Anti-pipeline rally in Stockton

Today Linda and I attended an anti-pipeline rally in Stockton, New Jersey, on the banks of the Delaware River.  The New Jersey side of the river is far more organized and far more militant in working to stop the pipeline.  Every New Jersey municipality along the proposed PennEast/UGI pipeline has passed resolutions in opposition.  New Jersey’s two U.S. senators have expressed their opposition to the pipeline, and both Republican and Democratic candidates for governor are opposed.  Perhaps the most impressive fact of all is that 70% of the New Jersey landowners along the route have refused pipeline personnel permission to even survey the route.

Hundreds of people were in attendance, including a number of participants dressed in Revolutionary War costumes.  Linda spoke to the rally, telling the participants we were there from Carbon County, named for another fossil fuel.  We are still dealing with the problems caused by that industry (acid mine runoff, culm banks, subsidence, black lung disease), and now we are doing it again with fracked gas.

An amazing and disheartening development is that earlier this week the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved the final environmental impact report for the pipeline.  The Commission said the environmental impacts would be minimal.  

This is a pipeline that will cross preserved farmland, streams, wetlands and state parks, mandate a permanent corridor, and pollute the atmosphere with a compressor station in Kidder Township, and the environmental effects are minimal?

As Linda said in her speech, the purpose of this pipeline is to enrich the robber barons, just like the coal industry.