PA 18235.  My phone number is 610-377-0235.

When the UGI-PennEast pipeline representatives held a meeting some weeks ago at the Flagstaff with affected Carbon County landowners, they had maps of our farm on their computer.  My wife Linda wasn’t quite oriented, and I pointed to a spot and said, ‘Here’s the place where we pick blackberries.”

I later realized how pathetic that sounded.  The old man talking about where he picked blackberries to some young hotshot from the pipeline company who really doesn’t care about blackberries, but does care about getting a multi-million dollar pipeline built as quickly and as efficiently as possible.

A colleague of mine at San Jose State once told me I had a peasant’s attachment to a small piece of land.  I suppose I do.  I grew up on a 460 acre farm, with pigs, chickens, horses, steers, cows, an apple orchard, a peach orchard, a pear orchard, a bank barn, a spring, a farm pond, a truck patch, a woodland, a swimming hole, and an amazingly lovely falls.

This was property bought by my great-grandfather, cleared by him and his sons, and farmed by my father and my uncles.  The Bethlehem Water Authority ran a water main through the property and took a few acres, but that was a minor inconvenience.  Then, in the Sixties, the Army Corps of Engineers, using eminent domain proceedings, took the bulk of the farm for the Beltzville Dam project, leaving Elwood, Marvin, and Leon Christman 29 of the 460 acres, not enough for three families to live on.  

My solace at the time was that the woodland would never be developed.  The Wild Creek Falls would remain pristine, for public enjoyment.  While much of the Wild Creek itself would be part of a lake, the adjoining woodland would be preserved.  

I’m actually not all that upset that the pipeline will cut through our fields.  What bothers me far more is that UGI-Penn East will cut a swath through Hickory Run State Park, Lehigh Gorge State Park, and Beltzville State Park.  

Evidently Pennsylvania State Parks are to be preserved for future generations unless some private energy company decides it needs to use the land.  Woodland that I thought would be preserved will be lumbered off, dug up, scarred.  

I taught Political Science at San Jose Staten University for 29 years, but I never realized that a company could use eminent domain to seize private property for its own profit.  I never realized that preserved farmland could be used as a route for a pipeline.  I never realized that forest land in state parks would be preserved until a pipeline company wanted to cross it.  I never realized how little power I had in the face of a multi-million dollar energy company.