Could this happen to your community?
Susquehanna at Owego, Winter CloudsY
Brian Keeler Studio, www.briankeeler.com
It most certainly could. The inland manufacture of LNG with product transport overland is a new concept. There will be other large export projects that the industry would like to set up in northern PA, with impacts to be borne by your community.
Here is a hypothetical scenario:
An industry approaches a municipality in which it has acquired land.
As required by DEP, the industry sends the Act 14 notice to the “host” municipality. If you are not the host municipality you will not hear about the proposed project. The industry also sends the Act 14 notice to the county; the county simply files the notice – it has no requirement to publicize it.
The municipality is wowed by the industry’s talk of jobs and of what the project will cost. The company does not disclose where or how the (800) millions of its investment will be spent. The municipality, grateful for any investment, wants to believe that the $ will be put into the local economy. But the reality is that most of it will be spent on wages to workers who do not live locally and on equipment that may be manufactured overseas.
The industry secures the needed zoning changes from the municipality and then files an application with DEP.
DEP grants permits for "gas processing" and earth disturbance (Water Obstruction and Encroachment; Erosion & Sedimentation). These do not require advertised public hearings.
Suddenly, there is a pipeline going through! Surreptitiously a pipeline company has been lining up right-of-ways from property owners.
Say, the host municipality does not raise any alarm because it thinks a small plant is going in. Over time, there is nothing to stop a small project from growing larger – after all, the host municipality did grant those zoning changes. Now the community could be faced with a need for road widening, traffic signals, and road repair to accommodate heavy LNG tanker trucks, as well as sand, water, and residual waste trucks associated with fracking.
The host municipality did not wish ill on its neighboring municipalities, but it was not informed by the industry of the wider-area impacts. The host municipality was somehow under the impression (incorrectly) that DEP or the county would tell everyone in the wider area and that the DEP review would involve an area-wide assessment.
The host municipality may have been given sweeteners in the form of fire trucks, grants, and recurring host-municipality payments. These are not shared with neighboring municipalities.
The County (of the host municipality) Planning Commission may have been consulted, but say you are in a different county – one that will be impacted by truck traffic and air-quality issues. The project didn't disclose the truck route it would take.
Soon all the merchants in your community complain when the sidewalk ambience is changed by thirty 40-ft tanker trucks per hour. Shoppers are afraid to parallel park. School bus routes are complicated by a new safety hazard.
You are two counties away, but now you are being approached by PennDOT to put up a traffic signal to accommodate a large increase in tanker truck traffic.
You have a Norfolk Southern railroad crossing in your community. When a 100-car unit train is passing, the flow of traffic is blocked. Your local emergency responders have to take a circuitous route around the railroad crossing. School busses are delayed in bringing children to meet parents. Due to the flammable nature of the cargo, you need to arrange additional traffic police every time the train comes through.
Susquehanna at Owego, Winter Clouds
Brian Keeler Studio, www.briankeeler.com
