I attended an “informational meeting” about the PennEast Pipeline in Lower Towamensing Township seven years ago. The company had hired guards, construction workers sauntering around looking tough, a table of federal officials from something called FERC were there, and the PennEast company had slick publications touting the need for this pipeline that would carry fracking gas from Pennsylvania to New Jersey.
Our state Senator (Yudichak) and our state Representative (Heffley) both supported the pipeline. One of the largest employers in Carbon County supported the pipeline. Officials in Kidder Township supported the pipeline under the impression it would bring jobs.
Testimony at “public hearings” on the pipeline was taken in private. Land agents tried to scare landowners. The company refused to move the pipeline an inch, even if it wrecked the water supply and crossed state parks and wetlands. The arrogance of the company was appalling.
For seven years a determined coalition of environmentalists, homeowners, farmers, local government officials, and community activists fought this pipeline. Every now and then a David beats a Goliath, and that is what happened. The pipeline is dead, kaput, deceased.
PennEast announced its death this morning.
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