WINCHESTER — A proposed new route for a controversial natural gas pipeline avoids much of the town’s drinking water aquifer and natural resources, including Pulpit Falls.
And while some town officials and residents are happy company representatives listened to their concerns, they say they’ll keep fighting until there’s no plan to bring a pipeline through town.
“Now that they moved it,
they want people to say, ‘Great, you listened to us and moved it so it’s
OK for us to let our guard down,’ “ said Susan L. Durling, part of
Winchester N.H. Gas Pipeline Awareness, an anti-pipeline group. “We’re
not letting our guard down.”
The Tennessee Gas
Pipeline Co. LLC, a Kinder Morgan company, is proposing to build a
pipeline carrying natural gas from shale gas fields in Pennsylvania
through upstate New York, part of northern Massachusetts and into
southern New Hampshire before going to a distribution hub in eastern
Massachusetts.
The Northeast Energy
Direct pipeline would cross 71 miles of southern New Hampshire,
including the Monadnock Region towns of Fitzwilliam, Richmond, Rindge,
Troy and Winchester.
Liberty Utilities, which
is interested in buying natural gas from the pipeline for its customers,
is considering building a line to branch off the pipeline to provide
its customers in the Keene area with natural gas.
The recent route change is the second Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co. officials have proposed through Winchester.
In July, they met with
selectmen and the conservation commission to discuss a proposal that
would move the pipeline south of the wellhead protection area part of
the stratified aquifer. They said at the time the proposal would be the
new preferred route for the pipeline.
However, board and
commission members continued to express concern to company officials
that the pipeline wouldn’t be leaving the path of Eversource’s
electrical transmission lines until after crossing less than 100 feet
from Pulpit Rock and just under 600 feet from Pulpit Falls, which are
both on conservation land owned by the town.
Local history says Native
Americans from the Massemet and Nawelet villages likely met annually in
the area of the falls and nearby rock to challenge each other to games
and enjoy one another’s company.
According to preliminary
route maps delivered to Winchester Town Hall this week, the pipeline
would leave the electrical transmission lines while still in Warwick,
Mass., and travel northeast toward Old Warwick and Upper Snow roads. It
would pass east of Pulpit Falls and Pulpit Rock, as well as avoid Bent
Pond, which straddles the Winchester and Warwick border.
The pipeline would then
cross Warwick Road (Route 78) farther south than the route proposed in
July and travel toward Scotland Road. After Scotland Road it would make a
sharp turn north, crossing Pudding Hill Road toward Richmond Road
(Route 119).
Winchester Town
Administrator Shelly Walker said Thursday that the preliminary maps were
dropped off at town hall Tuesday afternoon.
The conservation
commission has asked her to send the maps to the Southwest Region
Planning Commission to match them up with the town’s tax maps to see
which properties the new route would affect, she said.
Richard N. Wheatley,
spokesman for the Northeast Energy Direct project, didn’t confirm the
new proposed route in an email Thursday. He would only say, “We continue
to examine routing options for the proposed NED Project as we continue
stakeholder outreach and move toward an anticipated FERC certificate
filing in October. But we have made no final re-route decisions.”
FERC, the Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission, is charged with deciding whether to approve the
project after the certificate is filed.
When asked if Tennessee
Gas Pipeline officials considered the new proposal as a preferred route
or alternate route, Wheatley said “(n)o additional proposed routing
information to provide at this time. The full certificate filing has
been planned for October.”
Selectmen Chairwoman
Roberta A. Fraser said Thursday that while she and other town officials
and residents are happy the pipeline is proposed to avoid Pulpit Falls
and the aquifer, they’re bothered that it’s still coming through
Winchester.
At the July meeting, the
conservation commission voted to allow Fraser and commission member John
H. Hann to give Kinder Morgan and Tennessee Gas Pipeline officials a
tour of the Pulpit Falls and Pulpit Rock property.
Fraser said Thursday that
tour took place at the end of July, and conservation commission member
Benjamin Kilanski also participated.
Conservation commission
member Gustave A. Ruth said the new proposed route is an improvement
over the previous two, but it “just didn’t go far enough.”
Meghan Foley can be reached at 352-1234, extension 1436, or mfoley@keenesentinel.com. Follow her on Twitter @MFoleyKS.
