In his weekly column, Gil Smart asks “Would pipeline benefit Lancaster county at all?”
He writes:
“The proposed Central Penn Line South would serve as a shortcut between two existing lines. At least some of the gas, Williams representatives have said, could be headed for a liquefied natural gas terminal south of Baltimore, for export.
“So there’s one very legitimate question for you: This might tear up portions of Lancaster County. But how much will Lancaster Countians themselves actually benefit from it? Or are we, you know, simply in the way?”
WATCHDOG: It is the very nature of long distance pipelines to transmit a product over hundred and sometime thousands of miles. We here in Lancaster County are served by pipelines that cross without benefiting many counties and even states.
If every community took the same stance and had the power to block development, gas and oil would have to move by rail and truck. We suspect fuel would be a lot more costly.
Fortunately, wiser heads long ago betstowed on federal regulatory commissions the right of eminent domain, the power to to take and compensate for the right of way in such circumstances where it was deemed that the pipelines would serve the broad public interest.
Here is one other question: How many of us are aware of the many underground gas and oil lines that currently pass through county? All we ever see is an occasional tiny monitoring station.
After all, it isn’t as though we were moving a whole railroad freight yard into the backyards of a middle class residential community! We would never allow that to happen, would we?
