ST. BONAVENTURE — The state Department of Environmental Conservation has set a legislative public hearing on the National Fuel Gas Northern Access Pipeline Project for Tuesday at St. Bonaventure University.
The hearing, at 6 p.m. in Room E-140 of Doyle Hall, is one of three the DEC has scheduled on the pipeline route through parts of McKean County in Pennsylvania and Allegany, Cattaraugus, Erie and Niagara counties.
Hearings will also be held at Iroquois High School in Elma in Erie County on Wednesday and at Niagara County Community College in Sanborn on Thursday. All meetings start at 6 p.m.
The DEC has notified stakeholders that National Fuel Gas Corp that the company’s application for the pipeline is completed.
Documents and draft DEC permits pertaining to the proposed 97-mile pipeline are available at the Olean Public Library and Delevan-Yorkshire Public Library.
The project is seeking DEC permits for a Water Quality Certification Application for crossing 192 streams, 19 of which are protected streams. Five of the stream crossings will use horizontal drilling techniques, three will be bored and one will use the dry crossing method.
An Air State Facility Permit will be required for a new compressor station in Pendleton as well as an existing compressor station in Porterville.
The natural gas will come from Marcellus Shale wells in McKean County, bound for Eastern gas markets or the Canadian market. The 24-inch pipeline will pass through the Cattaraugus County towns of Portville, Hinsdale, Ischua, Franklinville, Machias and Yorkshire. More than three-quarters of the pipeline route follows existing rights of way.
Karen Merkel of the National Fuel Gas corporate communications office, said the company has been discussing the pipeline for 31 months and held numerous public meetings.
“The interstate transmission pipelines make up an efficient energy delivery network that keeps New York State running,” Merkel said Tuesday in an email to the Times Herald. “These pipelines are also bringing something that consumers have not seen in nearly a decade — cheap natural gas. Few states are experiencing that benefit as much as New York, where multiple new pipelines carrying natural gas in from the Marcellus and Utica Shale have pushed heating costs down to record lows,” she said
Merkel estimated the economic impact in annual property taxes for four New York counties to be $11.5 million, with a one-time sales tax impact of approximately $6.6 million.
“The direct and indirect economic impact of the Northern Access project is substantial,” she added. “It is expected to utilize $65 million in North American-sourced products, provide 1,680 good paying construction jobs, and have a total economic impact of $931 million, $735 million of which is in New York state.”
A group of landowners and groups opposed to the pipeline, Wyoming, Erie and Cattaraugus Communities Act on the Pipeline (WECAP), have expressed concern that National Fuel Gas has ignored rusting pipelines already leaking in rural areas.
“We would like them to fix those pipes before they start building expensive new pipelines which we will pay for by increased rates while the gas goes to Canada,” wrote Emilia Oprea of Sardinia in Erie County, who founded WECAP, in a notice to supporters.
Oprea, who owns property on Cattaraugus Creek, which the pipeline route crosses, said the pipeline will not benefit Western New York, but will tear up streams, wetlands, farms, fields and woods. She insisted it will not supply New York communities.
Oprea said trenching through 180 streams, 270 wetlands and seven ponds, and bisecting the Cattaraugus Creek Basin Sole Source Aquifer represents a danger to the region’s water supply.
WECAP has also expressed concern over stray voltage from the cathodic protection units the pipeline will employ to prevent rust, especially in Allegany, Cattaraugus and Southern Erie counties, where the pipeline route follows existing electric power line rights of way. The group is also wary of new compressor stations, interconnects and dehydration stations along the route.
“These facilities emit toxins for a 10-mile radius or flush toxins into our waterways,” Oprea said.
Opponents also fear the eminent domain powers the company will have if the pipeline is approved.
“The pipeline threatened eminent domain right of way has a detrimental or destructive physical effect on these (landowners) plans as it cuts a 75-foot wide swath through properties with little regard to building sites, barns, farmed fields, wildlife habitat/pathways and waterways,” Oprea said.
