PennEast Pipeline to Be Discussed at March 28 Event

Submitted by Steve Bacher:

A presentation exploring the PennEast pipeline and its threats to Bucks County residents will be hosted by 350 Bucks County and BuxMont Coalition for Peace Action on Saturday, March 28 at 7 pm at the Newtown Friends Meeting House, 219 Court St, Newtown.

The presentation will be given by the Delaware Riverkeeper Network’s Monitoring Director Faith Zerbe, a biologist with extensive experience assessing the impacts of oil spills on natural resources and designing restoration strategies. Zerbe will discuss the dangers to drinking water supplies in the Delaware River watershed from the planned gas pipeline through the watershed. She will also provide tools for citizen actions. The Riverkeeper champions the rights of our communities to a Delaware River and tributary streams that are free-flowing and not polluted.

The proposed natural gas pipeline would run from hydrofractured (“fracked”) gas wells in northeast Pennsylvania across the Delaware River south to near Pennington in Mercer County, NJ.

Critics charge that the pipeline project, and the fracking in the Delaware River watershed that it would facilitate, would threaten our agricultural lands, surface and underground drinking water supplies, our air and treasured natural resources such as state parks, preserved wildlands, and the Delaware River, a nationally designated Wild and Scenic River, as well as exacerbate climate change.

The critics point to the 10,620 pipeline incidents which resulted in more than $6 billion in property damage from 1994-2013, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation Pipeline Safety Administration’s figures. Since the Delaware River watershed provides drinking water for 17 million people, critics of the pipeline believe its risks do not justify its benefits.

There is no charge for the event and the public is invited to attend.