The Franklin Reporter & Advocate Eight Villages, One Community
More than 170 area residents – including a healthy contingent from Franklin – took to the Internet September 10 to persuade the state Department of Environmental Protection to once again kill a controversial gas pipeline project.
The nearly 20 Franklin residents joined their fellow dissenters in asking the state DEP to reject several Clean Water Act permits needed for the project sponsored by Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Company (Transco), a subsidiary of the Houston, Texas-based Williams Companies.
The project, known as the Northeast Supply Enhancement Project, or NESE, is a three-state endeavor designed to increase the amount of natural gas supplied to Transco’s New York customers. Part of the project involves building a 32,000-horsepower natural-gas powered twin turbine compressor station – which would raise the gas pressure in pipelines so the gas can make it to its final destination – on a 52-acre tract in Little Rocky Hill, near Route 518.
The project was thought to be killed about 17 months after the company said it was shelving the project following the denial of water permits by the New York Department of Environmental Conservation and the state DEP.
But in May, buoyed by statements by Pres. Donald Trump, Transco asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to reinstate its authorization for the project. FERC did so in late August.
Transco now has to get approvals from New Jersey and New York state environmental officials.
Commenters during the four-hour DEP public hearing on the permit applications generally focused on the compressor station, saying it would lead to air pollution in nearby residential communities.
Some statewide and shore-based environmental groups were also represented in the opposition.
Mayor Phil Kramer told the officials that air pollution from the project would affect nearby residents’ health and would also have a negative impact on climate change.
“This project’s impact on climate change would be a reason enough to deny it if we were located on an isolated prairie,” he said. “Putting it in a populated population center is inexcusable.”
“So if you do approve this project, then by all means come and live here, come and live in New Jersey’s version of Love Canal,” Kramer said. “But do not pretend it was progress, and do not pretend it is safe.”
Deputy Mayor Shepa Uddin said the compressor station will “create a lot of concerns around respiratory cancer and other health issues.”
She said fire officials have also expressed concern about fighting any potential fires at teh compressor station.
“And that’s very concerning when you have so many residents that are so near where this is getting placed,” she said.
Council member Ed Potosnak, also the executive director of the New Jersey League of Conservation Voters, noted that the project has been denied three times already, “for failing to meet basic health and environmental standards. NESE was a bad idea then, each of those times, and it’s an even worse idea now.”
“We’re asking the DEP to deny all permits and apply New Jersey’s safeguards for our community by using the full authority to protect our communities from the environmental, health, and safety impacts of this unneeded, costly fossil fuel infrastructure,” he said. “The expensive methane pipeline expansion compressor station proposed by Williams-Transco continues to be without a public benefit.”
“NESE must be put to bed once and for all,” Potosnak said. “This project goes against all of our efforts to move forward to a 21st Century renewable energy future. It would keep natural gas infrastructure in operation for generations, making the region dependent on dirty fossil fuels, damaging public health, exacerbating climate change, putting homes and businesses in danger, schoolchildren, and delaying the transition to clean renewable energy sources.”
Councilman Ram Anbarasan told the officials that the project “threatens the health, safety, and integrity of our township and our shared environment. Let’s be clear, this pipeline is not a progress, it’s a regression.”
“It’s a 20th century solution to a 21st century problem,” he said. “While the world moves forward with clean energy, this project doubles down on fossil fuels, placing a compressor station in our backyard and carving out a pipeline under Raritan Bay, a fragile estuary already under stress.”
“We are a vibrant, diverse community, we are schools, parks, places of worship, and homes,” he said. “The proposed compressor station would emit toxic pollutants, benzene, formaldehyde, and particulate matter into the air our children breathe. It would increase risks of asthma, cancer, and cardiovascular disease.”
“And for what? To expand a pipeline that serves no direct benefit to our township,” Anbarasan said. “It would disturb contaminated sediments, threaten marine life, and jeopardize the livelihood of those who depend on the bay. The environmental review already flagged significant risks, and yet here we are again fighting a project that was rightly rejected before.”
“We are not anti-development, but we are pro-sustainability, pro-health, and pro-future,” he said. “Let Franklin Township be remembered not as the place where a pipeline passed through, but as the place where a community stood up and said enough is enough.”
Melonie Marano, deputy director of the Somerset County Board of Commissioners, said the project is “unneeded, it’s unwanted, New Jersey gets zero from this. We are getting in Somerset County the most polluting type of compressor that will be a danger to our air, to our residents. We are putting our water supply in danger.”
“It has no need in this time,” she said. “We need to go to cleaner, non-fossil fuels for our energy reasons, not fossil fuels that will contaminate for decades and generations to come. I urge the DEP, just like you’ve done before, vote no to turn this project down.”
Kingston resident Christina Klam told the officials that constant dynamiting at the Trap Rock quarry could be dangerous for the compressor.
“The compressor location is so close to Trap Rock, but this is dynamiting that it will rupture or at least crack,” she said. “Every house within miles of Trap Rock has cracks.”
“We’re not against industry, we’re not NIMBY, but sometimes a bad location is a bad location,” she said.
Klam, who is also a Fire Commissioner for Fire District 4, said she also had concerns about safety in the case of an explosion.
“Currently, we do not have enough water to put out a fire in that location,” she said. “We should have more pressure within a couple of years. And even after that, if there’s a fire, we do not have enough power to put it out. We’ll have to have water trucks come in, tanks come in.”
Carol Kuehn said she would share a property line with the proposed compressor station.
“In opposing the entirety of the Nessie project, I speak for my neighbors, whose health, welfare, and safety would be immediately and directly in harm’s way from the hazards and pollution created by a gas-powered compressor station,” she said. “And I speak for all the residents of New Jersey and New York, who would be adversely affected by the unneeded and unwanted Nessie project.”
“I also speak as board secretary for the New Jersey Buddhist Vihara and Meditation Center, whose property also abuts the CS206 site, with its center of worship only one quarter of a mile away from this proposed industrial facility,” she said. “Not only would the monks, congregants, dharma school children, and visitors be adversely impacted by air and water pollution, but their religious and cultural activities and meditation practices would be disrupted by the constant noise emitted 24-7 by the operation of the compressors and the roar caused by periodic blowdowns.”
“Governor Murphy and the NJDEP, this is … what we’re asking you to do,” she said. “We urge you to prove that the letter P in your department’s abbreviation really stands for protection by denying outright all applications for Nessie permits. We and the future generations are counting on you to live up to your promises.”
Township resident Linda Powell said she has been fighting the project since she first heard of it in 2016.
“The Williams-Transco Northeast Supply Enhancement, or NESE project, has changed very little in the past nine years and is reportedly the same unchanged project that was denied both by you and by the NYSDEC,” she said. “What has changed is that we have had the hottest summers ever recorded, massive forest fires, more frequent destructive storms with increased flooding and sea levels rising.”
“The NESE project is extremely dangerous, unneeded, and of no benefit to New Jersey,” Powell said. “The plans for NESE endanger our wetlands and threaten the existence of many already endangered species. Even the proposed access road to the site of the construction of CS-206 supported by wetlands, many acres of woodland would be destroyed.”
“It upsets and frightens me that we no longer have federal agencies able to protect our environment or our health and safety as they have been dismantled,” she said. “But we do still have you to protect the environment and health and safety of New Jersey residents.”
“For these reasons and for a myriad of details that cannot be presented in three minutes, I am very thankful for your previous denials of this project and am asking you to again deny transpose permit applications for the NESI project,” she said.
Franklin resident Barbara Cuthbert said that deficiencies in Transco’s prior applications have not been rectified.
“Unresolved issues with NESE remain for water quality impacts during and after construction,” she said. “For the in-water construction and hydrostatic testing, these include sedimentation, turbidity, release of toxins and chemicals that will impact water quality, habitats, marine life, and the shore economy. For the on-land construction and operations, there will be wetland disturbances, potential groundwater contamination from nearby Superfund sites and habitat disruption. Concerns remain for the stormwater management at the proposed compressor station 206 site.”
“Now, since the DEP has a duty to protect the quality of our waters and since Williams-Transco has not made any substantive alterations to their plans in the last eight years, which could ensure the construction and operation of NESE would meet New Jersey standards, I strongly urge the DEP to again reject this application for permits,” she said.
Cuthbert also asked the officials to hold more public hearings on the applications.
“People do not know that this project has re-emerged and people need to understand the scope of the proposed project and be fully engaged in this process,” she said.
Cuthbert was joined in that request by Manijeh Saba, who said “we need another hearing so people can express themselves.”
Township resident Vasiliki Anastasakos said the issue was an environmental justice issue.
“Franklin Township has at least 25 percent each African-American, Asian and Latino population and 29 percent White,” she said. “Thirty percent of the students in our public schools come from families that are below the poverty line.”
“Let’s not continue this trend where compressor stations are in areas where communities are overburdened and let’s give Franklin an opportunity to become the wonderful community that it is and it deserves to be,” she said.
Susan Jurden of Griggstown said she was “very concerned about the lack of oversight of the compressor station. For example, will we be notified when there’s a blowdown or a leak so that we can make sure all our windows are closed and all our pets and kids are outside? We’ll have to be notified by someone from Texas, apparently. To me, that’s insane.”
“I also have very personal concerns about this compressor because last year I was diagnosed with lung cancer,” she said. “I was not a smoker. I had an extensive workup to find out more about my lung cancer and found out that my cancer has a variant that caused cancer to develop when I was exposed to a number of pollutants.”
“I wouldn’t want anyone to go through what I have gone through and am still going through with cancer,” she said. “If this project is approved, how many others will be affected by respiratory diseases and cancer from the toxic pollution from the compressor through no fault of their own?”
Bernadette Maher said there has been no significant change in the applications to warrant an approval.
“A recent study has again confirmed that there is no need for this gas in New York or New Jersey,” she said.
Maher listed a litany of issues that could be caused by the compressor station and pipelines, including the release of toxins in the water and air and the destruction of wetlands.
“The gases emitted by the station will increase the risks of asthma, cardiovascular, neurological, developmental, and respiratory diseases and cancers,” she said.
Tamar Kieval-Brill of Somerset said the project endangers wetlands, as it did five years ago.
“it’s unclear to me why DEP would approve it now when you wouldn’t have previously approved it,” she said. “On what possible grounds could you, since Williams has made no efforts to ameliorate its earlier problems?”
“Wetlands are among the most sensitive of environmental habitats,” she said. “They would without question be harmed from the construction of this NESE project, but the new application does not even provide complete details on proposed affected wetland areas, both coastal and inland.”
“This project has no benefit to New Jersey,” she said. “It will lock us into outdated and dangerous power generation and leave nightmarish swords of Damocles hanging over the health and environmental safety for us and future generations. I fervently beseech the DEP to deny all of Williams permit applications.”
Kate Joyce of Somerset said she opposed the project, but also lambasted the DEP for the virtual hearing, which was held on the Microsoft Teams platform.
“This whole Teams thing is not an acceptable way to give public comments, and I think it’s a big farce, this hearing and DEP’s so-called investigation of the pipeline,” she said.
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