Area residents speak out at pipeline event

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July 26, 2012

Area residents speak out at pipeline event

By JOE MAHONEY Staff Writer The Daily Star Thu Jul 26, 2012, 03:30 AM EDT

FRANKLIN -- Her brow furrowed, Cindy Beach pointed to a sprawling aerial photograph showing a stretch of the proposed route of the Constitution Pipeline, the transmission system that, if approved by federal regulators, will move natural gas from Pennsylvania to Schoharie County.

"If they keep the pipeline here," the Franklin resident said as she pointed at the map, "it's going to take my whole, entire backyard out."

She was standing inside Franklin Central School, the setting Wednesday night for an open house sponsored by the planners of the proposed pipeline, which the team of Williams Partners and Cabot Oil and Gas has said it is hoping will become operational in March 2015.

The managers of the $750 million project are promoting one preferred route that runs through Broome County, then crosses into Chenango County before entering Delaware County just southeast of the border with Otsego County. It would tie into an existing pipeline in the town of Wright in Schoharie County.

The planners have also come up with about 15 alternate routes and are also studying, at the direction of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, siting the pipeline within the existing Interstate 88 corridor.

Ultimately, it will be up to FERC to determine the exact route for the project and issue a license to the corporate partnership behind it, if it is to be built.

Beach said she was not seeking to stop the project, but rather to have the route moved several hundred feet to the west, putting it through wood lots and farmland owned by her neighbors.

She said she conveyed that suggestion two weeks ago to a land surveyor hired by Williams, noting the surveyor never got back to her.

As she spoke to The Daily Star, a Williams representative stopped by with a pad of paper and jotted down her suggestions and contact information.

About 120 people in all, most of them from Delaware County, but some from Otsego County as well, stopped in to meet with the fleet of representatives for the pipeline project.

"They set it up as a sort of cocktail party or a science fair, and I think they did that so people could not ask questions to the full group and keep people from hearing the responses," said Joan Tubirdy of Meredith. She is involved with a group of pipeline opponents who contend the project will pave the way for hydraulic fracturing for natural gas in the region.

The pipeline planners contend the transmission system -- while designed for open access, meaning gas could be loaded into the pipeline or taken out of it along the way -- is already booked to capacity with companies extracting shale gas in Pennsylvania.

As for the routing, pipeline spokesman Christopher Stockton said the designers are still getting input from local residents to minimize impact on local residents.

"Our goal is to identify the best possible route for the pipeline," Stockton said. "Tonight is to have information exchanged here and address the concerns that are out there."

Stockton said the project planners will recommend a preferred route next fall and then file an application for a FERC license in January.

He said siting the pipeline along I-88 would create both "constructability issues" and "environmental issues," noting that path could lead to multiple crossings of the Susquehanna River and impact more homeowners and businesses than the other suggested routes. However, the project engineers are moving forward with developing a full analysis of the I-88 corridor.

Land owner Cindy Greenblatt of Sidney said she supports the pipeline and has cooperated with land surveyors. "I think this would be a good shot in the arm for the local economy," she said.

But Giuseppe Fuduli, a contractor who owns a house on an 87-acre tract of land in Davenport, said he would lose the usage of about a third of his property if the pipeline is built on its current route.

"I came with my wife and kids from Long Island to here in the Catskills because we wanted to have a natural environment," he said. "Now I'm concerned about trespassers coming on the property with their snow mobiles (to use the right of way); I'm concerned about leaking, and I'm concerned that this is only going to open the doors to gas drilling and fracking and everything else that goes on."

The fifth and final in the series of open houses will be held from 6:30 to 8:30 tonight at the Best Western Cobleskill at 121 Burgin Drive in Cobleskill.